Hindustan ka dil dekho"  that's how Madhya Pradesh sells itself to the world. If this year's college admission drama is anything to go by, it needs to internalise that message and show some heart. Under pressure from the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the state's educational institutes are now stonily refusing to admit more Kashmiri students.

The "Kashmiri visthapit" quota was introduced by the NDA government in many states, and though it was never spelled out, it may have been intended to address displaced Kashmiri Pandits. However, if the idea is affirmative action for those displaced by violence from Kashmir, then that logic extends to all young Kashmiris deprived of comparable educational opportunities in their own state. And many universities had, indeed, interpreted the quota that way and opened their doors to all Kashmiris. But an agitated ABVP said this new surge of "anti-national elements" was corroding the institutions, and "spoiling the atmosphere in the hostels". Now, after sustained protests, universities are bending to their demands, in effect making it difficult for Kashmiri students to enter these spaces. Their applications are considered only after stringent police checks. An 80:20 ratio between students from the state and from elsewhere will be followed more strictly.

It is ironic that the Sangh Parivar nationalists who bang on about ending the Kashmir exception, who demand that the state be fully integrated into India, should be so resistant to it when it actually happens on Kashmiri terms. The challenge, rather, is to make that educational experience in the Indian mainstream and the idea of that India persuasive enough for this generation of young Kashmiris who have grown up in the shadow of insurgency, to defuse the anger and frustration. And college, especially, is a space where we encounter real difference and form our adult ideas. To close off the possibility of cultural mixing is to let go of the chance for young people in Kashmir and the rest of India to really learn something about each other rather than trading in dangerous cliches about separatists and hyper-nationalists.

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