kashmirpostoffice

Death of a Cleric

2011-04-09T22:59:00.001-07:00

IN a small lane inside Maisuma, hundreds of people walked over glass smithereens to the mosque’s back entrance. It was a Friday afternoon and almost as many people would walk the narrow alley to pray at Kashmir’s oldest Ahl e Hadith mosque every Friday. Today though, everyone stopped just at the entrance, jostling for a look at a skeleton of a bicycle and broken tinted glass scattered around. It wasn’t enough to tell what had happened here. At 12.15 in the noon, President of Jamiat e Ahl e Hadith and a well known Islamic scholar, Moulvi Showkat Ahmad Shah, was assassinated by an IED blast planted in a bag on the ripped apart bicycle. It was a low intensity bomb intended to kill Shah alone but with his death, the blast resounded across political landscapes quiet far from this Maisuma neighborhood.

Moulvi Showkat was a moderate man heading the Jamiat e Ahl Hadith, the Salafi order of Islam, in Kashmir for the seventh year in his third term as President. Showkat lead the prayers every Friday at the Maisuma Ahl e Hadith mosque and always used the back entrance and yesterday, leaving behind his mother, nephew and two security guards in the car, he walked a few paces towards the mosque but death was lurking just outside the small mosque door. “His one foot was in the mosque when the blast happened and I don’t remember clearly after that. He was lying there in blood,” says Yasmeena, who watched the blast from her window.

Showkat’s Khutba (sermon) for the week on Prophet’s humility remained unread in his pocket and a friend carried his broken glasses and cell phone around. He was rushed to the hospital immediately but the doctors declared him dead and then was immediately brought back to Maisuma, to his mosque, his office and the stronghold of his friend and ally Yasin Malik, the JKLF chief.

Showkat was killed few lanes away from Yasin’s home and Yasin later walked the lanes like a hurt man, too distraught to mourn the death of a friend. Every Eid, Yasin prayed behind Showkat in the TRC Ground and during the Lal Chowk rally last Eid, Yasin and Showkat stood next to each other trying to control the crowds. Now Yasin, surrounded by many people, looked a little lonely.

It did not take long for the news to reach the JAH district headquarters all across the valley and the lanes in Maisuma, already full with people, began swelling with more people entering to look at Showkat’s dead body, pay homage and join the slogans.

Tum kitne Showkat maro ge, har ghar se Showkat niklega (How many Showkats will you kill, every home give birth to a Showkat). “Hum kya chahtay- Azadi” (We want freedom). With the police and CRPF far away at the opening of the lane, waiting quietly of nothing to happen, the angry slogans this time seemed to be addressed for somewhere else.

Moulvi Showkat headed JAH with its more than 15 lakh members in the valley. It is the only religious organization whose members are spread all around- in mainstream parties like Congress and BJP, in J-K Police, in Judiciary, in Bureaucracy and almost everywhere and that makes it quiet powerful. JAH has 814 mosques in Kashmir (1200 in J-K) spread all over the districts which gives them a huge presence and an immense power to organize people and events. The Ahlihadith school of thought is highly puritanical in its religious approach and draws its influence from the Wahabi movement started inSaudi Arabia by a Muslim theologian, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century. Kashmir’s Ahlihadith movement began in south Kashmir's Shopian district 150 years ago and its most prominent leader was Maulana Anwar Shopiyani, a poet and a religious preacher.

Moulvi Showkat belonged to a Ahl e HAdith family and his uncle, Maulana Noor u din, was a renowned Ahl Hadith preacher of the valley. Showkat had almost always been a member of the organization- as a student as a trader selling shawls in Kolkata, where he was known for his honesty. In 2004, he was elected as the JAH president for the first time. For his contributions, Showkat was elected president thrice, the last time in 2010.

