Ramachandra Guha: In wake of Pahalgam, recalling Nehru’s advice on resisting Pakistan’s provocations

Surely the most noble of human emotions is to find hope in the midst of tragedy. One of the tourists killed by the terrorists in Pahalgam was N Ramachandran from Kerala. On her return home, his daughter, Arathy Sarath, spoke movingly of the succour she found from two young men in the wake of her suffering.

The Hindu newspaper quoted Sarath as saying: “Musafir and another local driver Sameer were with me all through, including when I stood outside the morgue till 3 am. They treated me like a younger sister. Kashmir has now given me two brothers.”

As reports in other papers confirm, Musafir and Sameer were entirely representative of how Kashmir, as a whole, reacted to the barbarism that claimed so many innocent lives. Several tourists who were at the scene of the attack were shepherded to safety by their Kashmiri guides.

At least one of these guides, like the others a Muslim by faith, was killed by the terrorists. As tourists sought to flee in panic, clerics opened mosques to provide beds for those who did not have hotel bookings. Taxi drivers refused to charge fares for passengers seeking to get to Srinagar airport.

The day after the killings, there was a complete hartal in...

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