It has been a year since the quiet, postcard-perfect valleys of Pahalgam were shattered by gunfire and fear. On April 22, 2025, what should have been an ordinary day of travel and leisure turned into a moment of collective national trauma. Tourists who had come seeking beauty found themselves confronted with brutality. In the serene expanse of Baisaran Valley, 26 lives were cut short, 25 Hindu tourists and one local Muslim, who reportedly tried to intervene and paid with his life. The attackers did not strike blindly; they asked questions, they identified religion, and then they killed. That detail continues to haunt the conscience of a nation that prides itself on unity in diversity.
A year later, the blood has long been washed away by rain and time, but the memory refuses to fade. The tragedy of Pahalgam is not just about the number of lives lost; it is about the manner in which they were taken. It forces us to confront a disturbing reality—that identity, something as personal and intrinsic as faith, can still become a death sentence in certain moments. And perhaps more unsettling is the realization that this was not an isolated rupture, but part of a longer, painful continuum in the history of Jammu and Kashmir.
Anniversaries are meant to be moments of reflection, but they are also tests of honesty. Have we, as a society, become more empathetic in the past year? Have we learned to see victims beyond the prism of religion and identity? Or have we retreated further into our own narratives, remembering what suits us and ignoring what challenges us? These are uncomfortable questions, but they are necessary ones.
To understand Pahalgam, one must step back into the early 1990s, when the Valley witnessed one of its darkest chapters—the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Beginning around 1989–1990, targeted killings, threats, and a growing climate of fear forced hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus to leave their ancestral homes. Overnight, a community that had lived in the Valley for centuries became refugees in their own country. Homes were abandoned, temples fell silent, and an entire cultural presence was uprooted. It was not a single incident but a sustained atmosphere of intimidation, where identity once again became the basis of persecution. For many, that chapter never truly ended; it simply receded from headlines.
The decades that followed saw Kashmir bleed in numbers that are difficult to comprehend but impossible to ignore. Since the insurgency began in 1989, nearly 45,000 people have lost their lives in the region, including close to 15,000 civilians. The early 2000s were particularly brutal, with hundreds of civilians killed each year. Though the intensity of violence has reduced in recent years, the nature of attacks has evolved rather than disappeared. Targeted killings—often symbolic, often identity-driven—have replaced large-scale massacres. In that sense, Pahalgam was both shocking and familiar: shocking in its brazenness, familiar in its intent.
And yet, statistics, however stark, do not fully capture the human cost. Each of the 26 victims in Pahalgam had a story—a family waiting for their return, plans that would now remain unfulfilled, lives that were ordinary until they were violently interrupted. The absence of a widely remembered, unified list of their names is itself telling. In a country that often rallies around tragedy, memory sometimes becomes fragmented, shaped by narratives rather than anchored in humanity. We remember selectively, mourn selectively, and in doing so, risk diminishing the universality of loss.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, there was outrage, condemnation, and a renewed focus on security. The government tightened surveillance, strengthened intelligence networks, and increased the presence of security forces across vulnerable areas. For a year now, there has been no repeat of a similar large-scale civilian massacre in the region. On paper, that is an achievement. But security, while necessary, addresses only the surface of the problem. It can prevent an attack, but it cannot heal the mistrust that such violence leaves behind.
More telling than policy changes is the way society itself has responded. In the days following Pahalgam, there were genuine moments of solidarity—people across religious lines condemning the attack, offering support, and asserting that such acts do not define the nation. But as time passed, the unity began to fracture. Social media debates grew sharper, narratives more polarized, and empathy more conditional. The danger here is subtle but profound: when grief is filtered through identity, it loses its power to unite and instead becomes another point of division.
This is where the shadow of the 1990s looms large. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits remains one of the most sensitive and, at times, contested chapters in India’s recent history. For some, it is a story of unacknowledged suffering; for others, it is a politically charged issue. But beyond debate and discourse lies a simple truth: a community was displaced under fear, and that memory still shapes perceptions today. When incidents like Pahalgam occur, they do not exist in isolation—they resonate with past wounds, reinforcing fears that history may not be as distant as we would like to believe.
One year on, the question is not just what has changed, but what has not. Violence may have decreased in frequency, but the underlying fault lines remain. The idea that someone can be targeted for who they are, rather than what they have done, still finds expression in moments of extremism. And as long as that idea persists, no amount of security can offer complete reassurance.
Because if there is one lesson that Kashmir’s long and troubled history offers, it is this: violence does not begin with a gunshot. It begins much earlier, in the quiet normalization of difference as division. And it ends not when the firing stops, but when a society refuses to let identity become a justification for hatred.
One year after Pahalgam, the valleys are calm again. Tourists have returned, life appears to have resumed, and the world has moved on. But beneath that calm lies a deeper question—one that cannot be answered by time alone. Have we truly moved forward, or have we simply learned to live with what we have not yet resolved?