by Sadia J. Choudhury
Abdul Wahid Bhat is no more. He was born in Khaniyar, in Indian-administered Kashmir. But he died carrying the label of a “Pakistani.”
The Indian state claimed he was not one of their own. What a cruel irony!
Bhat was 80 years old. He spent his entire life in the same land where he was born—his village in Kashmir.
He never made headlines. He never became part of any historic movement.
And yet, history chose to erase him. He was killed in the Pahalgam incident—and no, his death was not just another statistic. It reveals the brutal nakedness of a political reality:
A man born in India was posthumously declared foreign.
If the state gets to define your identity—even wrongly—where does a citizen turn for dignity?
Identity: The Quietest Weapon in Modern Politics
In today’s world, identity is not just about a passport or a biometric card. It has become one of the most silent and insidious tools of power. To be Muslim, to be Kashmiri, is to be seen through the lens of suspicion. Even to live in one’s homeland now requires proof.
Abdul Wahid Bhat was not a militant. He was not an activist. He was not even a political dissenter. He was an ordinary man—eighty years old—who perhaps just wanted peace in the final chapter of his life.Yet, he had to leave this world shrouded in humiliation, misidentified by the very state he lived under.
“When the State errs, it is dignity—not just people—that dies.”
If India is a democracy, then who bears the burden of this death?
If Kashmiris are Indian citizens, why this betrayal of identity?
And if they’re not, are we then silently accepting that Kashmir and its people remain “the other”?
When the state casts the wrong actors into its script,
not only is history distorted— a citizen loses their right to belong.
For Abdul Wahid Bhat, the only thing he ever asked from his birthplace was recognition.
Instead, he received exile in his own land.
His death echoes an old poem:
“This land is mine, yet I do not belong; This air I know, yet it resists my breath.”
This isn’t just a case of administrative failure. It’s a symptom of a deeper institutional indifference— where a certificate becomes the only key to survival, and humanity quietly disappears in the background.
This death is not alone. Its echoes can be heard at border checkpoints, in forgotten files, in ID queues, and in silent posts on social media.
When a state forgets who belongs to it, protest, memory, and writing become the citizen’s last weapons. Abdul Wahid Bhat now stares back at us from the mirror of our own civic conscience.