Showkat was the first Jamiat Chief who did not remain confined to religion only and was political, talking about political issues and taking political stances. Before he took over as Jamiat Chief, the organization refrained from open politics, concentrating only on propogating the Salafi order. Showkat not only was openly seen as separatist but also supported secular politics and freedom for Kashmir and was against the religion based merger of Kashmir to Pakistan. Showkat was a close and key ally of pro independence leader Yasin Malik. He was arrested several times for his association with JKLF. In 2008 he was arrested and was lodged in jail after authorities booked him under PSA. Many people within JAH thought that he was not doing right by using his post for political ideology but he seemed not to care.

Showkat was seen by many as a ‘Sufi’ heading a Salafi group, unmindful of differences and working towards peace and unity. He was seen as a non sectarian religious leader mourning with Shias during Muharram and always making efforts to unite the Kashmiri Muslims.

When Yasin and Mirwaiz addressed the mourners, it was the first time that on the funeral of an assassinated separatist leader in Kashmir, India was not mentioned. Instead, both Mirwaiz Umar and Yasin Malik, talked about the killer’s right no more to call himself a Muslim and called the act an attack on unity and Kashmir’s freedom movement.

“We would not remain silent. Shah Sahab has always worked for the unity of sectarian and political unity. Since 1990 there have been conspiracies hatched against Kashmiris,” Mirwaiz told the gatherings. “There have been deliberate attempts to deprive our nation of intellectuals, doctors and professors. There is a conspiracy to render the movement leaderless,” Mirwaiz sid in his address to people.

Yasin pledged in front of the people that he will not be silent and unveil the killers. “His death has broken our back and Kashmiri people will not remain silent spectators to the killing.” “Anyone who kills a scholar on the doorsteps of a mosque, can he call himself a Muslim? This is cowardice. This is savagery. Is this type of an act allowed by Islam even if you are doing Jihad,” Malik said in his emotional speech on the funeral. The finger pointed the other way straight. Showkat was a controversial figure esp. after he denounced stone throwing and cited Quranic references to justify his stand. Other religious leaders accused him of quoting Quran out of context and, some even accused him of speaking for the Government. Shah was seen close to certain quarters in the government. There were internal factions in Jamiat and strong frictions too. But most of all, it was slogan of Azadi that was not liked by many people and not certainly by those who saw a strong religious organization not speaking for Pakistan as detrimental to their interests.

“Pakistan killed him. They got him killed. No one else did,” said a close friend of Showkat, who knew him for years and stood by him each time he was attacked. Twice, he had been lucky to surive- first in 2007 when his car was targeted with bullets near Barbar Shah and then in 2008 when a grenade was hurled at his house. This time, Moulvi Showkat fell to a meticulous planning that seems to have been well recced to have minimum damage but eliminate the target.

Showkat preached a middle ground and was not connected with Lashkar, whose every cadre is from Salafi order. And as Showkat preached Islam and advocated freedom for Kashmir, he, in a way, went away from religion based politics and in a way not subscribing to the two nation theory.

Showkat was known for his philanthropic work and vision. He established a diagnostic centre that worked on no profit- no loss basis and was working hard to get a Trans-World Muslim Universityapproved from the government. Under his leadership, the JAH had set up a University and several High schools and Higher Secondary schools. After Showkat’s death, Condemnations rushed from all around- from CM Omar Abdullah to LeT. Yasin, Mirwaiz, and Syed Ali Geelani all called for a strike.

The new President of JAH, Ghulam Rasool Malik, is said be a man who thinks on similar political lines as Moulvi Showkat and he takes over at an acutely tense time. Showkat’s assassination by an IED outside a mosque before Friday prayers might not have an immediate reaction in Kashmir but it will, in long term, mark a shift in the very dynamics of politics in Kashmir.

A Book Reading

2011-04-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Who does a novel belong to? To the writer, who labors over it in loneliness? Or, to the reader who comes to it with his own world? Can a novel belong to an nation that has stammered and lisped its agonies for decades and finds the novel’s murderous landscape as its very own? It seemed so at Kashmir’s first book launch and reading when Mirza Waheed read passages from his novel, The Collaborator. It was as if the novel belonged to everyone who had come there.

