It’s apple season in Kashmir, but in orchards across the fertile Himalayan valley, unpicked fruit rots on the branches. Markets lack their usual bustle, most shops are open for only a few hours each morning, and schools and colleges are largely empty of students.

The slowdown reflects both the firm grip of the Indian government on the Muslim-majority state, and the seemingly spontaneous reaction of the Kashmiri people to it. A tweet posted on the account of Mehbooba Mufti, the state’s former Chief Minister who has been detained for more than two months, read: “Kashmiris have been resolute about a civil curfew as a mark of protest.”

It was Aug. 5 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government said it would scrap the semi-autonomous status that the state of Jammu and Kashmir had held under India’s constitution for seven decades. For the next 72 days, the Kashmir Valley and parts of Jammu endured a communications blackout, with landlines, cell phones and the Internet s..