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A Surge in Tourists in Restive Kashmir, but ‘No Mental Peace’ for Residents
Visitors have flocked back to the region — proof, India says, that its imposition of control worked. But people who live there say fear and uncertainty persist.
Hari Kumar and
Hari Kumar reported from Srinagar, Kashmir, and Mujib Mashal from New Delhi.
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — They come for the biggest tulip garden on the continent. They come for the snow-capped Himalayas. They come for the lakes. They come for the natural beauty that over time has enchanted Hindu kings, Mughal emperors, British colonialists and millions of regular people.
Tourists have returned in droves to Jammu and Kashmir, in what India calls a sign of how it has turned things around in the disputed region, where violent separatists have been active for decades. Three years ago, in a stunning move, India’s Hindu nationalist government cemented control of the Muslim-majority area, saying that would finally bring peace.
“The region was a terrorist hot spot,” Amit Shah, India’s powerful home minister and a key lieutenant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said recently. “Now it has become a tourist hot spot.”
But what lures visitors to the area offers only a brief escape for many residents, who remain stuck in an old cycle of fear, desperation and uncertainty.
At the tulip garden in Srinagar early this summer, Suhail Ahmad Bhat, a fruit seller from the nearby town of Baramulla, was taking in the beauty of a million flowers. “I feel good in the garden. But outside the garden, there is a sense of fear — lots of checkpoints, lots of guns,” Mr. Bhat said. “There is no mental peace.”
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