Two labourers died in a brick kiln in Kulgam region of the occupied Kashmir last week, and with them, briefly, died New Delhi's favourite narrative - Kashmir is at peace.

Deepak Ratray and Bopinder, migrant workers from Chhattisgarh, were shot dead at close range by a gunman on July 31, 2026. The government's response arrived in a typical tone and manner - a swift pointer toward The Resistance Front, a group Indian investigators describe as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. But the killing itself cuts against everything Delhi has repeatedly told the country and the world – that terrorism has been rooted out of the Valley, that the borders are sealed, that normalcy has finally arrived. Two more dead bodies in a "pacified" region is not a detail that fits quietly into that story. It contradicts it. Refusing to let that contradiction pass unremarked, former chief minister Farooq Abdullah stood before reporters in Anantnag and challenged New Delhi: "If terrorism has ended, who is doing the killing?" He further inquired: "Why does it keep happening precisely when Kashmiris rise to demand their rights?" The attack came days after a statehood demonstration at Jantar Mantar.

Abdullah did not treat that timing as coincidence. Increasingly, neither does the Valley.

Kashmir's present crisis of legitimacy began with the manner of the region's accession itself. At Partition, Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority princely state ruled by........

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