A meadow turned into a killing field. On April 22, 2025, Islamist terrorists slaughtered 26 Hindu and Christian tourists in cold blood in Baisaran Valley, a scenic meadow near Pahalgam, Jammu & Kashmir. Survivors narrated how the terrorists verified the victims’ religion before executing them, demanding the recitation of the Kalma (Islamic prayer) or checking physical identity markers (circumcision, religious symbols). The horror wasn’t just in the bullets, it was in the system that allowed it to happen.
Breach of protocol: The disconnect, not the absence of protocol
Baisaran Valley is known to be open, rugged, and exposed, an area without permanent defence installations and vulnerable due to its geographical location near infiltration routes from the upper Pir Panjal.
Established convention dictates that Baisaran and its adjoining routes are secured and cleared only in the lead-up to the Amarnath Yatra, typically beginning in June. The protocol involves sanitisation by Army units, surveillance inputs, intelligence validation, and then layered deployment to support pilgrim traffic.
In April 2025, however, this process had not yet begun. Despite this, local tour operators began ferrying tourists to Baisaran from April 20 onward, well before any security deployment had commenced.
What unfolded was not the absence of protocol, but a decoupling of ground realities from security readiness. Tourist movements to the valley appear to have commenced informally, without formal security clearance or structured coordination with authorities, thereby exposing visitors to grave risks.
This raises a sobering concern: How do tourism ecosystems operate in sensitive regions without even basic coordination with the state’s security apparatus?
Institutional memory ignored: A familiar mistake repeated
Time and again, Jammu-Kashmir has paid the price of disregarding standard operating procedures. Before any controlled mass movement, like the Amarnath Yatra or major religious events, there is a robust security plan involving:
- Terrain sanitisation and dominance by the Army
- Deployment of intelligence surveillance via drones and satellites
- Intelligence vetting by J&K Police, CID, and RAW
- Communication channels between the centre, state, and local teams
- Escort patterns by paramilitary units
These aren’t mere technicalities—they are scars from history that have formed into structured caution.
In this case, those systems were not even activated, simply because the visits were never officially declared. Instead, they began informally and commercially, making security planning a non-starter.
The episode forces a collective pause: Have we grown so casual about known threat zones that institutional safeguards are treated as formalities rather than essentials?
Tactical exploitation, not coincidence
Militants did not just ambush—they executed with precision. Arriving on foot with detailed terrain awareness, they located and separated tourists by faith, executed them, and escaped seamlessly, disappearing into the wilderness of the Pir Panjal.
- Their timing matched the first tourist footfall, designed to damage the local economy
- Their strike was swift and lethal
- Their escape was orchestrated before a formal response could even be initiated
Such precision implies advanced planning, reconnaissance, and timing. But more tellingly, it suggests they were aware that no state or paramilitary presence was expected in April.
This wasn’t just opportunistic terror. It was exploitation of a known procedural void.
The political-economic ecosystem: Commerce before caution
Pahalgam’s economy is interwoven with tourism. As winter recedes, local businesses, horsemen, guides, and vendors depend on the early-season tourist influx. Every year, the desire to “unlock” Baisaran precedes the formal green signal. This year, it was jump-started silently by local tour operators before even April had ended.
In a place where security and livelihood are both fragile, commercial eagerness is understandable. But it cannot come at the expense of life.
There is also a more systemic discomfort: the increasing disconnect between local commercial actors and administrative oversight. When routes are unofficially opened, when agencies are uninformed, and when ground-level decisions override national security considerations, it reflects a deeper imbalance.
And in areas where ideological fault lines persist, such disobedience may not always be accidental.
The tragedy compels a deeper introspection: How do we ensure that governance, economics, and national security move in synchrony—especially in regions where even a moment’s neglect can become a massacre?
