Srinagar, April 22 -- If you flip through the old revenue records of Jammu and Kashmir, you'll come across codes like LB6 and S432. These are obscure labels, that to most people mean little. Yet these cryptic entries hold stories of land, power, justice, and unfinished reform. They're not just dusty bureaucratic leftovers; they're echoes of a time when Kashmir tried to turn the tide of history by giving land to those who worked it with their hands.

To understand what LB6 and S432 mean, we have to go back more than seventy years, to the sweeping land reforms that followed India's independence. At that time, Jammu and Kashmir was still emerging from the shadows of princely rule. The state's feudal order allowed a handful of powerful landlo...