WHY IS IT, AFTER every tragedy, every massacre, every round of bloodshed in Kashmir, that the flag that rises is not Indian, but Pakistani? Why is it that, after the horror of Pahalgam — after bodies were strewn on a tourist road, after cries of grief were swallowed by curfews and riot gear — it was not the tricolour that appeared on the streets of Srinagar, but the crescent and the star? Why does that flag, forbidden and feared, still flutter in the hands of boys who have never crossed the Line of Control, who have never seen Islamabad, who have never known peace — and yet, when asked who they are, still whisper, “Hum Pakistani hain”?
Because that flag is not foreign to them. India is.
From school benches to college campuses, from silent protest marches to cricket pitches in alleyways, the story is always the same. Kashmiris — especially young, angry, broken boys — do not celebrate India’s victories. They celebrate Pakistan’s. They scream for Babar Azam and Shaheen Afridi. They weep when Pakistan loses to India. They break into cheers when India’s wickets fall. Not because they hate India’s team — but because in Pakistan’s green, they see something that India has never given them: recognition. Pride. Reflected identity. No one had to teach them this. No one trained them. The feeling is organic. Inherited. Borne of decades of humiliation, of having to prove their loyalty to a country that never gave them loyalty back. Tell them they are Indian — and they will ask why. Why, when their mosques are watched, their homes raided, their futures criminalised?
You can jail them for waving a flag, but you cannot jail the dream.
What is this dream of Pakistan that lives in the hearts of Kashmir’s youth? It is not some fantasy of prosperity or perfection — they know Pakistan’s flaws as well as anyone. They know about its inflation, its instability, its own human rights record. But this isn’t about GDPs. This is about dignity. This is about the right to live without suspicion. The right to worship without fear. The right to grieve your dead without being accused of terrorism. The right to support a cricket team — any team — without being dragged through courts and police stations.
Do you understand what kind of fire it takes for a teenage boy to risk prison just to say “Pakistan Zindabad”? To paint a crescent on a wall and know that bootsteps will follow? It’s not because someone told him to. It’s because he’s already lost so much that the only thing he can still claim is that whisper — that word: Pakistan. For many Kashmiri boys, the deepest desire is not wealth or travel or education. It is to be called a Pakistani — to be told, you belong. Not because they hate India, but because India made it impossible to love it.
And this — this is where Jinnah returns. Not as a ghost, but as a monument to foresight. In the world of Delhi’s chest-thumping nationalism, Jinnah is painted as the villain of history. But in the valley of broken promises, Jinnah is not the divider. He is the protector. He is the one who saw what was coming: that majoritarianism would not rest, that Muslims would be painted as problems, that secularism would be smothered in saffron. Jinnah built Pakistan not to exclude India, but to save its Muslims. And every time a Kashmiri boy wraps a Pakistani flag around his shoulders, it is an act of resurrection. You were right, Quaid. They never wanted us.
India was given every opportunity to prove Jinnah wrong. It had 75 years to build a pluralistic democracy, to include Kashmir, to honour its promises. But instead, it turned the valley into an open-air prison. Revoked autonomy. Criminalised dissent. Treated grief like sedition. Look at the reaction to Pahalgam — were the dead mourned, or were they weaponised? Within hours, India’s Hindu right had turned mourning into mobilisation, outrage into Islamophobia. Kashmiris, already terrified, were rounded up. Their loyalty questioned. Their homes raided. No evidence. Just vengeance.
And still, they say, “Why do they cheer for Pakistan?”
Because they’ve seen what India does when it mourns. And they want no part of it.
Do you want to know what secularism looks like now? It looks like a boy getting beaten in Punjab for wearing green. It looks like a mosque bulldozed in Delhi while the crowds clap. It looks like hijab bans, lynchings, silence from the courts. If that’s secularism, then Jinnah was not just right — he was too generous in believing coexistence was ever possible. Pakistan, for all its pain, still protects the Muslim identity. Still centres it. Still holds space for rage without condemnation.
That is why Kashmir looks east, not south. Not because it is blinded, but because it sees more clearly than ever. In the blood spilled at Pahalgam, in the flags torn from hands, in the slogans criminalised in court — they have understood the truth. Pakistan is not perfect. But it is theirs. And in a world where being Muslim feels like a provocation, belonging matters more than anything.
You can ban the slogans. You can censor the chants. You can lock up the boys. But you cannot erase the question that haunts every Kashmiri mother tonight: Would my son have been safer in Pakistan?
After Pahalgam, remember Jinnah in your prayers.
Because in Kashmir, his name is not just memory. It is rescue.