Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and his Biographers

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah (1905–1982) occupies an enigmatic position in Kashmir’s political memory. To his supporters, he remains the Sher-i-Kashmir; to his critics, a symbol of political compromise. Lockwood observed long ago that Abdullah’s politics were shaped by the ‘test of wills’ between his regionalism and nationalisms (Lockwood Citation1969, 384). This ‘test’ became the defining feature of his political life.

This review essay critically examines Chitralekha Zutshi’s Sheikh Abdullah: The Caged Lion of Kashmir and Altaf Hussain Para’s The Making of Modern Kashmir: Sheikh Abdullah and the Politics of the State. Zutshi interprets Abdullah primarily as a figure shaped by postcolonial nationalist narratives, arguing that his leadership was continuously reconstructed through symbolic representation and political pragmatism (Zutshi Citation2024). Para, in contrast, attributes Abdullah’s contradictions to his personal political development, asserting that Abdullah used ideologies ‘to raise his own stakes rather than to build a consistent political philosophy’ of his own (Para Citation2019, 280).