What happened in Pahalgam wasn’t just an attack. It was an assault on our collective spirit. Just as Shiva wandered the earth with Sati’s lifeless form and wherever her body fell became a site of divine power, today this land too has been consecrated not by choice but by the innocent blood that now lives within its soil.
Baisaran, once a name whispered with awe for its beauty is no longer just a meadow for tourists. It is now a silent witness to unspeakable sorrow. The ground here is no longer just earth. It holds in it the echoes of prayers never completed, laughter that was stilled too soon, dreams that will now never be lived.
Twenty-eight of our own, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, taken without reason, without mercy. Their lives, snatched in a moment, have left behind a silence so loud it shakes something deep inside us.
Their pain doesn’t belong to their families alone. It belongs to all of us. Their blood has stirred something fierce and sacred—like the fire that once consumed Shiva’s grief. And from that fire must come not just mourning, but meaning. Not just tears, but a promise.
We may have forgotten Wandhama and Chattisinghpora massacres, because the victims were local minorities, but Pahalgam is different, it has stirred the entire nation. This is not just mourning; it is awakening. A call to rise, to rebel, to resist every force that seeks to fracture Bharat’s unity.
Let us give this place a name that does justice to what it now represents—Bhasmasaran. Bhasma, the sacred ash, born of sacrifice and Saran, once a haven, now a sanctum of memory.
Let this name remind us every time we speak it, that this land has been marked not by defeat but by the courage of those who didn’t choose martyrdom but embraced it unknowingly, with trust in their hearts.
Let every Amarnath Yatri pause here, not just to bow to the divine in the heavens, but to honor the divine that now rests in this soil, in those who became immortal through their sacrifice.
My appeal to Hon Prime Minister (Sh Narendra Modi) is to declare Bhasmasaran as a National Memorial Site and Transform the valley of Bhasmasaran into a National Martyrs’ Memorial.
Also create a pilgrimage circuit that starts here before the Amarnath Yatra as a tribute. Install plaques with names and stories of the victims, to preserve memory and deepen national resolve.
Bhasmasaran will not fade into memory. It will live on. It will be honored. And one day, justice will speak from its silence.
(The Author is OSD to CM Haryana)
