Omar Abdullah has said that . “You didn’t need leaders for a 2016 agitation, it was a leaderless one. All the protests after that, that you’ve had in J&K, they were leaderless protests. So don’t tell me today that you need a leader for a protest. Most protests are spontaneous, they’re not engineered. And a year later (after the abrogation of Article 370), if you want to see a protest, it would have to be engineered, and I am not the person to engineer a protest. I’m sorry, that is not me. It has never been me. It is not my politics, it is not my party’s politics,” he told Indian Express.
“I will not engineer a protest to score a point. I will use whatever other means I have at my disposal. I will use my voice, my party platform, the courts and whatever else I can use but I will not engineer a protest. Particularly in Kashmir, where I know that an engineered protest will in all likelihood end very badly for poor youngsters who will get sucked into it.”
“I’ve said this before, if I am not willing to put a stone or a gun into my own kids’ hands, I have no business doing the same to any young Kashmiri. I am very clear on that.”
“So if the people of Jammu and Kashmir, are looking towards me as some sort of person who will rally them out into the streets and god forbid get some of them killed, then I am not that person, I will not do that. I will raise my voice against what has happened. I will fight against what has happened but I will not give somebody wearing a uniform with a gun an excuse or a reason to kill one of us. That’s not me.” (Indian Express)
Agitations in Kashmir were always leaderless: Omar Abdullah
