Kashmir's politics of communal paranoia

Communal tensions have been escalating steadily through the Jammu region - for the most part, around the motif of the cow

Eighteen years ago, one sunny September afternoon, a football soared over the playing field of the Government Degree College in Rajouri, and slammed into a student standing on the far side. The student who was hit was a Muslim, the player a Hindu; perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, buildings began to burn inside the hour. Four people were killed before the rage stilled.

Indians have been struggling to make sense of the communal hatred that drove the savage rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, allegedly by Hindu nationalists seeking to scare her sheep-herding