To the casual eye, Kashmir remains what it has always been: a deeply religious society anchored in faith and cushioned by tradition. But observe closer. The picture fractures. The mirror reflects not the Kashmir we imagine but a society drifting in a fog of its own contradictions.We preach piety with a fervour that would embarrass our ancestors, yet practise it with a casualness that would shock them. Religion has become performative be it dress code, recitation, stage-managed ritual that is fading from the quiet transactions of daily life. We argue for hours about folding our arms in prayer and stay indifferent to our neighbours and relatives. The moral vocabulary has expanded; the moral imagination has shrunk. We speak of deen with great public passion, yet the private sphere is governed by convenience rather than conscience.

This erosion did not happen overnight. It arrived slowly, disguised as modernity, as survival, as a new culture of the neo-riches. When a society lives for generations under the weight of violence, the inner life contracts. People stop asking what is right and start asking what works. Faith, once the invisible architecture of Kashmiri life, is now a set of external markers. We kept the shell and lost the kernel.Into this vacuum have stepped the ulema, or at least those who claim the title. The scholar once mediated disputes, comforted the grieving and spoke with quiet authority. Today, too many pulpits trade in sectarian vitriol; the net result is personality cults. The mosque, a sanctuary, has become another arena of division. The imams, who should have focused on the young and on social vices, are busy with frivolous debates and superiority claims thereby serving their status more than society.

This hate is killing the spiritual ethos Kashmir was known for. A land once celebrated for its Sufi temperament, for holding difference within a broad embrace, is being narrowed into camps of suspicion and contempt.........

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