Pahalgam/Shopian: Every day at the crack of dawn, Ishfaq Nazeer’s ears, conditioned to awaken to the azaan that echoes from the local mosque, respond just as before. Nazeer, a university student in Kashmir’s Shopian district, rises at the call, washes up and heads to the mosque with his mother’s specific instructions in mind: “After your prayers, go to the baker’s, bring me girdeh (a local bread) and head straight home. Don’t discuss politics with strangers.”Her words follow Nazeer every day, just like the call to prayer.Nazeer’s mother’s fears are not unfounded. In April, an encounter in Arhama resulted in the death of Ganderbal resident Raashid Ahmad Mughal. After his family called it a ‘fake encounter’, a magisterial inquiry was ordered into the killing by security forces.In January, many mosques across Kashmir were asked to fill out forms listing the names of attendees, their phone numbers and institutional and financial details, a process that left clerics feeling unsure about how the state now views Islamic spaces. In March, the Lieutenant Governor’s administration of Jammu and Kashmir terminated three government employees for alleged anti-national activities.Journalists in the valley have also been facing increased policing.In November 2025, explosives – reportedly evidence related to the blast near Red Fort in New Delhi – detonated while they were undergoing forensic investigation in Nowgam police station. And in August that year, the Union government banned several books on Kashmir, accusing its authors of spreading “secessionism”. Police even raided bookshops and disrupted a literary festival to enforce the order.Also in August 2025, at least 250 charity-run Kashmiri schools were taken over by the Union government. And in June, a government schoolteacher in Srinagar was terminated from his job after a background check flagged a distant relative as an alleged anti-India rebel, something the teacher says he had never known about.Residents of Kashmir describe an increase in the frequency of police summons and background checks, a continuous process of police intimidation ever since the terrorist attack in Pahalgam’s Basiran Valley in April 2025, which killed 22 civilians.This securitisation net has especially tightened around the pillars of civic life – education, literature, livelihood and faith.On any other summer day, Abid, a taxi driver, would have been occupied with ferrying tourists from one spot in the valley to another. He would have been answering his constantly buzzing cell phone, glued to his ear as he drove around, responding to over-eager tourists.But since April 22, 2025, things have not been the same. Life in Baisaran Valley, the exact spot where the militants struck, has felt unsettled. Driving down the road to Pahalgam from Srinagar brings a sense of foreboding. The previously packed roads have fallen silent, as if they are refusing to welcome anyone down the path to paradise.Since the militant attack in Baisaran Valley in April 2025, locals say the tourist spot has fallen ominously silent. Photo: Tarushi Aswani.Baisaran resident Abdul Majeed says he never thought that the lush green meadow near his home would one day echo with the terrified shrieks of tourists. “Since that day,” he says, “I don’t like to even look at that area. The horror and fear we saw in the eyes of people that day won’t leave our minds until we die.”For years, tourism was their primary source of income for Majeed, Abid and many, many others like them. Tourism was the chain that linked pockets to stomachs, as they say in these parts. But since last year, some pockets in Pahalgam have refused to fill up, leaving stomachs struggling to survive.While looking at the well-lit, empty hotels and restaurants in the area, even a year after the killings, a question taps one on the shoulder: Did that attack also shatter the fragile ‘Naya Kashmir’ narrative?Academic Dr Sheikh Showket says the Baisaran attack, condemned by all in Kashmir and beyond, still brought the subcontinent to the brink of a massive conflict. The fallout has made it clear that India and Pakistan must resolve their differences at the earliest. “Kashmir, being a battleground, is always on the receiving end. Apart from the risks to life and property, the space for already choked rights and liberties gets squeezed even more,” he says. The ongoing conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran has further strengthened his argument favouring a peaceful resolution, he feels.Majeed expresses the same sentiment as Dr Showket, just differently. He describes a Pahalgam that now lives under an ‘invisible lock’. “Nobody enters and nobody leaves. It is like a lock has been placed on Pahalgam. The roads run empty, the horses stand still, restaurants await customers, but no one wants to come here,” he says.Horses idle in their stables as horseback activities in Pahalgam’s dense jungles have been banned. Photo: Tarushi Aswani.Even the migrant labourers have fled. The young men who arrived from Jammu, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal looking for work are not even one-fourth their usual strength at this time of year.“My own son doesn’t work in Pahalgam any more – he travels to other districts,” Majeed says. The last week has been particularly stressful for Majeed, for the authorities banned guides from taking tourists on horseback to forested spots in Pahalgam.“It feels like danger is still in the air,” he says.A handicraft store owner in Basiran says the footfall has been dismal, disappointing. “If earlier we saw 25,000 tourists a day, it is not even 1,000 today,” he says. “Pahalgam’s image will take a long time to rebuild.”He points out that while the visitor arrival numbers are healthy because of steady interest in the tulip garden in Srinagar, “those tourists don’t even want to pass by Pahalgam”.The negative effects of the attack are now trickling through Kashmir, beyond its tourist hotspots.Several families in Pulwama and Shopian say that after the attack, their sons were summoned to police stations for questioning and the situation worsened after the India-Pakistan clashes in May 2025.“The police are now calling and asking about the whereabouts of anyone who was ever called in to a station before. Even families of those who joined militancy in the 1990s and later died are being called in. That is the extent [of surveillance],” says a social activist from South Kashmir.Locals say that every Kashmiri mind was hard-wired over the decades to sketch out the worst possible scenarios that could befall them in every situation. But today they feel that every new day brings more and more uncertainty.“We fear the things we have seen over the years, but what we fear even more is how much worse this can get,” says a seventy-year-old retired teacher.Residents describe living with the feeling that they might be overheard even when they were alone. “Even at a family gathering or wedding, I feel I am being watched in ways I cannot explain. Everyone feels like they are under a dense layer of heaviness,” says a local.Many describe a life that feels more watched than lived: who teaches, what is studied, where one prays and what one reads.Tourists click photographs near a board in Pahalgam. Photo: Tarushi Aswani.Since last April, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has taken “precautionary” steps that effectively censor how people work, worship and participate in public life.The fear is that this securitisation of ordinary life will soon encompass everything – from the school gate to the local bakery, the mosque, their homes and soon, hearts and minds.So they keep their guard up, even among known faces. What remains after the violence at Basiran receded is the caution, the silence, the small daily calculations they feel they must make. Kashmiris feel that their everyday life has become evidence against them – so a teacher adjusts lessons to avoid trouble, a cleric panics over orders for documentation, and a young student learns literature is now seen as a security concern.A year after the Pahalgam attack, Kashmiris feel they are silencing themselves more than before, in order to adapt to their own conflicted homeland. They say they have lowered their voice, self-censored discussions, and think twice before speaking – for who might be listening in?Most of the locals spoken to for this story did not wish to be named, fearing they might be arrested for expressing how they felt.