The ethno-religious cleansing
This was no generic act of terror. It was a premeditated massacre of Hindus, an act of ideological violence that sought out its victims based on their faith alone. According to survivor accounts and official reports, victims were asked to state their names, some were ordered to recite verses from the Quran, others were subjected to invasive checks of circumcision to confirm they were non-Muslims and then executed at close range. This was not about territory or politics—it was about identity. This was not an insurgency, it was targeted religious cleansing. And yet, there is a disturbing quiet.
Why has the international media refrained from using terms like “genocide”, “communal massacre”, or “faith-based violence”? Would their language have been different had the victims belonged to another minority?
The moral silence, both global and domestic, is deafening.
The fundamentalist poison
Let us be clear, the Islam practised by the terrorists is not a representation of the religion as cherished by its compassionate adherents. What was practised here is Wahhabi-Jihadist exclusivism—an ideology that reduces religion and its teachings to instruments of power and vengeance. These terrorists act not as defenders of faith, but as executioners of hatred.
What deepens the tragedy is not only the violence itself, but the eerie silence of so-called moderate voices—those who do not merely fail to condemn, but fail to ostracise such ideology from the fold of their own religious and human conscience.
If this is not Islam, as many rightly claim, then where is the open, thunderous rejection of these murderers from within the Islamic faith? Where are the unequivocal fatwas, the mass marches, the sermons of anger against the killers? If they are not Muslims, why do so few in positions of religious leadership, scholarship, or political influence disown them, without ambiguity, without “ifs” and “buts”?
Silence here is not just abdication. It is complicity. Worse still, adding insult to injury, the Deputy Prime Minister of Pakistan publicly glorified these butchers as “freedom fighters”, once again exposing how terror is sanctified and shielded behind religion.
What “freedom” is this that demands the blood of unarmed tourists? What “resistance” is this that needs the massacre of women, children, and elders based on the God they worship?
Such endorsements reveal the naked truth: this is not a freedom movement, it is theocratic fascism—terrorism clothed in slogans of faith.
Compare this brutality with the core tenets of any true religion: Sanctity of innocent life, Protection of the weak and vulnerable and compassion, humility, and justice for all beings.
The ideology practised by these terrorists, shielded by the cowardly silence of many who claim to represent moderation, and even openly glorified by certain state actors — stands in absolute violation of every dharmic, ethical, and spiritual principle known to humanity.
“Religion without humanity is a curse.” – Swami Vivekananda
“Where is Islam, if it does not save the innocent?” – A grieving Kashmiri Hindu survivor
Between Dharma and the desert of hate
The Baisaran massacre in Pahalgam is not merely a tragedy—it is a test of India’s resolve. We cannot let tourism politics, appeasement, or fear of “community sentiment” compromise national security. Nor can we hide behind sterile diplomacy when innocent civilians are executed for their faith.
Dharma does not allow passive submission to evil. It demands action. The idea of Dharma in Sanatana tradition is not pacifism—it is righteous resistance, rooted in truth (Satya), compassion (Karuna), and courage (Shaurya).
A religion or ideology that sanctions the murder of innocent tourists based on faith cannot be called divine. It is a weaponised hatred born of historical egoistic arrogance and supremacy and fed by cowardly silence. Until we face this truth head-on with clarity, law, and no apologies, Baisaran will happen again.
This is not a call to vengeance, but to awaken courage against cowardice, truth against propaganda, and justice against ideological extremism. Let us recall what Rishi Vasishta taught Sri Rama in the Yoga Vasishta: “दुष्टं मूलेन संसक्तं कर्तव्यं सम्यगुत्पाटितम्।” (“Duṣṭaṃ mūlena saṃsaktaṃ kartavyaṃ samyagutpāṭitam.”), “One must uproot evil from the source, completely, for Dharma to thrive.”
Let this be the moment that reawakens Dharma Rajya—not of bigotry, but of courageous compassion, where peace is not begged for, but protected, and where righteous strength is wielded to preserve the sacred soil of Bhārat (India).
