Jammu and Kashmir Insurgency: Historical Context and Evolution

The Kashmir Valley in the early 1990s looked nothing like the tourist paradise of postcards. Armed young men crossed the Line of Control for weapons training, gunfire echoed through Srinagar, and an entire community of Kashmiri Pandits fled their homes. But this explosion of violence did not appear overnight. It was the result of decades of political mismanagement, broken promises, and a deepening sense among Kashmiris that their voices simply did not count. To understand the insurgency, we need to trace how peaceful political grievances curdled into a full-blown armed rebellion.

The political roots of the conflict 🔗

The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir is often dated to 1989, but its causes stretch back much further. Scholars largely agree that the rebellion grew out of local discontent rather than being purely an external creation. As the political scientist S. Paul Kapur has argued, popular anger in Kashmir came mainly from chronic mismanagement by the central government, and Pakistan later capitalised on this discontent to transform scattered opposition into a full-fledged insurgency. In other words, the gunpowder was laid at home, even if the spark sometimes came from across the border.

At the heart of the problem was the slow erosion of Kashmir’s autonomy. The state had joined the Indian Union under special terms protected by Article 370, but over the years a series of constitutional orders and central laws steadily reduced the self-rule that Kashmiris had been promised. Each step chipped away at the trust between the Valley and New Delhi.

The Kashmir Accord of 1975 🔗

A turning point came with the Indira-Sheikh Accord, also known as the Kashmir Accord. Signed in 1975, the agreement allowed the popular Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah to become Chief Minister again after 22 years out of power. On paper, it brought the towering figure of Kashmiri politics back into the democratic fold. In practice, it required Abdullah to drop his long-standing demand that Kashmiris be given the right to self-determination through a plebiscite.

Many Kashmiris viewed this as a surrender. The accord kept Article 370 in place but also retained the post-1953 changes that had diluted the state’s autonomy. Critics saw it as Abdullah trading the dreams of a movement for the chair of Chief Minister. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had famously told him that the clock could not be turned back. For a generation that had grown up hearing about the promise of a plebiscite, the accord felt like a betrayal by their own leadership.

The dismissal of Farooq Abdullah’s government 🔗

The next blow to democratic faith came in 1984. After Sheikh Abdullah’s death in 1982, his son Farooq Abdullah took over as Chief Minister and led the National Conference to victory in the 1983 assembly elections. But Farooq soon fell out of favour with the central government. In what is widely described as a political coup, his own brother-in-law, Ghulam Mohammad Shah, defected along with twelve other legislators and brought down the government on 2 July 1984.

Shah formed a new government with the support of the Congress, even though it lacked a popular mandate. This episode sent a damaging message: a popularly elected government could be toppled through engineered defections backed by New Delhi. Shah’s own tenure ended in 1986 after communal riots in south Kashmir, when temples and properties of Kashmiri Pandits were attacked, leading to the imposition of Governor’s Rule.

The rigged election of 1987 🔗

If the events of 1984 shook public confidence, the 1987 assembly election shattered it. Farooq Abdullah had returned to power in 1986 through an alliance with the Congress. The 1987 election pitted this National Conference-Congress alliance against the Muslim United Front, a coalition of religious and regional groups. The election is widely believed to have been rigged in favour of the ruling alliance, with reports of candidates and counting agents being beaten and results manipulated.

This was the moment when faith in the ballot box collapsed. Many young men who had campaigned for the Muslim United Front concluded that peaceful, electoral politics was a dead end. Some of them, including future militants, crossed over to Pakistan for arms and training. The rigged poll, more than any single event, pushed a generation toward the gun. Decades later, the demand for a judicial probe into the 1987 polls still surfaces in Kashmiri politics, a sign of how deep the wound runs.

The rise of the insurgent groups 🔗

As the political climate deteriorated, armed groups emerged, each with its own ideology and goal. Two became especially prominent: the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and the Hizbul Mujahideen. They represented two very different visions for Kashmir’s future, and the rivalry between them shaped the early years of the rebellion.

The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front 🔗

The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) was the first major group to take up arms. Led by figures such as Yasin Malik, Ashfaq Majeed Wani, and Abdul Hamid Sheikh, it championed a secular and nationalist cause: complete independence for Kashmir, free from both Indian and Pakistani control. The group announced itself dramatically in December 1989 with the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

The government in New Delhi agreed to release several jailed militants in exchange for her freedom. The episode was a humiliating moment for the Indian state. For the insurgents, it was proof that India could be brought to its knees, and it gave the movement enormous momentum. In the months that followed, dozens of insurgent groups sprang up and the authority of the state nearly collapsed in the Valley.