On a cold afternoon in Srinagar, Mirza’s measured voice floated in the silent hall packed with people as he recited the first chapter of his novel. For Mirza, it was an emotional day. “I had told my publisher that whatever you do for promotion of the book, I will do the novel’s maiden reading at home.” It was the reading at home and the lines between fiction and non-fiction blurred completely. Mirza might have conjured up the characters for his debut novel far away ‘in a Kashmiri corner of his London home’ but in Kashmir, his character’s were more than real. People greeted the passages with silence, tears and laughter. The listeners had lived what Mirza had written and almost everyone knew what he was talking about. They walked through the luminous liquid blue corridors conspired by the mountains in Waheed’s novel and stumbled over the elaborate litter of dead boys. Some of the people listening might have even known some of the dead.

That is why at a certain point during the reading, most of the people had their heads down and many were wiping off their tears. The boys that had been lost in the forgetful nooks of memory came alive as ghosts in the room when Mirza described the dead bodies at LOC. All Kashmiris have seen dead bodies, some only parts. A retired engineer sitting in the back row stood up sobbing and urged Mirza to stop. “Please, please, we can’t take it anymore. We can all read it individually, but it is too poignant for collective reading,” he said in a sobbing voice. But Mirza, after apologizing to the old man, finished the passage and when he stopped, even the applause was shrouded in silence.

Mirza was introduced by fellow Kashmir author and journalist, Basharat Peer, who also moderated the Q & A session.Between the readings, Mirza said that as a child he had been delusional to think that he would one day write a novel and today his delusions had come true. But on a more serious note, Mirza suggested that it was the lack of a Kashmiri narrative between several contesting narratives that helped him write the novel. “People from outside used to come and tell us who we are. They used to analyze us and even tell us what we think. I have serious problems with that literature and couldn’t go beyond a few pages of Lawrence’s, “Valley of Kashmir” finding it outrageously racist,” Mirza said.

The mood in the room lifted with a passage in which the narrator describes a distinct crackdown in his village where the Governor, ‘the King of Curfew visits, himself’. “But an even bigger surprise had been kept for the last: the Minister of Sport, the man who had been replaced by the Governor as the ruler of Kashmir, walked at the back, his black Karakuli towering above everyone else. The burly politico walked like an awkward giant, his whopping cherubic cheeks shaking like meat hung from a butchers hook.” Mirza had yet to finish his sentence when the whole room burst into laughter, heads were thrown back and even a few arms went flailing up. For them, the Minister of Sport was more than a imaginary character and they loved Mirza’s fictitious description of the real.

Mirza, half smiling, went back to the beginning of his book to read out that the book was a work of fiction and all the characters were author’s imagination. “I have a son. And I don’t want to be seditioned (booked for sedition).”

For a moment, the room looked like Bakhtain’s Carnival- reputations tossed up and then down- and people laughing around a fire in cold room.

A High Valley

2011-04-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

A high valley

In a small houseboat on the Jehlum river in Srinagar, wafts of smoke float across a dimly lit room and Noori’s face glows brighter than the pale bulb hanging above. Her son always answers the knock on the window and Noori always sits in the same corner; the TV mumbles in the background and she always commands the visitors to turn to hers to have a better look of them.

“What do you want?” she asks in an unaffected tone, flicking the ash off her cigarette. Noori knows what brings people to her small unadorned houseboat; the sharp questioning is just part of her business.

Maal (Stuff). Tamouk (Tobacco). Phoul (Piece). The answers vary with the customers but they both know what she sells. Almost everyone around knows it too. Noori sells Charas (Hash); and for many years now, she has been in this room surrounded by polythene bags selling brown little stones in small packets.

