By Dr. Syed Eesar Mehdi

Kashmir has always been more than a geopolitical flashpoint. It’s a living landscape of culture and resilience. This serene space of sages and skillmen is forever longing for peace. And yet, peace remains as distant as the Himalayan ridges that cradle the valley.

Time and again, efforts to resolve the strife have collapsed. Not because peace is impossible, but because its architects have built it from the top down — far from the soil where its roots must take hold.

The recent terror attack in Pahalgam, in which several innocent people lost their lives, is a tragic punctuation mark in a much longer and painful narrative. Every such act of violence reinforces the urgency of rethinking what peace really means in Kashmir — and more importantly, who gets to define it.

From the Delhi Agreement of 1952 to the Shimla Accord of 1972, and through successive rounds of dialogue and confidence-building measures, the defining feature of the Kashmir peace process has been its top-down nature. Designed in capitals and conference rooms, these initiatives have prioritized strategic interests over human dignity.

In these processes, Kashmiris have not been participants. They have been spectators, sometimes even suspects.

The absence of Kashmiri voices in negotiations over their own future is not just a political oversight; it is a philosophical and ethical failure. As political theorist John Rawls argued, justice must be rooted in fairness, and fairness cannot exist when those most affected by a decision are excluded from the making of it.

Even Immanuel Kant, in his essay Perpetual Peace, insisted that true peace cannot be imposed upon people, but must arise from their collective will. Kashmir has never been........

© Kashmir Observer