Politics in Srinagar is a loop. A glitchy, high-stakes simulation where the players change outfits but the scripts are hard-coded into the soil.

Last week, the BJP decided to run a stress test on Omar Abdullah’s brand-new government. It wasn’t a subtle affair. They didn't just show up; they brought the receipts, the rhetoric, and a very specific kind of historical trauma. They’re calling it a "show of strength," which is political shorthand for reminding everyone who actually owns the server room. The target? Omar’s supposed "doublespeak." The weapon? The ghosts of 2010.

It’s a classic move in the Kashmiri playbook. When you can’t win on the current UI, you point out the catastrophic bugs in the previous version. The BJP’s legislative heavyweights didn't spend their time talking about infrastructure or the price of saffron. They went straight for the jugular, dragging the 2010 unrest back into the light. For those with short memories, that was the year the valley turned into a graveyard of stones and tear gas, leaving over 120 young people dead under the National Conference’s watch.

The friction here isn't just about history. It’s about the price of optics. Omar Abdullah is currently trying to perform a delicate balancing act—pitching himself as the champion of lost autonomy while keeping the lights on in a Union Territory controlled by the very people he’s performatively fighting. The BJP is calling foul. They see the NC’s recent resolutions on "special status" as vaporware—a product launch with no ship date, designed solely to keep the base from uninstalling the app.

The BJP’s argument is simple, if brutal. They’re asking why the NC is suddenly so concerned with "dignity" and "rights" when their own record involves the heavy-handed suppression of the 2010 protests. It’s a cynical play, sure. But it’s effective. It forces Omar to defend a legacy that most of his younger voters would rather forget. It’s a reminder that in this region, your past isn't just behind you; it’s a vulnerability waiting to be exploited by a rival's PR department.

You have to admire the sheer audacity of the timing. Just as the new assembly is trying to find its feet, the BJP is flooding the zone with reminders of failure. They’re painting the NC-Congress alliance as a coalition of convenience, a buggy partnership held together by nothing more than a shared dislike for the current hardware. The "doublespeak" tag is meant to stick. It’s meant to suggest that Omar is saying one thing in the plush corridors of New Delhi and another to the angry crowds in the downtown streets.

And let’s be real about the cost of this political theater. The trade-off for this constant back-and-forth is actual governance. While the assembly bickers over who killed whom fourteen years ago, the real-world metrics—unemployment, the stifling security apparatus, the digital shutdowns—remain largely unpatched. It’s a lot easier to argue about 2010 than it is to fix the economy of 2025.

The BJP’s "show of strength" in Jammu and its aggressive stance in the valley suggest they aren't planning on playing the role of a quiet opposition. They’re acting like the developers who still have the master password. They’re poking at the NC’s contradictions, waiting for the system to crash. They know that Omar’s government is operating on a limited battery. Every time they bring up the 2010 killings, they drain a little more of his political capital.

It’s a grim spectacle. We’re watching a government try to reboot a system that was fundamentally rewritten by the center in 2019. Omar is trying to run legacy software on hardware that doesn't support it anymore. The BJP is just there to point out the error messages.

The assembly floor has become a theater of the absurd, where the dead are recruited to serve the living's press releases. There’s no talk of reconciliation, only of "doublespeak." No talk of the future, only a weaponized version of the past. It makes you wonder if the "new" Kashmir is really just the old one with a more expensive camera crew.

How long can a government survive when its primary function is to apologize for its history while pretending it has the power to change its future?