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In August, the Indian government injected a new note of uncertainty by stripping away statehood from Jammu and Kashmir State, which includes the restive Kashmir Valley. It announced that the territory would be cut in half and turned into two federally controlled territories, a change that Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said would bring peace and prosperity.

But it was clear that the shift would be highly unpopular, and in the hours before India announced the move, the Indian authorities shut off phone and internet service in Kashmir. The authorities also rounded up most of Kashmir’s political leadership, and many remain in jail without having been charged.

On Monday, the Indian government switched cellphone service back on for much of the Kashmir Valley, though the internet remains off. For the first time in more than two months, many Kashmiris were able to call loved ones — or an ambulance, if they needed it. Doctors have said that as a result of the weekslong communication blackout, at least a dozen people died needlessly.

Some Kashmiris are determined to return to their normal routines, and there was even a traffic jam in downtown Srinagar, the valley’s biggest city, on Tuesday morning.

But separatist militants are determined to disrupt any resumption of normalcy and maintain the resistance. There are only a few hundred militants in the Kashmir Valley, members of various outlawed groups who are poorly trained and lightly armed compared with the Indian forces they are fighting.

Still, they have managed to keep much of the population in check through fear. The militants have hung posters and passed threats person to person, ordering the population to stay off the streets, or else.

In August, militants fatally shot a shopkeeper in Srinagar who had opened his shop for a few hours. Other shopkeepers shut their gates after that.