On a bright spring morning in Pahalgam, as tourists wandered through the pine-scented air and children played on ropeways, no one saw the gunmen until it was too late. Emerging from the dense forests, they opened fire without warning – a sudden, brutal eruption of violence that left at least 26 people dead, dozens more wounded, and a region immediately plunged back into fear.
Kashmir’s deadliest attack in a quarter-century was a harsh reminder that old fault lines lie beneath the fragile veneer of normalcy.
Though survivors saw the deaths as a massive security failure by the Indian state, New Delhi was quick to accuse neighbouring Pakistan of orchestrating the 22 April attack.
Within hours, India suspended the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) – potentially seriously restricting Pakistan's water supply – severed diplomatic ties, and suspended visas for Pakistani nationals.
Islamabad denied any involvement in the Pahalgam attack, and followed this up by shutting down Pakistani airspace to Indian airlines, suspending trade with India, and dismissing New Delhi's suspension of the vital water-sharing agreement, which dates back to 1960.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi then quickly set his aim on Kashmir – a region he had revoked the special status of and placed directly under New Delhi’s control in 2019. In a post on his X account, he labelled the incident a “terror attack” and pledged that “those behind this heinous act will be brought to justice”.
On 23 April, a cash reward of two million Indian rupees (more than $23,000) was announced by police for “any information leading to the neutralisation of the terrorists involved in this cowardly act”.
Not for the first time, it was soon the people of Indian-administered Kashmir who were bearing the brunt of suspicion from the state, and from a public that feels emboldened by years of Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies.
“Why should everyone else be punished?”
Within a week of the attack, thousands of government forces were conducting cordon and search operations through the forests surrounding Pahalgam to apprehend the four suspected attackers.
The hunt quickly metastasised into a sweeping clampdown. In the first few days alone, Indian security forces detained more than 1,500 people for questioning and demolished the houses of at least 10 alleged militants.
Videos of homes being flattened with explosives based on allegations of “harbouring terrorists” – without trial, without evidence, and without time to save any of their belongings – circulated online. In the footage, neighbours watch on as explosions turn homes to rubble.
Yasmeena, who would provide only her first name, told The New Humanitarian that her family home was destroyed by explosives early Friday morning, less than two days after the attack.
Her home is 30 kilometres from the attack site in Pulwama district, but the security forces accuse her brother, Asif Sheikh, of belonging to a proscribed militant group.
“They planned this,” she said of the security forces. “Hours before, they locked all the cattle – not just ours – into the sheds, and told us to put our fingers into our ears. When we asked why, they said there will be a blast in your house.”
In another village, neighbours said the home of another suspected militant, Ahsan Ul Haq Sheikh, was blown up on Friday night. A neighbour, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said her son called her and told her to rush home because security forces had surrounded the area.
“My husband, son, and daughter-in-law were kept in a room and asked to stay indoors. I was in a neighbour's house. There were two blasts – we felt everything was over,” they said. The blast shattered the windows of nearby homes, broke doors, and cracked apart walls, the neighbour added, asking: "If it's one person's mistake, why should everyone else be punished for it?"
The demolitions have caused widespread fear in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. In the past, homes have only been demolished during gun battles between fighters and the government forces. This is the first time that houses have been demolished in a crackdown, with videos circulated on social media and broadcast by national news channels.
Omar Abdullah, chief minister of the Jammu and Kashmir region, was among the many lawmakers who voiced their opposition at the federal government's sweeping post-attack campaign.
In a land that remains contested between India and Pakistan, and where an armed struggle for greater autonomy has been brewing since the 1990s, houses have become more than just homes. They have come to symbolise legacy and pride, painstakingly built over generations. Their demolition has been viewed by the local community as collective punishment, designed not only to destroy property but also to broadcast fear: a message to Kashmiris that resistance – or even the suspicion of resistance – could cost you everything.
According to security experts, such actions also risk retaliation. “This just makes things tougher for the security forces. All this flexing of muscle will just stir up more trouble,” one senior counterintelligence officer told The New Humanitarian.
