Seventy-eight years after the partition of British India, Kashmir remains an unresolved dispute that continues to strain regional relations. It is not simply a territorial dispute between two nuclear-armed neighbours; it is a tragedy of human suffering and political failure. What began in 1947 as a dispute over accession has evolved into an unending ordeal of siege and ethnic cleansing, depriving generations of Kashmiris of normalcy, dignity and the hope of a peaceful life.

In August 2019, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoked Articles 370 and 35A of its constitution, effectively dismantling the semi-autonomous status that Jammu and Kashmir had enjoyed since independence. The move was celebrated by India's Hindu nationalists as an act of "integration" and a triumph of unity. In reality, it was a constitutional sleight of hand that turned a political problem into a military one. Today, the region is among the most heavily militarised places on the planet, and its residents are living under an architecture of surveillance, suspicion and........

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