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New Delhi appears to be flirting with a dangerous illusion in Kashmir: the belief that dissent can be curated, domesticated, and politically recycled without consequences. The emerging political visibility of figures like Ruhullah Mehdi and Wahid Para is increasingly being read as part of an informal strategy to engineer a “new MUF”- a sentiment-heavy, youth-facing political formation that absorbs anger, vents frustration, yet ultimately remains within manageable limits. This assumption is not only historically naive; it is structurally reckless.
The Muslim United Front (MUF) of the late 1980s was not merely an electoral alliance- it
was a political condensation of long-suppressed sentiment, moral outrage, and generational
impatience. Its suppression did not neutralise dissent; it detonated it. Any attempt today to
recreate a sentiment-driven political formation, even in a moderated and sanitised form, risks reopening the same fault lines- only this time in a far more volatile and digitised political ecology.
Ruhullah Mehdi and Wahid Para represent two distinct but converging trajectories of
Kashmiri politics. Ruhullah draws legitimacy from symbolic resistance, moral posturing, and
a carefully curated ambiguity that allows him to speak the language of hurt without
committing to institutional confrontation. Wahid Para, in contrast, channels the idiom of
youth, incarceration, and survival politics- presenting himself as both victim and
representative, insider and dissenter. What unites them is not ideology, but sentiment. And
sentiment, when politicised without structural clarity, becomes combustible.
Their appeal, particularly among the youth, lies in their ability to mirror pain rather than
mediate it. They speak from within the emotional grammar of Kashmir, not towards a
political resolution of it. This is precisely where danger resides. Politics that merely reflects
suffering without reorganising power relations transforms politics into performance. The
crowd feels seen, but remains structurally unmoved. Over time, such politics breeds not hope, but deeper cynicism- and cynicism, in Kashmir, has historically been a precursor to political withdrawal or radicalisation.
The problem begins when sentiment is mistaken for strategy. Both Ruhullah and Para
mobilise affect- anguish, betrayal, wounded pride- but offer little by way of institutional
imagination. Their politics thrives on performative dissent: statements that resonate, silences that provoke, gestures that suggest resistance without outlining its costs or consequences. This is not accidental. It allows them to remain palatable to New Delhi while appearing credible to a restless youth. But such balancing acts are inherently unstable.
New Delhi’s wager seems to be this: allow controlled figures to articulate grievances so that
unregulated anger does not spill into the streets. This is a familiar counterinsurgency logic-
political venting as a safety valve. Yet Kashmir is not a pressure cooker that can be
periodically released without altering its internal chemistry. The youth being addressed today are not politically naive; they are hyper-aware, historically burdened, and deeply sceptical of symbolism without substance. To speak in their name without altering their material or political conditions is to risk radicalising them further.
Moreover, the assumption that youth anger can be indefinitely channelled through
charismatic intermediaries ignores the generational shift in political consciousness. Today’s
Kashmiri youth are less attached to parties and more attuned to contradictions. They do not merely ask who speaks, but to what end. When leaders repeatedly invoke sentiment without confronting the asymmetry of power that produces that sentiment, credibility erodes rapidly. In such moments, leaders are not rejected for saying too much- but for doing too little.
There is also a deeper contradiction at play. By elevating figures who thrive on ambiguity,
New Delhi is inadvertently legitimising a politics of emotional mobilisation divorced from
accountability. Once emotions are commodified- once suffering becomes currency- neither
the mobiliser nor the manager retains control. Ruhullah’s moral vocabulary and Para’s
carceral biography cannot indefinitely remain within the bounds of scripted dissent.
Sentiment, once awakened, demands direction. If that direction is not institutional, it will
inevitably seek extra-institutional expression.
Equally problematic is how both leaders misread their own agency. Ruhullah’s rhetorical
postures often mistake symbolic capital for political leverage. Para’s proximity to youth pain
risks conflating representation with redemption. In different ways, both risk turning lived
trauma into political spectacle- using Kashmir’s unresolved questions as renewable political
resources rather than confronting the structural asymmetry that produces them. This is not
empowerment; it is emotional brokerage.
For New Delhi, the danger lies in believing that such politics can be calibrated indefinitely.
History suggests otherwise. The state may believe it is managing dissent; in reality, it is
normalising a discourse of grievance without resolution. This creates a feedback loop where
anger is acknowledged but never addressed, heard but never transformed. Such loops do not stabilise political systems; they exhaust them- until rupture becomes inevitable.
The central question, then, is not whether Ruhullah and Wahid can mobilise sentiment- they already do- but whether they are prepared to bear responsibility for what follows. And the more uncomfortable question for New Delhi is whether it is prepared for the consequences of legitimising a politics it cannot fully control.
Kashmir’s youth do not merely seek articulation; they seek direction, dignity, and durability.
Any political project that offers emotion without structure, resistance without roadmap, and
symbolism without stakes is bound to collapse under its own contradictions. A manufactured MUF, however subtly engineered, will not remain manufactured for long.
If history teaches anything, it is this: in Kashmir, sentiment once politicised does not remain ornamental. It moves, mutates, and ultimately escapes its handlers. And when it does, the mess it creates is never local, never limited, and never easily reversible.
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