In Kashmir, People’s Fears About Loss Of Identity Must Be Addressed indianexpress.com

It is a huge opportunity to prove to the people of Kashmir and to ourselves that the long dark night of violent hatred that began in 1989 is coming to an end in 2019. Naya Kashmir can finally look forward to a new dawn of prosperity and peace in the heart of India. For many weeks since August 5, a vocal and influential section of our self-styled Kashmir experts have been preaching doom and gloom. They have drawn fanciful comparisons with Nazi Germany — strangely never with Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China — by invoking images of concentration camps and genocide. They have been regularly breast-beating on prime time TV and in the opinion pages of newspapers about the death of Indian democracy and about violations of the Constitution. For this constituency, the weeks leading to October 31 — when the decisions announced by the Government of India on August 5 took effect — must have felt distinctly anti-climactic.