In Kashmir, rights relating to life, liberty, dignity of the people, and freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution, embodied in the fundamental covenants and enforceable by courts of law, have been gravely violated.

For India, Kashmir lends credibility to its secular nationalist image.

The partition of India in 1947 legitimized the forces of masculinist nationalism and enabled hatred for the "other" to irreparably mutilate a shared anti-colonial legacy and cultural heritage so systematically that the wounds inflicted by the partition are yet to heal.

The creation of India and Pakistan were pyrrhic victories for their denizens because the political, socioeconomic, psychological, and culture havoc wreaked by that momentous event is reflected in those pogroms, ethnic cleansing, proliferation of nuclear weapons, poverty, and riots that continue to cause seismic tremors in the Indian subcontinent.

For Pakistan, Kashmir represents the infeasibility of secular nationalism and underscores the need for an Islamic theocracy in the subcontinent.

The increasing communalization of Indian politics is a juggernaut that annihilates the myth of secularism in India.

The much-lauded parliamentary democracy in India has been unable to protect a genuine democratic set-up in Kashmir.