Once diverse, Kashmir is now valley of Muslims

"Kashmiris are religious, but they are not communal [communally exclusive], and every Muslim believes that we want the Pandits to return," says Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief cleric of Kashmir's largest mosque and a separatist leader. "But all that is changing," he adds. "A certain sector of Kashmiri youth has gone to religion in a hard-line way."

Some Kashmiris believe that tolerance starts at home, where parents can reinforce values rooted in the three liberal religions that dominate the valley, Sufi Islam, Shivaite Hinduism, and Mahayana Buddhism.

"Honest to God, I feel very unfortunate that my children don't know what it is to have a Hindu teacher or a Hindu friend," says Mukhtar Ahmed, a father who spent 16 years as a photographer for the royal family in Saudi Arabia before returning to Kashmir last year. "It reminds me of Saudi Arabia. Children grow up never knowing what a Hindu is, what a Christian is, what a Sikh is. But in Kashmir, we don't believe those values as in Saudi Arabia, and the home is the first cradle of values, so we teach humanitarian values."

In fact, on the streets of Srinagar and even in the villages, it's clear that Kashmir is still one of the more modern, liberal Islamic societies in Central and South Asia. Short skirts have been replaced by the loose traditional outfit called the salwar kameez, but it is still rare to see women wearing a full face-covering veil. Social mores are more liberal too. Couples cuddle up for a shikara boat ride across the expansive Dal Lake, or take long walks in the lush public gardens.

Even the hundreds of religious private schools that have sprung up across the state over the past decade have relatively liberal curricula. Islamic schools in Kashmir teach the Koran in Kashmiri and English, and require students to study math, science, literature, history, and economics.

Mohammad Shafi-Uri, a former state education minister recently ousted in this month's state elections, says he is hopeful that schools will be able to cultivate tolerance, even as the population grows less diverse. "Education has a tremendous liberating power. It makes you humanistic. If you talk to students at college, they may talk against the government of India, but they are secular in their outlook."

At the Government Boys Higher Secondary Institute in Srinagar, Muslim students are asked to explain ideas from the Koran. Hindu students (there are still six left, out of hundreds of Muslims) discuss lessons from sacred Hindu texts. And Sikh boys talk about their holy book. Principal Syeeda Shafi says her teachers do what they can to mold tolerant, globally minded students – even in a cultural vacuum.

Nevertheless, the straight-talking Ms. Shafi stops short of nostalgia in talking about Kashmir's multiethnic tradition.

"It was a lovely mixture of cultures," she says. "But there was a problem: The Pandits used to overestimate their own talents, and underestimated ours. Our Muslim children were neglected.

"If the Muslim youth had been given chances to work in the central government offices, if they were allowed to see the outside world, maybe these problems [the insurgency] wouldn't have come up."

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