Srinagar, Sept. 18 -- By Farooq Ahmad Khan

A speech in Jerusalem, a war in the Gulf, and a sermon in Srinagar do not, on their face, belong to the same story.

Politics rarely publicises itself so plainly. It moves through sequence instead: a phrase spoken on one continent that finds an echo months later on another, a diplomatic guest list that includes a name nobody expected, a cleric who begins quoting the same Prime Minister who once placed him under house confinement.

Read separately, these events explain themselves easily. Read together, they raise a harder question about whether something is forming beneath the surface of Kashmir's frozen politics.

Start with the speech.

Addressing the Knesset, Narendra Modi told Israel's parlia...