New Delhi looks to be testing Omar Abdullah's endurance with unconcealed glee, never feeling shy to bite whenever a moment comes its way.
After all, ruling the country's only Muslim-majority UT/state has been the BJP's burning desire, points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
In the absence of restoration of full statehood, the drastic politico-Constitutional action, taken by the Union government in the erstwhile semi-autonomous Jammu and Kashmir state, on August 5, 2019, remains a work-in-progress.
Even the likely contours of an alternative arrangement, as and when it comes, remain shrouded in mystery.
From the historical perspective, this six -year-old 'vindictive' political degradation of the country's only Muslim-majority state followed two distant phases of its arbitrary down-gradation -- in 1953 and 1975.
Precisely on August 9, 1953, the then Sadr-e-Riyasat of J&K, Dr Karan Singh, acting on a cue from New Delhi, dismissed a duly elected prime minister of the state Sheikh Abdullah, half way through his tenure, and threw him behind bars.
It was a rude shock to the people of the state.
It also set off a drastic downgradation of the state's Constitutional stature within the Indian Union, irrevocably tilting the balance of power at the expense of J&K.
Yet, 72 years down the line, conclusive details of the 1953 coup are not fully known/recorded mainly because the dramatis personae, of whom Dr Karan Singh is alive, have not parted with full truth to reconstruct the event conclusively for history's sake.
Individual biographies, including that of Sheikh Abdullah, give out mainly convenient partisan details.
The run-up to that drastic act was precipitated by Jana Sangh founder Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee's sudden death on June 23. 1953 while in detention in Srinagar.
He had been detained by the Abdullah-led government, for entering the state without a permit which was then mandatory for all movement in and out of J&K.
New Delhi saw Sheikh Abdullah getting too big for his boots.
With Sheikh behind the bars, the next logical step was to break the constitutional 'barriers' grudgingly installed to keep the moody Kashmir leader in good humour. Thus began the torrent of erosion of Art 370.
Between 1953 and 1963, Sheikh's successor, Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad, continued this process until he sensed grass growing under his feet and dared to stop short of changing the nomenclature of the head of the state as 'Sadr-e-Riyasat' and that of the elected head as the 'prime minister' of the state.
Consequently, Bakhshi evaded to 'do more' and was ousted in 1963 under Jawaharlal Nehru's Kamaraj plan.
In 1964, under G M Sadiq's leadership, the nomenclature of Sadr-e-Riyasat and prime minister (of the state) were scrapped and replaced with that of governor and chief minister respectively.
Also, the state's ruling party, the National Conference, merged with the Congress party.
By now, the state's Constitutional and political superstructure had been whittled down beyond recognition.
The net result was that Article 370 was rendered as a hollow decorative piece, just for the record.
So much so, that when a chastised Sheikh Abdullah opted to return to the national mainstream in 1975, 22 years after his political wilderness, he tamely dittoed the then prime minister Indira Gandhi's terse assertion that the 'hands of the clock cannot be turned back'.
That, in effect, marked the political legitimisation of the 'new normal': Yet another round of the downgradation of the state's politico-Constitutional stature.
By the time the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance arrived on the scene in New Delhi in 2014, armed with its long-cherished pledge to 'honour the martyrdom' of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, it was clear that even the hollow remnants of J&K's special Constitutional status were doomed.
Only the timing and the manner of redeeming that pledge remained to be decided.
It did not take long coming.
Yet, when it actually came, it turned out to be far more ferocious than the preceding two punitive doses of downgradation.
To quote renowned historian Ramachandra Guha, it was outright 'degradation'.
For the first time a dubious Constitutional precedent was set: A state was downgraded/degraded and split into two Union Territories.
It was stripped of its special Constitutional status with band, baja and baraat.
The Peoples Democratic Party's politically suicidal power sharing alliance with the NDA in 2016 eventually turned out to be the camel's nose under the tent.
The NDA did it in style, to extract maximum possible political advantage. And it continues to go on and on.
The final strike, when it came, on August 5, 2019, was actually accompanied by shock-and-awe.
With that ended a chapter of Kashmir's turbulent history covering the events from the mid-1930s through 1953 and finally up to 2019, washing out the Valley's popular political narrative.
Principal stake holders in Kashmir, notably the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party, have been struggling to put together a coherent alternative narrative but, six years down the line, without any success.
Last year's assembly election was held with incoherent bits and pieces from the debris of the pre-2019 narrative now lying buried deeper into the ground.
In the popular perception, the new politico-Constitutional construct that was born out of an amorphous scenario defies a precise definition.
For one, here is a popularly elected state government devoid of even such a basic functional parameter as 'rules of business' to transact whatever was left within its routine administrative jurisdiction split vertically into two unequal, parallel streams.
The weightier of the two assignments remaining under Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha's jurisdiction.
(Sinha's 5-year tenure expires on August 6. In the absence of any replacement, Sinha is most likely to continue indefinitely. He is said to be the PM's choice for the BJP's next president. Yet another speculation cropped up about him in the aftermath of Jagdeep Dhankhar's shock exit as vice president.)
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been at the receiving end of the unequal tussle so far.
Its undesirable consequences were partly evident on July 14 when Omar was seen in physical combat with the police in full public view as he sought to 'defy' the restrictions imposed by the lieutenant governor-controlled law and order machinery.
After coming into power, Omar has been trying to cultivate goodwill. From lavishly gifting precious Kashmiri shawls to everybody who is anybody out there in Delhi to singing paeans to them and, lately working hard to earn Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public appreciation for visiting Gujarat, Omar seems to fondly hope for better days ahead.
Things, meanwhile, are getting hot on his home ground with the passage of time. His inability to deliver, for whatever reason, is beginning to show its adverse impact on the ground.
The turnout and the fervour witnessed in Srinagar, on July 28, when the ruling National Conference party's main rival on its home ground, the Mehbooba Mufti-led Peoples Democratic Party, celebrated its anniversary was unexpectedly extraordinary.
Only a few months ago, during the assembly polls, the PDP was virtually in the dumps.
The PDP's resurgence so soon after Omar's record poll victory points to the NC government's erosion on the ground.
New Delhi looks to be testing Omar's endurance with unconcealed glee, never feeling shy to bite whenever a moment comes its way.
After all, ruling the country's only Muslim-majority UT/state has been the BJP's burning desire.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff