On April 22, 2025, the serene hills of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir were drenched in innocent blood. What should have been a peaceful afternoon for tourists quickly turned into a calculated slaughter. Terrorists from The Resistance Front (TRF) — a Lashkar-e-Taiba offshoot — ambushed civilian vehicles near Baisaran Valley and opened fire. At least 28 people were killed, and over 12 were critically injured. Their only “crime”? They were Hindus.
This was not a random act of violence. According to multiple survivor testimonies, the terrorists first asked for ID cards, then names, and in some cases, even pulled down pants to check for circumcision. They demanded that the victims recite the Kalma — a declaration of Islamic faith. Those who couldn’t? Were shot dead on the spot. No mercy. No doubt. No room for error. This was targeted, religiously motivated ethnic cleansing, masked under the term “militancy.”
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard it before — in the blood-stained chapters of Kashmir in the 1990s, when over 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee after similar threats and violence. This is not just a repetition. It is a continuation — a revival of an ideology that refuses to die, fueled by hatred and executed with precision.
The timing is no coincidence either. Just days before the attack, Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir delivered a venomous anti-Hindu speech, blaming India for “changing Kashmir’s demography.” At the same time, U.S. Senator JD Vance, a pro-India voice, was on an official visit. This massacre was not just terror; it was a political message — carefully timed, deliberately brutal, and ideologically driven.
Among the victims were people from across India — a Navy officer from Haryana, a schoolteacher from Odisha, a newlywed couple from Gujarat, and families from West Bengal and Maharashtra. Children, women, and even foreign nationals from Nepal and UAE were among the dead. They were not soldiers, not politicians, not part of any conflict. They were simply tourists — people who came to see the beauty of Kashmir and got shot in cold blood.
And yet, despite the clarity of motive and method, the response from India’s so-called secular ecosystem was predictable — silence, whitewashing, and euphemisms. The same people who cry “minority persecution” at the drop of a hat couldn’t find it in themselves to utter the word “Hindu” when reporting this massacre. They called them “tourists,” “civilians,” “victims.” But not once did they say the truth: They were Hindus, killed for being Hindu.
This exposes the moral rot in our discourse — the lie that “terrorism has no religion.” If it truly didn’t, why were ID cards checked? Why were Hindu names singled out? Why was the Kalma used as a test of life or death? When religion determines who lives and who dies, then yes — terrorism does have a religion. And in this case, its target was Hindus.
This isn’t just an attack on people. It’s an attack on a civilization. It’s a continuation of the same ideological war that began in 1947 — in Noakhali, in Baramulla, in Godhra, and now again in Pahalgam. It transcends borders and flags. It is not just about guns. It’s about erasure — cultural, demographic, and civilizational.
Where is the global outrage? Where are the candlelight vigils, the celebrity tweets, the human rights statements? If the roles were reversed, the world would be in uproar. But when it’s Hindu blood, it barely makes a headline.
This is a wake-up call — or it should be. We can no longer afford the luxury of appeasement and denial. What happened in Pahalgam is Pulwama 2.0 — not just in scale, but in symbolism. We are being warned, yet again, that we are at war — not just against terrorism, but against an ideology that seeks to destroy our very existence.
If we still choose silence, if we still soften the truth to please imaginary secular gods, then we are complicit in every pyre that burns.
The victims were Hindu. They were killed for being Hindu. Say it. Acknowledge it.
