T alking about normalcy in Kashmir can be as perilous as negotiating the minefields along the Line of Control (LoC). One false step, one incident mishandled can shatter months of carefully wrought calm in the Valley. What has gone largely unnoticed, however, is a story playing out in the interiors of the state, perhaps the best “good news” from this trouble-torn state in a long time: Indian militants who had gone to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to join the Kashmir movement during the last two decades have started trickling back to the Indian side, to lead normal, peaceful lives—quietly, fearfully, but very surely.

Just 9 km from the LoC, on the foothills of the Pir Panjal mountain range, in Kupwara district, is a small village called Batpora. In the early 1990s, hundreds of young men from Batpora and other neighbouring villages had taken a narrow mountain path to cross into PoK and join the ranks of militant organisations operating from camps there. Some had been lured by outfits like the Hizbul Mujahideen and the...