Srinagar, Aug. 4 -- There is a sound Kashmiri politics now makes with grim regularity: the press conference convened not to inform but to wound. In recent weeks, two of Jammu and Kashmir's mainstream parties have supplied a fresh instalment of this genre - accusation met with counter-accusation, statement answered by insult, until any trace of governance vanishes beneath the noise. Workers are mobilised not to persuade but to protest. Leaders speak not to the undecided but to humiliate the opposed. It would be comforting to call this ordinary political theatre. It is not. What is being staged here is something more corrosive, and an entire generation is being made to watch it.

Political scientists have a name for the thing being destroye...