Attacks on Kashmiri shawl sellers disrupt India internal trade

A wave of attacks on Kashmiri shawl sellers travelling across India is forcing a choice that sounds like a moral dilemma but behaves like an economic one: accept a rising “security tax” on commerce or exit the market.

In a detailed report, Al Jazeera follows itinerant traders from Kashmir who sell shawls and winter goods in distant Indian states, often by going door-to-door or setting up temporary stalls. Several describe being assaulted, threatened, or chased away in recent months, with violence frequently framed through identity politics: Kashmiri Muslims as outsiders in a polarised environment.

The immediate effect is visible in the traders’ adaptation strategies. Some return home early, forfeiting seasonal income. Others change routes, avoid certain neighbourhoods, travel in larger groups, or shift to safer but less profitable locations. A few explore online sales — a move that reduces physical risk but increases dependence on platforms, logistics firms, and digital payments, each with its own fees and gatekeepers.

The deeper story is institutional failure and rent creation. When the state cannot — or will not — enforce basic order impartially, private actors fill the gap. That can mean informal protection arrangements with local strongmen, payments to intermediaries who “guarantee” safe access to markets, or reliance on community networks that can mobilise quickly when trouble starts. In each case, the cost of doing business rises, but the revenue does not. The margin is transferred from productive trade to whoever can credibly threaten or prevent violence.

This is not “migration” in the welfare-state sense; it is internal labour mobility in a country where free movement is constitutional but not always practical. The sellers are effectively running a mobile micro-enterprise model: low capital, high labour, seasonal arbitrage between Kashmir’s production and India’s consumer demand. Their vulnerability comes from being transient. They lack local political representation, have limited access to police, and cannot easily litigate. That makes them ideal targets in an environment where intimidation is cheap and enforcement is selective.

The incentives for local authorities are perverse. Visible crackdowns on attackers can be politically costly if violence is tied to majoritarian sentiment. Under-enforcement, meanwhile, pushes the problem onto the victims, who self-insure by leaving, paying, or hiding. The result is a shadow regime of “order” that looks stable on paper — fewer complaints, fewer traders, fewer incidents — while the underlying market shrinks.

Over time, this kind of informal coercion acts like a tariff on interregional trade. It reduces competition, raises consumer prices, and concentrates retail in actors with local protection or political backing. The losers are not just Kashmiri sellers, but any small trader without the right identity, contacts, or scale.

Al Jazeera’s reporting makes clear that the question is not whether India’s state has laws against assault and intimidation — it does — but whether those laws are credibly enforced when identity conflict turns commerce into a target. When enforcement becomes discretionary, the market reorganises around fear, and the “price” of public order is paid privately, in cash and broken routes.