 Muskan Thakur
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 22: For nearly twenty-five minutes on Tuesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly stopped functioning as a legislature and became something closer to a battlefield of memory — one where the past itself was on trial, and both sides refused to yield.
The spark was a demand. National Conference legislator Abdul Majeed Larmi rose and asked for December 5 — the birth anniversary of NC founder Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah — to be restored as an official holiday, and for September 8, the Sheikh's death anniversary, to be added as a new one. Then came the line that lit the fuse: if both dates for Sheikh Abdullah wouldn't be honoured, Larmi argued, then the holiday for Maharaja Hari Singh's birth anniversary should be scrapped too.
The BJP benches erupted. Legislators sprang to their feet, chanting "Maharaja Hari Singh ki Jai," accusing Larmi of insulting the last Dogra ruler and trampling on the sentiments of those who still revere him. The NC side answered fire with fire — "Sher-i-Kashmir Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah Zindabad" rang out in response, as NC members cast the Sheikh as a freedom fighter who stood against autocratic rule.
For a quarter of an hour, the House was noise, not business. Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather tried to restore order, insisting that neither he nor the Assembly had any power to grant or withdraw a holiday in the first place — a technicality that did little to cool tempers already running hot.
This isn't a fight about calendars. It's a fight about who gets remembered, and how.
The current flashpoint traces back to August 2019, when Article 370 was abrogated and the state was carved into two Union Territories. The Lieutenant Governor-led administration that followed quietly struck several holidays from the books — Sheikh Abdullah's birth anniversary among them, along with Kashmir “Martyrs' Day” on July 13.
In their place, the administration added new commemorations — October 26, marking Hari Singh's signing of the Instrument of Accession in 1947, and later September 23, his birth anniversary, after sustained demands from political, social and cultural groups in Jammu. Both still stand on J&K's official 2026 holiday calendar.
The politics here cut close to home for Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. During the 2024 Assembly campaign, the National Conference promised to bring back July 13 and December 5 — while also signalling it had no intention of touching Hari Singh's birth anniversary holiday. Two years on, neither restoration has happened, leaving the party exposed to exactly the kind of floor confrontation it witnessed Tuesday. |