Srinagar, May 5 -- In Nishat, where the Dal Lake mirrors the sky with deceptive calm, a woman was outraged. She was a Gujjar-Bakerwal, a pastoralist whose life unfolded in the highlands, her hands rough with work, her speech Gojri. Her assault met no dissent. No candles were lit. Her name never trended.

The silence was not forgetfulness, it was hierarchy.

Kashmir often speaks of itself as casteless, bound by a common faith that claims equality as its bedrock. Yet the social order here hums with distinctions that no one admits aloud. A Syed is not a Wani. A Sheikh is not a Gujjar. These lines drawn not on paper but in habit, marriage, and mourning, decide whose pain is noticed, and whose is dismissed.

The woman's outrageous case did not...