Himanshi and Vinay Narwal were married a week before the young naval officer was murdered by Islamist terrorists at a meadow  near Pahalgam.

Yet while sectarian vigilantes have been busy carrying out vendetta across the country against Kashmiri Muslims – students, vendors etc – the one person who might have been expected with justification to seek revenge, the so-bereaved Himanshi, has wasted no time after losing her beloved husband to say: “We do not want people going after Muslims and Kashmiris.”

May we please invite the nation to salute this young woman for the incredible catholicity of her mind, and for inspiring us all to eject from the body politic the sectarian virus that has made of national loyalty a partisan domain and unleashed a season of hate which has  riven the collective psyche heinously.

That Himanshi has expressed this most needed sentiment sitting next to an MLA of the ruling party adds piquant meaning to the moment.

Another voice that the powers-that-be and the polity at large had better heed is that of the chief minister of the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir – Omar Abdullah.

In his address to a special session of the J&K assembly, Abdullah observed with force and feeling how Kashmiris have, this once, chosen publicly to denounce both the terrorists and Pakistan, even from the altar of the iconic Jamia Masjid.

Issuing from that, he has wisely admonished that while terrorism may be curbed by strong-arm means, it can be eradicated only when the mass of Kashmiris make bold to repudiate it

And, looking at how that moment seems to have arrived, the worst folly that the state and society could commit is to engage in practices and policies that continue to distrust Kashmiris.

The need of the hour is to own and include them in a praxis that abjures punitive modus operandi, and discriminatory procedures.

In that context, the question has been asked whether the course adopted by the state in  blasting houses of suspected terrorist sympathisers without the least due process is the right course to follow.

Should this be construed as a policy of collective punishment, it is hardly to be expected that Kashmiris – already bruised by the revocation of their cherished special status and the humiliating diminution to a union territory, the first and only time that has happened in independent India – are likely to sustain the conviction that they have for the first time expressed without let or hindrance.

There are wisecracks who argue that Kashmiri Muslims are now strident against Pak-sponsored terror only because they fear losing the bounty that tourists bring.

This cynical view must be discarded with force if the positive fallout of the tragedy in Pahalgam is to be sensibly garnered to good national purpose.

Moreover, it may be asked if Kashmiri Muslims are the only people in the world who fear the erosion of their livelihoods?

And if they do, that only puts them in the company of some 70% of Americans who now, in polls, tremble at the thought of the recession that a mad man’s pet caprice is  likely to bring about.

Nowhere do allegiances shift more with the changes in livelihood prospects than among the elite who deride the hoi polloi for being so canny.

Returning to the noble admonition uttered by  Himanshi, let ruling spokespersons in high places now be heard to echo what she has said; for, until the sentiment she has expressed also becomes state policy, we may not expect anything lasting to come from the carnage in Pahalgam.

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