Kashmir has always been at crossroads. Sufis, Pandits, Sikh Gurus, Muslim saints, and Buddhist scholars have walked the same narrow passes for a millennium. Their graves and shrines are not merely religious sites. They are geographical witnesses to a pluralism that predates the nation state, and they may prove more durable than the borders drawn across them, at least not by their choice.
Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Wali, known as Nund Rishi - the patron saint of Kashmir - rests at his dargah in Chrar-e-Sharief. His shrine is a site of annual pilgrimage for Muslims and Pandits alike. His poetry ‘Ann poshi teli, yeli vani poshi ‘(food fills the stomach, but words fill the soul) is inscribed on the walls of the legislative assembly. But Pandits who left in 1990 cannot return to offer chadar at his shrine without bureaucratic processes that stretch into months.
Consider Sharada Peeth. It lies across the LoC in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, near the town of Sharada in the Neelam Valley. For centuries, it was one of the most revered Shakti Peethas in the subcontinent - a temple of the goddess of knowledge. Kashmiri Pandits made annual pilgrimages before 1947. The manuscripts preserved there formed the basis of the Kashmiri script. Today it is inaccessible to Indian Pandit pilgrims. The ancient spring beside it still flows, but there is no one to receive its water as prasad.
And yet excavations in the Neelam Valley, led by Dr Rukhsana Khan - a pioneering archaeologist, art historian, and Chairperson of Art and Design at the University of Azad Kashmir - have uncovered stone tools, megaliths, rock inscriptions, Kushan-era coins, and evidence of Buddhist monasteries beneath the historic site. These discoveries reveal the region's deep cultural and religious heritage, linking it to broader networks of trade and faith across centuries. Dr Khan's work repositions Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir as a significant archaeological landscape, one whose historical connections do not stop at the LoC.
The Sikh geographies are equally layered. Gurdwara Chati Patshahi in Srinagar marks the visit of Guru Har Gobind and is maintained with devotion. Then there is Chota Nankana Sahib in Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan - a gurudwara associated with Guru Nanak's second udasi (journey), standing near the Indus in the shadow of the Karakoram, accessible only to Pakistani passport holders. For Sikhs from Indian Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, it is as distant as the moon.
Across the LoC in Rawalakot, on the Pakistani side of Poonch, there stands a small but historically significant temple that once served the region's Dogra-era Hindu community, a short distance from the Faculty of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at the University of Poonch. No Indian pilgrim has seen its inner sanctum in decades.
What is the CBM here? It is almost embarrassingly simple. Issue 10,000 pilgrimage-only permits annually for trans-Kashmiris and nationals from both countries to visit sites such as Sheikh Noor-ud-Din's dargah, Sharada Peeth, the Rawalakot temple, and Chota Nankana Sahib. Make each permit valid for ten days, non-extendable, with a bonded itinerary. Mandate that 20 percent of each pilgrimage fee goes into a joint Glacier Fund for ecological restoration on both sides of the divide.
This is not fantasy. The Kartarpur Corridor, which allows Indian Sikhs to visit Guru Nanak's final resting place in Pakistan without a visa, has been operational for years. If Kartarpur works, why not Chrar-e-Sharief, Sharada Peeth, and Chota Nankana Sahib? The answer is political timidity dressed as a security concern. And that timidity is anchored in a trust deficit.
Trust Deficit
The trust deficit between New Delhi and Islamabad is not a natural law. It is a manufactured product, replenished daily by rhetoric and a 24-hour news cycle that profits from outrage. A tourist buying a shawl is not a headline. A stone thrown at a checkpoint is. A burst of gunfire is breaking news.
The cross-LoC interactions are no longer happening and civil society meetings from the two sides in foreign locales rare. When they do happen, what comes up for discussion are the mundane and non-serious matters.
"The media wants the hostage narrative," says the retired principal from Anantnag, an expert in international relations, whose friend’s family has lost distant cousins to cross-LoC firing. "But the people want the samosa and pakora narrative. And if things can move towards a real, ordinary engagement, they might go to the next level."
The diplomatic context has grown more complicated. On May 25, China and Pakistan issued a joint statement in Beijing describing Kashmir as a "leftover from history" requiring peaceful resolution under the UN Security Council framework. Then, on June 2, 2026, the EU-Pakistan Joint Press Communiqué's Section 11 placed "the issue of Jammu and Kashmir" in structural proximity to Russia's war against Ukraine, addressing both under the shared rubric of peaceful resolution and adherence to the UN Charter. For Pakistan, this pairing elevates its Kashmir narrative to the level of a cross-border armed conflict.
For the EU, which does not recognise Jammu and Kashmir as an international dispute comparable to Ukraine, the juxtaposition risks unintended equivalence. The communiqué thus achieves diplomatic ambiguity: without asserting identical legal status, it places territorial sovereignty and alleged violations of international law in deliberate, consequential proximity.
For the EU, which does not recognise Jammu and Kashmir as an international dispute comparable to Ukraine, the juxtaposition risks unintended equivalence. The communiqué thus achieves diplomatic ambiguity: without asserting identical legal status, it places territorial sovereignty and alleged violations of international law in deliberate, consequential proximity.