“I don’t know you,” Noori says to a customer, opening her eyes a little wider. “Who are you?”

“I buy from you. There is nothing to worry,” the customer replies with a reassuring smile.

“Worry! What is there to worry about? I have been doing this all my life and there is nothing to worry. You shouldn’t talk like that,” Noori says, un-amused, her tone still unaffected, and her manner disconcerting.

For 300, she says. Noori doesn’t like to bargain, it irks her and also, she knows that her customers are usually desperate. Like people don’t bargain over medicine, addicts don’t bargain over their drug. They need it, it is written all over their face; and Noori with her big green eyes and 55 years behind her reads well.

Noori buys cheap in bulk. She buys for less than Rs 50 what she sells for Rs 300. The transportation is negligible and she receives about 3 customers a day. Business is good all through the year; even when protests and curfews stop life in Kashmir, she doesn’t do too badly, like pharmacists.

Untouched by the police, who sit in Kothibagh police station less than a kilometer away, Noori earns Rs 22000 a month, sitting at one place. People around Noori say that police get a cut off that money too, the price for being forgotten.

Like Noori, hundreds of charas sellers earn a quiet living in Kashmir right now and as the demand increases with more boys getting hooked on Charas, newer villages turn to these cash crops. And with an overwhelming demand for phuki from Punjab, South Kashmir, which has been home to hash and poppy cultivation in the valley, sees more people joining the trade and small dealers becoming big players. Encouraged by big money, lax police force and a negligible conviction rate under NDPS Act, more villages join the a high business blooms quietly in the valley.

In south Kashmir where Anantnag is the hub, Awantipora Tehsil is now growing as a big weed and poppy field. According to police, six villages have more than half of their population engaged in weed and poppy farming and as it reaps more profits than any other cultivation, people in the other villages are joining and the industry is getting bigger.

Kawini is a small village in Awantipora with vast empty fields and hundreds of families waiting for spring. Come spring and hundreds of thousands of weed plants will grow wild in the big fields and on the banks of several brooks of Jehlum that run through the village. And, a better quality will be grown in the gardens of the professional weed farmers as well.

“In a month from now, we will be busy harvesting Charas. Boys, men, women, all are there and we earn good money out of it. And it sells on day to day basis,” says Iqbal Yousuf, 22, a first year arts student.

Charas plants grow wild in the valley and harvesting isn’t hard. “It is a slow job in which the leaves are touched with hands and then rub together to collect the sticky dark cream on a paper. It is Attar, the best Charas, the cream.”

Attar (Scent) is soft, sticky, like a chewing gum and, it fetched Iqbal a lot of money last year. “A day’s work can fetch Rs 500. I and my brother harvested earned several thousand rupees,” he says. The other kind of charas is Garda (Dust). The fine damp powder made is placed in corn husk and then wound by a damp cloth making it look like sticks. “They are then put in the fire to prepare the Charas. It is easy,” he says.

The main income for Iqbal’s family, though, comes from poppy cultivation. His father’s poppy plants last season made more than two lakh rupees. “We don’t have much land and we would never make that much money with any other crop,” says Iqbal.

The poppy plants are like tulips, with their red and white heads waving in the spring breeze on entire strechs of land in Awantipora, Pulwama, Anantnag and other districts in South Kashmir. The plant gives both opium and phukki. With the police and Excise department in the valley talking about destruction of the poppy fields, the farmers have started to get more careful. “We now grow it in between other crops and spread it around,” says Iqbal. And also, police is just doing an eyewash, this thing wouldn’t happen unless they would let it be,” he adds.

Poppy has been grown in Kashmir for hundreds of years and used in the Unani medicine and its seed khashkhash is used in local bakery. “Permission is granted to people for growing poppy to use it for personal khashkhash use and also medicinal use but that is a small piece of land unlike what is happening,” says SP Awantipora, Irshad Ahmad.

