If one were to sit back and watch the
silence of Kashmir, one might mistake it for peace or acceptance, but the reality is quite the opposite. This silence is not a sign of collective consent, but a compulsion born of circumstances, fear, and constant pressure. It is the silence that forces a person to remain silent despite the desire to speak.
Silence in Kashmir often thrives in the shadow of lockdowns, communication restrictions, arrests, and an uncertain future. When the cost of speaking is too high, when even a single sentence makes life difficult, people turn to silence as a shield. This silence is actually an attempt to protect themselves, not an endorsement of a decision.
History is witness that
silent nations are not insensitive, but are often the most sensitive. In Kashmir, people see, understand, and remember—they just cannot speak. The worry for their son in the eyes of a mother, the uncertainty on a farmer’s face, and the fog of the future in a young man’s questions—all these are the language of silence. Words are few here, but the feelings are deep.
The problem is that silence is presented as a powerful narrative. It is said that since there is no voice, everything is fine. However, the real question should be why there is no voice? Have the problems really ended, or are the channels of expression simply closed? If silence were peace, there would be no fear in hearts, and if there was consent, questions would have been buried.
Kashmir’s silence is actually a wait—for those days when speaking is not a crime, disagreement is not treason, and asking questions is not considered a threat. This silence will one day be broken, because history shows that repressed feelings always find words.
Therefore, mistaking Kashmir’s silence for acceptance is a grave mistake. This silence speaks, just in a different way. It requires not noise, but the courage to hear the truth.
The recent issuance of safety advisories cautioning Kashmiris against traveling to parts of North India should unsettle anyone who believes in the idea of equal citizenship. While such advisories are often framed as precautionary measures, their very necessity exposes a deeper and more troubling reality: in practice, safety in the world’s largest democracy is not experienced equally by all its citizens.
Freedom of movement is a foundational democratic right. In India, it is constitutionally guaranteed, not granted by discretion or circumstance. When a specific community is advised to avoid certain regions of its own country for fear of hostility or violence, the issue is no longer merely about security. It becomes a question of whether citizenship itself has been quietly stratified—where some move freely, and others move at their own risk.
Supporters of such advisories argue that they are issued in good faith, intended to prevent harm in times of heightened tension. That may well be true. But good intentions cannot obscure the underlying failure they represent. A democratic state should not need to warn its citizens away from fellow citizens. The need for advisories is not a sign of caution; it is evidence of a breakdown in social trust and state assurance.
For Kashmiris, these warnings carry a particular weight. They reinforce a long-standing sense of conditional belonging—where identity precedes individuality, and suspicion precedes innocence. Travel advisories, even when unofficial, send a subtle but powerful message: your safety cannot be guaranteed outside your home region. Over time, this message erodes not only confidence but dignity.
Democracy is often reduced to elections, numbers, and mandates. But its true test lies elsewhere—especially in how it treats those who are fewer in number, politically weaker, or socially vulnerable. Majority rule, without the protection of minority rights, is not democracy; it is majoritarianism. And history offers no shortage of examples where democracies hollowed themselves out by normalizing fear for some in the name of comfort for others.
The danger of such advisories is not only immediate but cumulative. When warnings become routine, exclusion becomes normalized. When exclusion becomes normalized, discrimination stops shocking the public conscience. Eventually, what began as a temporary precaution hardens into an accepted reality: some citizens must constantly calculate risk where others do not.
There is also a moral hazard in shifting responsibility from the state to the individual. Advisories implicitly tell Kashmiris to protect themselves by avoiding certain places, rather than telling society—and its institutions—to ensure their safety everywhere. This inversion of responsibility is deeply troubling. In a functioning democracy, the burden of ensuring safety lies with the state, not with citizens adjusting their lives around potential hostility.
Moreover, such advisories undermine the very idea of national unity that political rhetoric so often celebrates. Unity cannot be asserted through slogans while contradicted by lived experience. A nation does not become integrated by telling one group to stay away from another. True integration is built when diversity is rendered unremarkable—when identity no longer predicts danger.
It is also worth asking what precedent this sets. If Kashmiris can be advised against traveling today, who will be advised tomorrow? Once safety becomes conditional on identity, no group is permanently insulated from exclusion. Democracies that fail to confront this logic early often find themselves sliding toward a politics of permanent fear.
None of this is to deny that security challenges exist or that tensions can flare in moments of crisis. But democracies are defined not by the absence of tension, but by how they respond to it. Choosing advisories over accountability, avoidance over assurance, may be administratively convenient—but it is democratically corrosive.
Protecting minorities is not a favor extended by the majority; it is a constitutional and moral obligation of the state. Safety advisories for specific communities should be treated as alarms, not solutions. They should prompt urgent reflection, corrective action, and political honesty—not quiet acceptance.
If India is to remain faithful to its democratic promise, it must ensure that no citizen is advised to fear their own country. Anything less risks transforming democracy from a shared guarantee into a selective privilege—and that is a cost no democracy can afford to normalize.