The Hizbul Mujahideen 🔗

In sharp contrast to the JKLF’s secular nationalism stood the Hizbul Mujahideen. Founded in 1989 and closely linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami, this group pursued a religiously oriented agenda. Its goal was not independence but the merger of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan, along with Islamic governance.

Backed by Pakistan, the Hizbul Mujahideen gradually became the most powerful militant outfit in the region. Over time, it eclipsed the JKLF, partly because Pakistan preferred a group that supported accession to Pakistan over one demanding independence. This ideological split, between those who wanted azadi (freedom) and those who wanted to join Pakistan, became a defining feature of the conflict.

The external dimension 🔗

While local grievances lit the fire, external factors poured fuel on it. The timing was significant. In February 1989, the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan after a long war. Pakistan had received large quantities of weapons from the United States to support the Afghan mujahideen, and much of this arsenal could now be redirected. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, used its experience from the Afghan war to organise training, funding, and infiltration for Kashmiri militants.

India has long contended that the insurgency was significantly driven by infiltration across the Line of Control. Most balanced accounts conclude that the truth lies in between: genuine local anger created the conditions for rebellion, while external support turned that anger into a sustained and heavily armed campaign. One tragic consequence of the early violence was the targeted killing of Kashmiri Pandits, which triggered the mass exodus of the Hindu minority from the Valley.

From the gun to the stone 🔗

The insurgency has not stood still. The intense armed militancy of the 1990s gradually subsided in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with only sporadic attacks taking place. But the underlying grievances never disappeared. By the late 2000s and 2010s, the form of resistance had shifted from organised armed rebellion toward mass street protests and stone pelting, increasingly led by young people.

The Burhan Wani moment 🔗

A watershed came in July 2016 with the killing of Burhan Wani, a young Hizbul Mujahideen commander. Unlike the militants of the 1990s, Wani was a social media phenomenon. He posted pictures and videos of himself and his fellow fighters without masks, making militancy appear glamorous and relatable to a new generation of Kashmiri youth.

His death sparked an uprising unlike previous protests in its scale and intensity. The Valley erupted in months of demonstrations, general strikes, and stone pelting. Security forces responded with pellet guns, leaving many protesters dead and thousands injured, including many with serious eye injuries. Official figures later confirmed that hundreds of local youths joined militant ranks in the years after Wani’s killing.

Why the youth turned to protest 🔗

The shift toward stone pelting reflects a generation that has grown up surrounded by militarisation, curfews, and a shrinking political space. For many young Kashmiris, throwing stones became a form of protest when other avenues felt closed. The 2016 unrest was driven by a mix of factors: anger at heavy security measures, reaction to perceived threats to the region’s special status, and a deep sense of alienation.

The motivations behind the insurgency have always been layered. Political grievances over rigged elections and dismissed governments combined with religious mobilisation by groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen and ideological aspirations ranging from independence to merger with Pakistan. Understanding this mix is essential to grasping why the conflict has proved so durable. The abrogation of the region’s special status in August 2019 marked yet another dramatic turn in this long and unresolved story.

What do you think? Was the insurgency primarily a product of internal political failures, or did external support play the decisive role in shaping its course? And as the form of protest has shifted from armed militancy to youth-led street demonstrations, what does this tell us about how political alienation evolves across generations?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_Jammu_and_Kashmir
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira%E2%80%93Sheikh_Accord
3. https://kashmirlife.net/indira-abdullah-accord-1975-365160/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghulam_Mohammad_Shah
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooq_Abdullah
6. https://www.beyondintractability.org/casestudy/navlakha-kashmir
7. https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Kashmir%20Conflict%20-%20A%20Study%20of%20What%20Led%20to%20the%20Insurgency%20in%20Kashmir%20Valley.pdf
8. https://newlinesinstitute.org/middle-east-center/no-normalcy-in-kashmir-the-state-of-kashmirs-separatist-insurgency-since-2019/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Kashmiri_Hindus
10. https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india%2Fonce-romanticised-militancy-again-moves-back-to-secrecy-in-kashmir-1006251.html
11. https://www.e-ir.info/2020/10/27/from-militancy-to-stone-pelting-the-vicissitudes-of-the-kashmiri-freedom-movement/