Srinagar, Aug. 11 -- By Farooq Ahmad Khan

A Kashmiri stepping into a courtroom once removed his cap and replaced it with something more solemn: a handkerchief laid over his head before he addressed even a roadside traffic magistrate.

Nobody wrote this custom into law, and judges never demanded it, but the gesture survived because ordinary people believed the courtroom was the one place where wealth and rank counted for nothing, where a farmer and a minister stood on identical ground before the bench.

Older Kashmiris still describe it, and the memory says something important about what courts once meant to people who had almost nothing else standing between them and power.

An old Kashmiri proverb captures the same instinct: "Kraye khou...