The problem lies in Indian ignorance of Kashmiri history, memories, and self-construction, their equivalent of the ‘synthesis between history, geography and politics’ through which scholar Mahmood Mamdani examined the roots of the Tutsi genocide by Hutus. Kashmiriyat for Kashmiris is about putting the Kashmiri back into the landscape and redefining that relationship on their own terms. Pandit and Muslim Kashmiris commonly identify with the endangered Hangul deer: can’t the deadlock over the forested land be broken by rearticulated its cost in environmental terms, surely of equal concern to all? But to get there, the political temperature has to be lowered first. The full re-opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway would be the most effective step in that direction.

The writer is a senior lecturer at the University of Leeds and the author of ‘Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir’