ANANTNAG, Jammu and Kashmir, India—The Facebook status updates of people living in the Kashmir Valley are a lot like those posted anywhere else in the world. There are birthday wishes and engagement announcements, and photos of weddings and newborn children, all followed by seemingly endless strings of comments from well-wishers.
The content can also skew toward the political, but the stakes are much higher than they tend to be for typical political debates on a Facebook feed. This is because of the decades-old military campaign waged by those seeking independence from Indian rule.
Listen to Hilal Mir discuss this article on WPR’s Trend Lines Podcast. His audio starts at 23:50.