Soon enough the design slipped from the shawls into other garments as an embroidery or a print – the paisley had become a rage. Demand outstripped supply and mills in England and Scotland began to copy the design so that demand could be met – they could not, though, get the extremely fine wool from Kashmir, so the design was applied on all kinds of fabrics including silks and cottons. So popular did the manufacture become in one town in Scotland that it even the design and the name of the town merged into one - Paisley.

After falling a bit out of fashion in the late 19th century, the paisley or buta was back in fashion by the 20th – appearing everywhere, including on the clothing of The Beatles, and continues even today. It is just that almost no one connects this story to Kashmir.

But this is not the only story of Kashmir that has gone barely noticed.

About five years ago, at a particularly desultory meeting of Fortune India, we had a eureka moment. There was a bank which was part of the Fortune India 500 India list – or the 500 biggest, most important companies in India, the backbone of the Indian economy so to speak – and no one seemed to know much about it.

This was a bank called the Jammu and Kashmir Bank. It is one of India’s best-run banks of its size and is consistently profitable. It is owned by the government and wholly managed by locals. Local Kashmiris who work for the bank have regularly risked their lives to beat terrorism – including an attack that burnt down one of its main centres, and deliver services, including desperately-needed money, to their customers. Not only the bank, but the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute has been attacked by terrorists – it is worth considering with care why every positive development in Kashmir is murderously attacked.

A few days ago, Shamika Ravi, who is director of research at Brookings India and serves on the Prime Minister’s economic advisory council, tweeted out a set of four charts from the apex Reserve Bank of India which show that Kashmir receives more development spend per capita than the rest of India and has far better health infrastructure than the rest of India.

Jammu and Kashmir Bank

Reimagining Kashmir

Kashmir's hero