Hate speech, fear, and the wider fallout
Since the attack, hate speech has quickly spread online, including incitement from Hindu right-wing extremists to rape and sexually assault Muslim women in Kashmir. This has already translated into a reported increase in violence and intimidation against Kashmiris, especially students, throughout India.
Speaking to The New Humanitarian by phone, a dozen Kashmiri students studying in various Indian cities expressed their fear and the compulsion to return home due to the assaults and harassment they faced.
“This is a purposeful and focused campaign of hate and defamation against Kashmiri students,” said Nasir Khumeni, convenor of the Jammu & Kashmir Students Association, although he noted a "glimmer of hope" in the registration of a legal case against those issuing threats.
This is far from the first time that Kashmiri students, workers, and traders living elsewhere in India have become the targets of violent reprisals.
After the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing, for instance, mobs attacked Kashmiris across Indian cities, forcing many to flee back to the valley in fear. Hotels refused them rooms. Universities suspended them. Neighbours turned hostile. It exposed a painful truth: in Modi’s India, being Kashmiri – and Muslim – can itself be seen as a provocation.
A multiethnic country formed as a secular republic, India has been drifting away from that vision under the leadership of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with Hinduism growing as a national identity.
Modi has kept several of his most controversial campaign commitments in his decade as prime minister, including constructing a large Hindu temple where a mosque formerly stood and removing the semi-autonomous status from the Kashmir area.
This playbook isn’t new. After revoking Kashmir’s limited autonomy in 2019, the BJP has systematically eroded the region’s political rights, flooded it with soldiers, and dismantled protections for its Muslim-majority population.
The Pahalgam massacre gave the government an excuse to push even harder – painting entire communities as suspects, linking religious identity to terrorism, and justifying repression in the name of “security”.
Kashmir and Palestine
The echoes of Israel’s occupation of Gaza are hard to ignore. Like Palestinians, Kashmiris now face collective punishment for the actions of a few. Homes destroyed. Movement restricted. Identity criminalised.
Modi, whose political appeal is partly rooted in a tough national security image, claimed the move would usher in peace and development in a region long marred by conflict.
On the ground, however, a different picture has surfaced. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior police official admitted: “There is a higher thrust on showing normalcy rather than on ensuring it, and that has extracted a heavy price."
Opponents of the BJP say its larger project has always been about recasting India’s secular democracy into a Hindu-first state, where minorities live at the mercy of the majority. Muslims, who make up roughly 14% of India’s overall population, have faced lynchings, property demolitions, mass incarcerations, and open calls for genocide by right-wing fringe elements – while political leaders either stay silent or actively fan the flames.
Political pundits have long drawn parallels between Kashmir and Palestine over territorial occupation and settler policies amid rising violence.
A major crackdown followed Modi’s government revoking the region’s partial autonomy after his 2019 election victory. Leaders of prominent political parties, including those who consider Kashmir a part of India, were among the thousands of civilians detained. For months, phone and internet access was cut off, effectively isolating Kashmir from the rest of the world.
Since then, authorities have arrested and intimidated journalists, enforced strict laws against them, seized their passports, and severely limited the local press through self-censorship. Numerous government employees, including police and academics, have been suspended or fired, often under allegations of anti-national activities, raising concern about due process and the region's climate of fear.
More than 83,000 domicile certificates have been granted by the Indian government to non-residents of Jammu and Kashmir in the past two years – this was not permitted before 2019. This, analysts say, demonstrates India's systematic colonial settlement effort in the Muslim-majority region.
A tactic long seen in Palestine and increasingly seen in India is the bulldozer, which has been used to destroy houses in Muslim communities under Modi.
“The unlawful demolition of Muslim properties by the Indian authorities, peddled as ‘bulldozer justice’ by political leaders and media, is cruel and appalling,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, said last year. “They are destroying families – and they must stop immediately.”
The alarming rhetoric of some Israeli politicians around Gaza finds an echo in India, where calls for an "Israel-style" crackdown from law enforcement, public leaders, and the general public have been voiced on prime-time TV discussions as well as social media.
The US-based Stop Hindu Hate Advocacy Network (SHHAN) went further on the social media platform X, calling for Kashmir to be "flattened", saying "Kashmir ought to be destroyed, just like Gaza."
Edited by Ali M. Latifi.
