“You wake up to witness the propaganda. It’s an everyday humiliation,” says a bulky Kashmiri man, his wife, wearing salwar kameez and gold jewellery, next to him. She is a teacher at a government college. “When they forced me to sing the national anthem, I felt I was being raped.” The husband emphasises that “she is not at all political and yet she couldn’t bear the state’s brutal force”. The sentiment of humiliation was more visible during my last visit in November-December 2019. It then seemed that the valley might erupt anytime soon. The sentiment seems to have invisibilised now. Army officers note that violence has come down, infiltration drastically declined and tourists are back, with over 72 lakh footfalls since last September. The number of militants is below 200 for the first time. Of the 128 youth who joined militancy last year, 73 were killed and 16 arrested. There are multiple reasons for the reduction in violence—greater coordination among security forces, the transformation of the J&K police into a first-rate anti-militancy unit, crackdown on separatists and dissenters, enhanced military capacity and an intense security grid. “Above all,” many people add, “Pakistan is silent these days.”