Sometimes the earth does not just shake, it mourns. The world will ache from sorrow, and the loss one experiences as they move here and there about the place, at the time of loss. It could be a day with a dim light, the sky must free a heavier blanket, and the sun tremendously wants to fade from sparkle, the cloud is low, and it feels as if the earth is being pulled down with sadness through mourning. The wind murmurs, “The world lost humanity today.” Yet amongst that sadness, there can be light, the one bright breakthrough like a crack of light breaking through the heavy, dark clouds. April 22, 2025, was one of those days that, at the same time, Kashmir witnessed tragedy within the loss of humanity, their contained flourishing and outpouring of humanity, which offered glimmers of hope.
But by sunset, the beauty of Kashmir was stained with violence.
In Baisaran, a meadow located just near Pahalgam, where families were making memories and enjoying the peace of the valley, armed militants were shooting at tourists without warning. Chaos ensued. People screamed and ran in every direction, with bullets raining everywhere within the valley that they once found peaceful. No more than minutes later, 26 people were dead: mostly innocent Hindu civilians who were only there to soak up the beauty of Kashmir: young children, couples, and older travellers. Lives snatched away in an instant of violence.
The militants behind this act of violence were trying to tear apart the fabric of humanity, which had held Kashmir together for generations. The militants were sending a message: to reopen old wounds, to impose terror to thicken the divide between Hindus and Muslims, to tear communities apart. They were not just trying to kill them; they were trying to fracture them. They were looking for the country to ask how it could exist together in Kashmir. Fear, hatred and distrust were their goal.
But what happened after that was not what the perpetrators had in mind.
While the police and army were heading to the site, the first responders weren’t police officers in uniform and reporters, but rather those locals – the Kashmiri Muslims who had spent the day with the tourists. They had taken them to the tops of hills, shared cups of tea and told them about life in the valley. These locals, many of whom were pony boys, tea sellers, or guides in the forest, could have turned around and run in the other direction, out of fear. Instead, they ran towards the gunshots and the sound of terror, toward the bleeding tourists.
Among those locals was Syed Adil, the 28-year-old pony boy. When the shooting started, Adil was with a family of tourists. Without a second thought, he ran toward the site. He heard the cries for chairs and looked at the terrified faces of the survivors. Among the injured was a 10-year-old girl, Riya, whose parents were shot dead in front of her. Adil found the girl, grabbed her hand and shielded her. He was shot three times along the way. But he wouldn’t let the girl down.
Nazakat, his cousin, although wounded by the gunshot, managed to extract twelve frightened tourists out of the forest, away from the gunfire. He kept saying, “Yeh hamare mehmaan hain. Mehmaan Allah ke hote hain,” which translates to “These are our guests. Guests are God’s people.” Putting himself in grave danger and carrying total strangers into immediate safety was a gnawing reminder of human goodness and a counterpoint to the disregard for human life that had taken place a few minutes earlier.
In the hospitals just neighbouring Anantnag and Srinagar, countless doctors and medical personnel didn’t ask about religion or ethnicity. They then proceeded to treat the injured but did not check their names; instead, they checked their pulses. Muslim doctors, alongside Hindu paramedics, sutured wounds and performed surgeries to save human life. Islamic women lined up to donate blood for the express purpose of saving both Muslim and non-Muslim lives. These human beings were lost to every label society placed on them while helping save lives.
A local mosque, located just a short distance from the attack site, threw its doors open for those who survived. Some were covered in blood, some were barefoot, some were missing significant amounts of clothing and appeared pale from fear and shock. The mosque’s imam told them softly, “Yeh insaaniyat ka waqt hai”, or “This is the time for humanity”. Inside the mosque, survivors from every background and religion were offered refuge, no questions asked about who they were or what they believed. An elderly Kashmiri woman, in the corner, silently sat holding a terrified child in her arms, singing her a lullaby of sorts until she fell asleep. The child, now motherless, had found solace in the arms of a stranger, a stranger who only identified her as a human who needed care.
In Anantnag, the town came together for a candlelight vigil that brought different faiths together. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs stood together not as part of their communities, but because they were equally traumatised by what happened. Hindu priests lined up with Muslim clerics and Sikh granthis in silence. They didn’t speak of faith or politics. They spoke of the dead. They remembered Rani and Mahesh, an elderly couple from Gujarat who had come to Kashmir to celebrate their anniversary. They remembered Adil, the young pony boy who died trying to save a child. They remembered the many others who died too soon. With its quiet dignity, this vigil was a protest against those who divided, and an affirmation of the capacity of Indians, however we pray or do not pray, to unite in grief.
Kashmir is often characterised as a distant place in turmoil, caught in religious, political, or ethnic conflict. It is the Kashmir of the headlines categorised by agent or victim, Hindu or Muslim. On April 22, 2025, the event served as a powerful reminder of the Kashmir that few speak of. It was a reminder of real Kashmir, the Kashmir of human beings living, working and loving together regardless of their beliefs. It was a reminder that the greatest weapon against hatred and division is not weapons or politics, but manhood.
The terrorists who attacked Pahalgam were hoping to create panic and distrust among the people of Kashmir, they were trying to remind the people of Kashmir of their differences as they weren’t expecting this: when they heard the sounds of gunfire, the people of Kashmir – the real Kashmir – responded with compassion, courage and solidarity.
Kindness was celebrated in every corner of the valley in the days following the attack. A Muslim woman who had lost her husband in the attacks sat beside a grieving Hindu mother. A Hindu man, who had escaped from the forest with the help of a stranger, later returned to thank his Muslim rescue worker. A young boy who had lost his parents in a terrorist act was now in the arms of a Sikh volunteer who promised the boy that he could help him get his life back on track.
The militants wanted to divide the people of Kashmir, but in the end, all they managed to do was to rally them together. Instead of a gulf of hate, they created a wave of unity. Instead of reinforcing the divides of religion, they muddled it. Yes, Kashmir was grieving. But it was also a place of intense love, sharing, and relationships.
Ultimately, love, not violence, won. It was the shared humanity of people across Kashmir that rose from the toxic ash of hate. As long as the spirit lasts, as long as people keep choosing compassion over fear, the terrorists have not won. Because in the heart of Kashmir, even after the blood and the fire, the only thing that truly survived was love. And no terrorist, no ideology, can ever kill that.
Too often, Kashmir is summarised as headlines and conflict. It is polarised – Hindu and Muslim, victim and aggressor, pain and politics.
But what transpired in Pahalgam revealed a different reality: Kashmir is about more than the past. It is a place where a Muslim man would run into the line of fire to rescue a Hindu childWhere a Hindu girl would whisper thank you to an Imam who stopped her from fallingWhere people stripped of every label, simply find one another as humansAnd maybe that is what the terrorists fear the most, not that we are divided, but that we are unitedNot our anger, but our compassion Not our fear, but our refusal to stop believing in one anotherBut those that walked the ground – those that bled, those that cried, those that held one another tight through the hardest of times; they know the truth: That when hate came armed with guns, humanity came unarmed.
And in that moment, under that same sky where those bullets once flew, something more substantial arose: the indelible bond of shared grief. Of shared courage. Of shared humanity. Because in the heart of Kashmir, even after the blood and the fire, the only thing that survived was love. And no terrorist can kill that.
The men with guns wanted headlines soaked in fear, reopening old wounds and fanning old flames. They wanted Hindus to fear Muslims and Muslims to be blamed
They grieved with victims,
they stood with families they prayed,
not in one language, not in one tradition but in one voice.