Even as a section of the Indian population celebrated in August 2019, the people of the Kashmir Valley seemed to have been hit by a thunderbolt at the abrogation of Article 370. To them, it wasn’t merely a section of the Constitution that conferred autonomy on their state, it was what defined their relationship to India, and its removal yet another in a long chain of betrayals by the Indian State, which they see as a ‘colonial’ power.

Based on his experience of reporting from Kashmir since 2017, Rohin Kumar deftly unpacks contentious issues like militarization and human rights abuses in the Valley, offering rare insight into Kashmiri perspectives often missing in mainstream narratives. From the messy accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India in 1947 to the rise of separatism and militancy and the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s, he takes us through the emergence of the new militancy of the 2010s. But Lal Chowk is more than a narration of events leading up to and following the abrogation of Article 370. Through intimate conversations with Kashmiris from all walks of life—stone-pelting youth, parents seeking justice for their dead, tortured or ‘disappeared’ children, young women simultaneously resisting patriarchy and the Indian State, security forces personnel who justify their excesses, and seasoned politicians from across the spectrum—the author paints a nuanced portrait of a region locked in perpetual conflict.

Placing Kashmiris at the centre of the narrative, this incisive book asks difficult questions about identity, the wildly contrasting perceptions in Kashmir and New Delhi, and the elusive quest for ‘normalcy’ in one of the world’s most militarized zones.