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SRINAGAR, INDIAN KASHMIR
Javed's parents always talk about what Kashmir used to be - a
land where Hindus and Muslims were friends, celebrated holidays
and weddings together, ate each other's food.
But Javed, a high school student here, says his parents might
as well be describing life on the moon. He was 3 when a violent
insurgency against Indian control tore apart the state, causing Hindus
to flee by the hundreds of thousands. He has never had a Hindu
teacher or friend, never tasted Hindu food.
"Terrorist activities have destroyed our culture," says Javed,
who doesn't give his last name. "When Hindu Pandits left the
valley, we lost a part of ourselves."
India has announced it will begin pulling back troops from
the Pakistan border next month. But while politicians and diplomats
search for ways to end the 13-year insurgency - considering
everything from state autonomy to joint control by India and
Pakistan - Kashmiris are in the midst of a profound social
change. Migration of most of the Hindus has turned a once
cosmopolitan society of Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists,
into an Islamic monoculture.
Now, experts worry that an entire generation will grow up
never having experienced Kashmiriyat - the thousands-year-old
concept of cultural unity through diversity - and in a fundamental
way, India will have already lost Kashmir.
"Kashmiriyat as a collective presence is either dead or dying,
and to revive this sense of to-gatherness is the biggest challenge, a
bigger challenge than fighting terrorism," says Amitabh Mattoo, a
political scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
The Hindu vacuum is felt most profoundly in the state's public
and private schools, where children of Kashmir's many cultures once
mingled. Before 1989, Kashmir's small but influential Pandits - a

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