The map can never be the territory.

-- Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map

In August 2008, fruit growers of the Kashmir Valley in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir declared that they were going to cross the "Line of Control" (LOC) to sell their produce in Muzaffarabad, a city located in "Azad Kashmir," or that part of the valley currently under Pakistani administrative control. Their action was in protest against a reported economic blockade of the highway connecting the Kashmir Valley to the Indian plains -- currently the only available road route for the sanctioned movement of goods and people between the valley and India. The blockade was attributed to agitators in the plains town of Jammu, which, like the valley, is part of the Indian state (federal unit) of Jammu and Kashmir. The agitators were protesting against the Indian government's retraction of a grant of a hundred acres of forested land to the trustees of the Amarnath Shrine, an important Hindu pilgrimage center in Jammu and Kashmir -- a retraction that was itself triggered by earlier protests in the valley over the initial land transfer decision. This cascading chain of protests and counterprotests had scarcely caught the rest of India's attention, focused as it then was on issues ranging from a possible no-confidence vote against the central government over a nuclear deal with the United States to the opening of the Beijing Olympics. But the intended breach of the LOC grabbed all headlines, opening the nation's eyes to the gravity of the anti-Indian sentiments being voiced in the valley. After that, events moved at an unprecedented pace. The incident galvanized different facets of the Indian establishment to consider the meaning of these sentiments for the nation's claim on this disputed territory, even as the demand for aazadi (freedom) grew ever louder in the valley.

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