On 1st September 2025, during Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s fourth death anniversary, Kashmir has spoken in silence. No protests. No shutdowns. No stone pelting. No violence and just a normal life at schools, shops and markets open, public transport bustling and people going about their daily routines.
This silence is historic, a stark departure from the decades of unrest that once defined the Valley in response to Geelani’s calls for strikes and resistance. Where are those who once congratulated Kashmiris for paralysing their own homeland with shutdowns? Where are the voices that glorified chaos as “resistance”? They are silent because their script has ended.
The absence of disruption is not emptiness — it is clarity, a resounding rejection of separatist politics that long held Kashmir hostage. For years, separatist leaders, wielding Geelani’s image as their banner, built wealth and power while ordinary Kashmiris paid the price in blood, lost opportunities and shattered dreams.
Geelani, a towering figure in the Kashmiri separatist movement, was portrayed as the unyielding champion of azadi (freedom), advocating for Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan. Yet, his own words tell a different story, revealing contradictions that unravel the myth of his movement. He described Pakistan’s role as merely “moral, political, diplomatic,” insisted Kashmiris were not enemies of Indians, and dismissed Indo-Pak talks as delaying tactics.
Despite these nuanced statements, separatists twisted his image into a permanent tool of unrest, weaponising his name to fuel a cycle of strikes, violence and boycotts that suffocated the Valley’s economy and future. Geelani’s legacy is a paradox, a blend of ideological conviction and strategic manipulation. Born in 1929 in Zurimanz, in the Aloosa tehsil, in the Bandipora district of North Kashmir to a poor family, he rose from a schoolteacher to a three-time MLA from Sopore, serving over 18 years under India’s Constitution — a system he later urged Kashmiris to reject. He thrived in Indian democracy, winning elections in 1972, 1977 and 1987, taking oaths of allegiance to the very Constitution he denounced as a betrayal of Kashmiri aspirations. This double standard — participation for leaders, boycott for the masses — became a hallmark of his movement.
While he called for election boycotts, recent polls in Kashmir saw a 65 per cent voter turnout, the highest in 25 years, signaling a growing embrace of democratic processes over separatist rhetoric. His calls for hartals (strikes) crippled livelihoods, shuttering schools and businesses, yet his own family enjoyed privileges — sons trained as doctors, daughters employed abroad and grandchildren educated in elite Indian schools.
This hypocrisy fueled accusations that Geelani and his allies demanded sacrifices from ordinary Kashmiris while securing personal comfort. By 2020, Geelani himself exposed the rot within his own camp. In a dramatic resignation from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), he accused its leaders of corruption, nepotism and misusing his name for personal gain.
The architect of the separatist movement had lost faith in the very “struggle” he had built, revealing its fragility and opportunism.
If Geelani himself acknowledged the betrayal within his ranks, what does that say about the so-called fight for azadi? It lays bare a harsh truth: the movement was less about liberation and more about control, with separatist leaders acting as brokers of instability, exploiting Pakistan’s support to serve their own interests while ordinary Kashmiris bore the cost.
The narrative of “resistance” peddled by separatists was, in reality, manipulation. Pakistan’s role in Kashmir, far from being merely diplomatic, has been linked to funding militancy, with allegations of Geelani receiving `7,00,000 monthly from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) via his cousin Ghulam Nabi Fai, a US-based lobbyist convicted in 2011.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) probed Geelani for terror funding, fining him `14.4 lakh for foreign exchange violations. His politics, tied to Jamaat-e-Islami and later the APHC, were accused of radicalising youth and fueling violence that claimed over 100,000 lives, including the 1990 Kashmiri Pandit exodus.
Critics like Omar Abdullah argue that Geelani’s calls for militancy and strikes led to economic stagnation and eroded the Valley’s pluralistic Sufi traditions, replacing them with a rigid Islamist ideology that stifled dissent and women’s rights. The stories of ordinary Kashmiris reflect the human toll of this manipulation. Javiad from Central Kashmir recalls the “dark days” of hartals, when he walked from Budgam to Srinagar to buy baby food for his son during a Geelani-led shutdown.
The silence on 1 September 2025 is not just an absence of protest — it is a powerful statement. This shift is not imposed by India, as some pro-Geelani voices claim, but embraced by a population weary of being pawns in a geopolitical game. Pakistan’s failure to script Kashmir’s destiny is evident in this quiet rejection of its proxies. The high voter turnout, the bustling streets and the absence of violence signal a new chapter, one where Kashmiris are reclaiming their agency from the grip of separatist politics.