Anniversaries are important. They serve as a sombre reminder of lives lost; of grief that lingers. Anniversaries, like that of the horrific attack in Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow on April 22 last year, are also an occasion to take stock of what may or may not have changed since the terrorists walked out of the woods in Kashmir’s pristine valley and shot 26 people, mostly tourists, dead at point blank range.We know what followed. The Narendra Modi government – which first took political ownership of surgical strikes after attacks in Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019) – engaged in a furious aerial dogfight with Pakistan, in an exercise it called, Operation Sindoor, a reference to the women who lost their husbands in the terror attack.As a reminder of the government’s stated policy of how it views terrorist attacks, Modi spoke again, on the first anniversary, saying, “Remembering the innocent lives lost in the gruesome Pahalgam terror attack on this day last year. They will never be forgotten. As a nation, we stand united in grief and resolve. India will never bow to any form of terror. The heinous designs of terrorists will never succeed.”The anniversary, which Modi tweeted about, however did not include any reflections on the residents of Jammu and Kashmir. Not only did an almost equal number of Indians die in heavy shelling in Kashmir’s border districts, the local Kashmiris surprised everyone by taking to the streets to condemn the blood that was spilled on their soil. They protested the killings of tourists – their “mehmaan” or guests – by holding demonstrations to condemn Pakistan. Even as they lined the streets, through candle-light vigils and tiranga yatras, they made it known that the Pahalgam attack had trespassed an unwritten, unarticulated boundary.The messaging was loud and clear: the stain was too burdensome for the Kashmiri conscience to bear. At the time, one of the banners which read, “Peace, not pieces,” summed up the mood in Kashmir. It was an opportunity that the Modi government should have immediately seized, to talk to the long-alienated population that had been pushed further to the corner on August 5, 2019 when new barriers were drawn – with rolls of concertina wire blocking street corners – so the Union government could read down Article 370 that gave Jammu and Kashmir its special status. Worse, it cleaved a state, often referred to as the crown on India’s head, into two Union territories.The Pahalgam attack punctured the Union government’s narrative of how the reading down would usher in a ‘Naya Kashmir’, wherein bloodshed would end. The attack also exposed what the government had told the Supreme Court when it was hearing a slew of petitions that contested the watering down of the special status. In an affidavit to the apex court, the government said that the reading down had led to “unprecedented development, progress, security and stability”, and that “life has returned to normalcy in the region after three decades of turmoil”.Also read: A Year After Pahalgam, Modi Govt Yet to Clarify ‘Lapses’ That Led to AttackJammu and Kashmir has been anything but normal since the reading down. The Pahalgam attack came as a huge setback, not just because it upended the lives of vast swathes of people that depend on tourism for their livelihoods. It also, sadly, made the ordinary Kashmiri a suspect in the eyes of people being bred on a daily diet of hatred and bigotry. Students in other states and traders looking for greener pastures for their shawls and handicrafts continue to be targeted.All of this has happened because the ‘Not in Our Name’ message that reverberated through the streets of Kashmir was not consolidated by New Delhi. Modi, the leader with the self-avowed 56-inch-chest, prefers to peddle the muscular approach and focus on military action. He prefers to punish the perpetrators across the Line of Control and has made it amply clear that his government will no longer distinguish between state actors and non-state actors in Pakistan. “Terror and talks can’t go hand in hand,” is the oft-used maxim, but why punish your own citizens who stood in solidarity after Pahalgam? Why let the moment in history pass?What the government does not understand is that ruling Jammu and Kashmir with an iron fist – with boots in the ground – through its lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha – only deepens the sense of alienation. It mistakes surface normalcy for peace when it actually is “negative peace” as former Army chief General Manoj Naravane has often said.If the government is indeed sincere about “unprecedented development, progress, security and stability”, it should start to engage with Kashmir politically. Reopening tourism sites with large footfalls and securing them by providing QR codes are important but don’t help in bridging the trust deficit between New Delhi and Srinagar.Kashmir is neither the Union home minister’s backyard nor just a piece of real estate with undulating fields, snow-capped peaks and rivulets. Instead of reiterating that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, as Modi and Amit Shah do, they must think of ways of truly integrating the people of the Union territory. The focus must shift from ‘territory’ to ‘union’.There is also a legitimate government in place and the National Conference-led Omar Abdullah government needs all the help the Union government can give it, especially to restore statehood, a long-held promise, made on the floor of the house on the same day that the state lost its special status. The sooner that is done, the better, for, while it may not be the final solution to “thirty years of turmoil”, it will go a long way in restoring dignity to the inhabitants of the erstwhile state. Statehood cannot be dangled like a political carrot; nor should it be linked to the fact that the BJP has been unable to open its account in the Valley where the Kashmiri lives in fear of a demographic change.Also read: ‘Under an Invisible Lock’: In Post-Pahalgam Kashmir, Locals Live and Survive SilentlyThere are other ‘peacemakers’ who are willing to engage. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chief priest with a commendable following, has an ear to the ground. A respected religious-political figure, he asks rightly if the government wants resentment to grow.In a conversation I had with him soon after the Pahalgam attack, for The Quint, he said, “New Delhi only wants to push its narrative. In the past, the BJP acknowledged us. [A.B.] Vajpayee never said he would give us ‘azadi’ but the government was willing to talk to us…”He was referring to the dialogue initiated during Vajpayee’s tenure as prime minister, when A.S. Dulat, former Research and Analysis Wing chief, who then served as an adviser to Vajpayee on Kashmir, worked hard to arrange a meeting between the then-prime minister and the separatists.The word ‘separatism’ is now, however, equated with terrorism and that is a problem because instead of opening windows, the government is intent on closing doors. The danger lies in the fact that the government over-emphasises its political ideology instead of focusing on the way forward, not just for Kashmir but for the entire nation.There is another urgent reason for the Modi government to step in and address the emotional void that will help Kashmir’s union with the nation. The West Asia war has seen Pakistan emerge as a mediator, and irrespective of external affairs minister S. Jaishankar referring to the neighbouring country as a “dalal”, the government cannot be sanguine about the fact that geopolitical realities have changed sharply after Pahalgam and Op Sindoor.The US president, who claimed credit for the ceasefire that helped pause the aerial dogfight between the two nuclear neighbours, is now all praise for Pakistan’s Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir. Trump’s “favourite field marshal” is now hard at work to negotiate an agreement between Tehran and Washington.The Modi government would do well to remember that there are no free lunches. A meaningful dialogue with Jammu and Kashmir and the restoration of statehood will hit at the heart of Munir’s argument that Kashmir remains “an unresolved international issue” and Pakistan’s “jugular vein”.Pahalgam offered an opportunity that requires resolve. The opportunity can be seized even today. As the Mirwaiz said, when he took the pulpit at Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid mosque, soon after Pahalgam,“Moments like this demand more than condemnation; they call for dialogue, for healing. They call for bridges to be rebuilt where walls have been raised … We must engage, we must listen, we must bridge the gaps that years of conflict have widened. Violence thrives where dialogue is absent. Healing begins when we listen.”The writer is a journalist and author of the recently published book, They Will Shoot You Madam: My Life Through Conflict.