India, June 29 -- I am writing this column from Srinagar. It is peaceful and very much the paradise it always was. My wife and I are the guests of an old friend, Jyoti Wazir, whose father-in-law was the Kashmiri Pandit chief justice of the state. She has a lovely cottage, and a beautiful garden full of hydrangeas, roses, pansies, magnolia and fruiting trees. But the best thing for me is that right above her home, on the hillside opposite, is the Adi Shankaracharya temple in clear view.

Fact and legend both indicate that Shankara (788-820 CE) visited Kashmir. The city was at that time renowned for its Buddhist and Hindu scholarship. Ever since Ashoka conquered the Valley in third century BCE, Buddhism had flourished here. There is histori...