Srinagar, April 30 -- Kashmir has always been more than a geopolitical flashpoint. It's a living landscape of culture and resilience. This serene space of sages and skillmen is forever longing for peace. And yet, peace remains as distant as the Himalayan ridges that cradle the valley.

Time and again, efforts to resolve the strife have collapsed. Not because peace is impossible, but because its architects have built it from the top down - far from the soil where its roots must take hold.

The recent terror attack in Pahalgam, in which several innocent people lost their lives, is a tragic punctuation mark in a much longer and painful narrative. Every such act of violence reinforces the urgency of rethinking what peace really means in Kashm...