For Iqbals family and others, it is good business also because they just have to collect the poppy heads and, the dealers take it on from there. The shadows of ‘dealers’ lingers over all these villages and as the business becomes more institutionalized, the dealers become more powerful. It is they who give the advance to the farmers and beat the gried heads into phukki and also transporting it to Punjab. The farmers last year sold a kilo of phuki for Rs 250 and the dealers for more than Rs 600.

“It is transported mostly in trucks with false roofs and false ceilings. Sometimes it gets caught, mostly it doesn’t,” says Ibrahim Ahmad, who was arrested for loading a phukki truck that was later caught on specific information. Ahmad was paid Rs 15000 for his job. “They had first put a layer of bajri (pebbles) in the truck and on that they had put several quintals of phukki and on top of that apples. All this was one to get the weight of the truck right so that no one would have any suspicion,” says Ahmad. IN the last year, Awantipora police has seized about 40 quintals of phukki and four kilos of charas. It is just the tip of the iceberg, not even the tip.

The biggest dealer in the area, the villagers say, is Feroz Ahmad Parray of Charoosa village and, here he is known as Feroz Don. Feroz has never been brought to the police station even though they know that he is the kingpin. In my four years here, there has been no FIR against him, nor has he been called here ever,” says a constable at the Awantipora police station. Feroz, in his late 40’s, has become wealthy over the years and his cousins have also joined the trade. “They have now opened a cricket bat factory as the face for their illegal money,” says Ahmad.

Police says that they can’t do much because everyone arrested under NDPS manages to get bail here. “The police is not doing enough to stop it and the judiciary is undoing whatever little the police is doing. The Excise department doesn’t do much at all,” says a police official from South Kashmir. “If we destroy 10 acres of poppy land, we leave 90 there. That is the way it is happening,” he says.

Officials from the Excise department say that police has a strong nexus with the drug dealers. “Often we are left to wait alone for many hours for the police to arrive on a raid,” says an Excise officer.

But between the blames and the silence, the dealers are becoming bigger everyday and the business is blossoming in an institutionalized manner. And far away, in Srinagar’s only drug de-addiction center, the queues are getting longer and longer for admission into the 10- bed detox center where teenage boys, middle aged men and old people try to get over their addiction. Doctors say that they begin with cannabis and reach multiple drugs. Like Asif Shafi, a 17 year old boy from Ganderbal, who was born two months before his police constable father was killed in an encounter and who smoked his first joint of weed and gobbled his first strip of sp at 12 on the same day when his mother remarried. There are many stories like Asif’s walking on streets in Kashmir and it is much easier and for the J-K police to blanket protestors and young boys in valley as addicts than close down Noori’s business or Feroz’s Don’s freedom.

A Killer on Loose

2011-04-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

Last month when an Indian transport company owner was arrested in Fresno in California for beating his wife, a few old pages of loss and injustice ruffled in Kashmir. The accused, Avtar Singh, was charged with domestic violence in US after his wife testified against him but in Kashmir, several families had been waiting for many years for him to face trial in the murders of their sons, husbands and brothers. Singh was an officer of the Indian Army and is on the Interpol’s wanted list, accused of murder in Kashmir but like several times in the past, the Indian government did not make any serious attempt to extradite Singh.

With a Special Investigation Team (SIT) report indicting him of murder of a Kashmiri Human Rights Activist and a High court appearance order waiting against him in Srinagar, Singh managed to escape the bodies of justice by evading trial and fleeing to Canada and then US with, what people in Kashmir believe, the support of Army and MHA. Singh is also accused of exterminating all the evidences of Human Rights Activist’s murder.

Avtar Singh was a Major in Unit 35 of Rashtriya Rifles and posted in Srinagar in 1990’s where he was then known as ‘Bulbul’. Journalists who reported then knew him as a ‘tyrant’ and ‘a man drunk with power’. Singh was involved in counter-insurgency operations and posted in Rawalpora.