The timing of this ambiguity matters, because Pakistan-administered Jammu Kashmir (PaJK) is in turmoil ahead of the 2026 general elections. The Joint Awami Action Committee's (JAAC) demands were agreed in principle but never met despite a deadline, compelling it to resume its agitation, while its demand to abolish the 12 seats reserved for refugees, which it says skew government formation in Muzaffarabad, was never conceded at all. The subsequent ban on JAAC triggered violent clashes in Rawalakot that killed over twenty people.
The Nuclear Triangle
Kashmir sits at the apex of what strategists call the Nuclear Triangle - the compressed airspace where India's, Pakistan's, and China's red lines overlap. The Line of Actual Control with China in eastern Ladakh is less than 200 kilometres from the LoC. Any untoward incident - a border sniper, a misinterpreted drone - can flare into existential threat within hours.
And yet, almost eight years after the last comprehensive dialogue died a quiet death, no peace infrastructure exists on the ground. The Delhi-Lahore bus service has atrophied. The Samjhauta Express, which survived a bombing in 2007, stands suspended since the 2019 diplomatic freeze. The 2005 Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus and the 2008 cross-LoC barter trade via Chakoti-Uri and Poonch-Rawalakot are both suspended.
"You cannot have peace dividends without a peace infrastructure," says Gowher Rasool, a mechanical engineer with a deep understanding of disaster management. "It is like expecting a crop without a field. The PET factor - Peace, Ecology, Tourism - needs a fourth dimension: L for Longevity. Investment in tourism today must be irreversible, even if shells land tomorrow. That means cross-border insurance. Real-time visa tracking. A ceasefire tourism guarantee fund. None of this exists."
The math turns political here. Currently, 92 percent of tourism investment in Indian-administered Kashmir is in luxury hotels and gondola lifts - infrastructure that can be bombed, closed, or co-opted. Zero percent is invested in conflict-resilient mechanisms.
The Way Forward: A Seven-Point Menu
The PET: F framework is elegant in its simplicity. Peace acts on Ecology to produce Tourism. But the common factor — Fragility — demands that we rewrite the equation for practical use:
Sustainable Tourism = (Peace × Ecology × Political Boldness) / Fragility
What is needed is not a grand peace accord. History shows that the post-nuclear triangle is no place for heroics. What is needed is what psychologists call the smallest possible action — voluntary, incremental, unromantic, and real. And, to start with: the unconditional release of political detainees, a guarantee of free political expression for all parties, and collective safeguards on land, jobs and other democratic rights.
Here is a seven-point menu. None of these items requires a treaty. All of them could begin tomorrow.
One. Declare a June Peace Corridor every year during the heat wave, when both armies are too exhausted to posture, and allow permit-free family meetings at crossing points: Kaman-Chakoti, Karnah-Teetwal-Neelam, Tulail-Neelam, and Poonch-Rawalakot.
Two. Issue 10,000 tourism-only permits for trans-Kashmiris to visit six sites: the Martand Sun Temple in Anantnag, Sharada Peeth in Neelam, Sheikh Noor ud Din's dargah in Kashmir, Alibagh Gurudwara in Mirpur, the Raghunath Temple in Mirpur, and Chota Nakana Sahib in Skardu.
Three. Mandate that 20 percent of all hotel tax collected in Srinagar, Jammu, Leh, and Muzaffarabad goes into a Glacier Fund - a jointly audited account for spring rejuvenation, rainwater harvesting, and water reservoir construction on both sides of the LoC.
Four. Establish a cross-LoC water CBM: a joint team of hydrologists from both sides, with neutral observers from the Indus Waters Treaty secretariat, tasked with mapping shared aquifers and publishing a public spring health report every six months.
Five. Create a Ceasefire Tourism Guarantee Fund - a bonded amount of ten million dollars deposited with a neutral party, such as Switzerland or the United Nations, to compensate any tourist or pilgrim affected by a ceasefire violation. Remove the financial risk from the individual traveller.
Six. Establish the Srinagar Principles - a voluntary code of conduct for war reporting on both sides of the border. Stop placing phrases such as "surgical strike" and "befitting reply" in headline font.
Seven. Establish a joint cross-LoC disaster mitigation structure, drawing lessons from the October 8, 2005, earthquake, the devastating floods of September 2014 and August-September 2025, fast-receding glaciers, increasing cloudbursts, and the growing threat of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods on both sides.
These are baby steps – unromantic but incremental.
But as the June sun bakes the LoC, melting the snow on the Pir Panjal into water that feeds the Jhelum on one side and the Neelam on the other, one truth remains indisputable. Peace is not a treaty. Unlike a ceasefire line, it cannot be drawn on a map. It can be practiced through sharing of ideas, knowledge and building of trust. This nuclear neighbourhood does not need a grand resolution to prevent the next catastrophe. All it needs is the political boldness to admit that the only thing growing faster than the glaciers' melt is the people's exhaustion with militarization and environmental degradation.
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