However deep the desire to erase the dreadful decade of the 1990s, its scars remain inscribed upon the historical conscience of Kashmir. It was a time when certainties collapsed, illusions shattered, and the centre of life itself began to drift. The 90s marked the last assault upon Kashmiri nativity—when its fragile tapestry of coexistence was torn apart thread by thread.

The Indian state, too, stood on trembling ground. Its financial sinews had weakened; social institutions were in disarray; the security apparatus, both internal and external, appeared orphaned of purpose. Politics at the centre had lost its moral compass—coalitions thrived on convenience, and accountability waned into ritual. Amid such fragility, a single rigged election in Kashmir proved combustible enough to unmake a people’s faith. Through that breach, Kashmir found its way to what was called jihad—a grim participatory theatre where revolt was mistaken for redemption.

Then came the roar of guns, the sermons that sanctified separation, and the daily life that learned to live with fear. From mosques to courtyards, the language of disavowal replaced that of belonging. Symbolic killings announced a new order and an ancient community—Kashmiri Pandits—was driven out en masse, exiled from the land they had helped to imagine. The youth, enthralled by dreams of purity, were taught to measure time not by seasons but by the Hurriyat calendar, where each date was a call to defy, each dawn an anthem of vengeance.

And yet, the irony that history conceals is unforgettable. It was the same ‘Subhan Saib’ who once drove young boys from classrooms to the border—urging them to cross over and return armed with promise—who, in another dawn, guided Pandit families through the tunnel: silent, burdened, and broken. The same vehicles and the same men would drive them out from their native place.

The difference........

© Greater Kashmir