The dominant storyline today on Jammu & Kashmir is not different from what it was in 1990s. Yet, Kashmiri children born in 1990s are now adults and they ask questions. One of those questions is about its identity. Why Kashmir region is portrayed as a hotbed of violence? Unanswered and unaddressed divergences on both sides of the Line-of-Control have increased in these years.
Who is overtly and covertly backing this terror campaign? We leave this question for historians to answer and ‘pretend’ for a moment to ‘think out of the box’. Why we need to pretend this?
Erik Pevernagie, a Belgian painter says “when we stay locked up in the spectrum of unsolved life stories and keep hiding in an arcane prism, life remains a mystery behind perpetual tensions and a journey in a world beyond appearances.”
These words are truly symbolic to the dynamics of Kashmir quagmire. A conflict that has grown so big that it’s arcane prism makes it mysterious to those inflicted by its enormous size, yet, clear and well-known to a few behind overt and covert game.
So, we need to ‘pretend’ that we are going on a journey to the world beyond appearance. And that world beyond appearance is everything except what is advertised on Kashmir. We need to find the true colours of life in this beautiful region of the world.
