Pahalgam Attack: Another cut in an already wounded civilisation

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Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Karl R. Popper

Beneath the towering pines and snow-clad ridges of the Pir Panjal range, it was another bright spring day in Baisaran, Pahalgam, one among the many places to have earned the analogue of “Mini Switzerland” of Kashmir. In a ticketed lush meadow, families of tourists strolled across the rolling green pastures. They were clicking photos, zip-lining, resting in the alpine serenity, all in perfect fearlessness because of a unique and illusive product of a series of arm twistings. The arm twisting of the first lab hamsters of Kashmiri Pandits arriving in the valley post abrogation of Article 370 and the arm twisting of Indian media to show how the Indian tricolour lighting was truly being appreciated on Lal Chowk. All this to provide optics to the illusion of normalcy. So the children laughed as the horses trotted by and the local guides started to appear less snake and more human, and for a fleeting moment, even with the twisted arms, the illusion of peace was complete.

And then came the gunfire.

Sudden, sharp, surgical, and piercing so fast that people couldn’t believe it was real. Like quicksand, at first, it seemed like a trick of perception, until it pulled everyone in too deep to escape. Well, technically not everyone. But Hindus. People tripped and froze and within minutes, trousers were pulled down and the life of men rested on the facts if the tip of their penises were covered with the heathen foreskin or if they could read aloud Kalma. What was left was blood soaked ground bearing the weight of the literal irony of “Heaven on Earth” and a massacre of 25 Hindu men gunned down in cold blood. The wives and the children were left to pick up not just bodies but to deliver a message to the Indian state that all is not well in Kashmir.

The attackers disappeared into the forested periphery strolling almost in the same way as the tourists, laughing in the face at the security of the world’s heaviest militarised zone.

The massacre in Pahalgam is more than a terrorist attack. It is a brutal reaffirmation that Kashmir remains a battlefield, not of economics or politics alone, but of civilisations and identities.

The Indian state continues to present development as a balm. Roads, tunnels, paid tweets, fashion shows, and film festivals have replaced hard questions. But blood is spilled and can this blood be paved over? For every fancy boutique resort opened in Gulmarg or tricolour hoisted on the Instagram story, another bullet is chambered by a muslim animal in the forests of south Kashmir. The fantasy of normalcy is being sold to a generation that does not remember 1990 (and doesn’t even give a shit to see beyond the fancy reels), and to a community that desperately wants to forget their last exodus.

The bitter but necessary truth is that no amount of economic or human development metric can take away the intrinsic pleasure of biting that a snake enjoys. But somehow even those who should know better, those with lived memories of exodus and targeted killings, are now buying into a state-sponsored tourism campaign that sanitises the valley’s grim realities and presents the snakes as humans. A snake must be killed before it kills you. This is not cynicism. This is not fear mongering. This is an existential lesson.

Rahul Pandita, who has long chronicled the pain of Kashmiri Pandits and the theatre of conflict in the valley, once wrote that war is not fought with hashtags or studio debates. It is okay to question surgical strikes, to demand accountability, to grieve with dignity, and to seek justice without jingoism. But it is not okay to ignore how systematic violence continues while the television screens shout about normalcy. He wrote that wars cannot be wished away by rendering Faiz but nobody listened.

The stories from Kashmir are not scripts for media dramatisation; they are cries for reckoning, for restoration, for the memory of shock-stricken families crying out in fear even at the sight of guns of their very protectors is a memory that will indeed refuse to fade.

It is not okay to talk about peace. It is not okay to oppose war. What is really not okay is to erase the suffering of victims by pretending that peace can be manufactured by influencers, film stars, and travel agents. Peace and Islam are mutually exclusive.

By the time the privileged newsroom two-book-authored part-time Hindu Hriday Samrat intellectuals, with a real full-time job will cross their legs and tell you, “Look, the Kashmir conflict is not simply a local problem, it is a civilisational conundrum”, there would have been another Abdul trained and ready to do what he thinks is right. But just as Ashish Dhar points out, the illusion of agency that many Indians feel, the idea that we are winning because we are being told we are, has blinded us to the cost at which that illusion is sold.

Kashmir is not a misunderstanding. It is not a tourist destination. It is a frontline. And those who pretend otherwise are not peacemakers, they are spectators in denial.

And just to be clear, this piece is totally a call for war. It is also a call for peace. And peace, in this valley, will remain under siege until the total annihilation of the snakes. Until then, whether you like it or not, “Aap nahi bantenge, fir bhi katenge.”