From New Lines Magazine.
A week after Indian naval officer Vinay Narwal married Himanshi Sowami on April 16, he was dead. The couple wanted to visit Switzerland for their honeymoon, but since he did not get permission to travel abroad from the naval authorities, they went instead to Kashmir, a popular tourist spot. They were in the Baisaran meadow, a 4-mile trek from the tourist town of Pahalgam — dubbed a “mini Switzerland” because of its breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains and pine forests — when Vinay was shot dead by a group of armed militants.
The attackers ambushed tourists in broad daylight, killing 26 men and injuring at least three dozen people. Local police said that many of them were fired at from close range. The victims — barring one local Muslim man and a Christian — were Hindus, and eyewitnesses told Indian media that, in some cases, the attackers asked them if they were Muslims before killing them. At least five militants, including three from Pakistan, are suspected of involvement, according to news reports, and security forces are carrying out massive search operations to trace them.
Pahalgam was the most brutal attack on civilians in India since 2008, when the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai claimed the lives of 175 people. One of the defining images of the April 22 attack, widely shared on social media, is of the newlywed couple: Himanshi is sitting still and silently watching over the dead body of Vinay. Her red bangles, which newlywed women wear in India, are hard to miss.
This attack was unprecedented; targeted killings of tourists are rare in Kashmir. There had been an unwritten agreement among militant groups not to attack tourists, because the livelihoods of a majority of Kashmiris, either directly or indirectly, are dependent on the tourism industry, which supports an estimated 500,000 people. The region has been contested between India and Pakistan since 1947, and the dispute has caused three wars between the countries, as well as decades of violence since a separatist armed insurgency began in the late 1980s. Emphasizing the gravity of the attack, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah posted on X that “this attack is much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years.”
The attack has invoked outrage among a huge section of the local population in Kashmir,who are known for their hospitality and have expressed solidarity with the victims. “The grief is not theirs alone,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Kashmir’s top religious and political leader, during a rare Friday sermon the Indian authorities allowed him to deliver last week at Srinagar’s Jama Masjid, a mosque that has been a site of anti-India protests. “Kashmiris stand shoulder to shoulder with the victims,” he said. As well as holding candlelight vigils, locals led a mass shutdown, the first protesting a militant attack for 35 years.
Surbhi Gupta is South Asia Editor at New Lines magazine.