Kashmir Needs Reconciliation More Than Rhetoric |
By Farooq Ahmad Khan
Thirty-six years have passed since Kashmiri Pandits left the valley in one of the darkest chapters of modern Kashmir’s history.
Arguments over why they fled continue to dominate public debate, dividing people into competing camps of accusation and counteraccusation.
History deserves careful examination, but Kashmir now confronts a harder question: can a society fractured by violence restore the people whose absence changed its character?
That question defines Kashmir’s future far more than another round of competing narratives about 1990.
Many Kashmiri Pandits built lives elsewhere. They found jobs, educated their children and adapted to unfamiliar cities. None of those achievements replaced what they lost.
Kashmir remains the landscape of their ancestors, temples, language, memories and the inheritance passed through generations.
Home exists in geography as much as memory. A community separated from its birthplace lives with a wound that time alone cannot close.
The image of the uprooted Chinar captures that reality with unusual precision.
A tree removed from the soil for decades cannot simply return to life because someone plants it again. Restoration takes patience, commitment and sustained care.
Kashmir presents the same challenge.
A successful return demands preparation, trust and persistence. Still,........