But in the spring of 1996, Singh, is believed to have tortured and murdered Jaleel Andrabi, a Human Rights activist. Andrabi, a lawyer, headed a group called Kashmir Jurists Group. In 1995, Andrabi had spoken at the UN Human rights Commission and was going to speak out again. It was 1996 and the word ‘Human rights’ was not liked much by Army, who either came down on irksome things themselves or asked the Ikhwanis, former militants who later switched sides and worked under the aegis of Indian Army. Together, they ruled Kashmir then and Andrabi, with his Human Rights talk, had made powerful enemies.

One evening in March, when Andrabi, 42, and his wife, Riffat, were returning home, their white Maruti car was intercepted by some Armymen and Ikhwanis. In February that year, Andrabi had been suspicious that his life was in danger and even took pictures of gunmen in civvies watching over his house. That evening on March 8, Andrabi was dragged out of the car and Riffat left behind who followed them in an auto only to see them speed away.

Riffat and Andrabi’s brother, Arshid, contacted the police who assured them that they would find him soon. A case of disappearance was registered six days later on March 14 under the directions of the high court and on March 18, a Special Investigation Team, heahed by an IPS officer, IK Misra, the then Srinagar Police chief, was formed under the order of the high court.

On March 27, Jalil Andrabi dead body was recovered from Jehlum river near Rajbagh. Andrabi’s body was in a burlap bag and his hands were tied behind him with a tent pitching rope and a stone had been tied to his body. He had been shot in the head and his eyes had been gouged out. There were visible marks of torture on his body and he been dead for a week at least.

After the body was found, there were massive demonstrations in valley and the SIT worked faster. They recovered the pictures Andrabi had taken of the gunmen roaming around his home but could not locate any of them. They then looked for Sikandar Ganai, another counter insurgent, who Arshid said, was following his brother.

On April 5, Police recovered five dead bodies on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, 5 kms from Pampore town. Four of them were surrendered militants and one of the dead bodies was identified as that of Sikander Ganaie, a surrendered militant who operated with 35 RR located in Budgam. Ganaie was the one SIT was looking for and his murder took out a link from solving the case. It then came out that the other dead counterinsurgents too lived in the campus of 35 RR Budgam. People who saw the bodies then said that the hands of the dead people were tied with pieces of rope.

Ganaie’s wife told police that she suspected Major Avtar Singh and another Ikhwani, Mohammad Ashraf Khan, of killing her husband. After great effort, the SIT managed to find Ashraf Khan. According to the SIT report, during interrogation, Ashraf Khan revealed that Major Avtar Singh along with Sikandar brought a person wearing coat, pants and tie into the camp. “Six persons namely Sultan, Balbir Singh, Doctor Vaid, Mushtaq and Hyder were also present there. Heated exchange of words (arguments) took place between Avtar Singh and apprehended person which irritated Avtar Singh and others. He was beaten and confined in a room,” the SIT report said. Ashraf said that after that, Avtar Singh came out in the lawn and asked him if he knew the person confined in the room and when he replied in negative, Major Avtar Singh told him that he is a leading advocate namely Jaleel Indrabi who propagates against army and assists militants and that is why he has been apprehended. “Because a person who maligns army and helped militants will not be forgiven. We will eliminate him,” Ashraf recounted Avtar Singh’s words to police. “On the same day during evening hours he heard hue and cry from the same room where Jalil Indrabi was kept. Thereafter, he saw army personnel loading a gunny bag in an army truck and left the camp. He found Avtar Singh in a demoralize state who told him that he had committed a mistake by killing Jalil Indrabi,” the report says.

Colonel B.S. Pundir, CO of 103 Battalion under whom Avtar Singh was serving told the SIT that in 1996, Singh was posted as Coy Commander D-Coy at Rawalpora, Srinagar carrying out anti terrorist operations. When Major Avtar Singh was questioned regarding the abduction and killing of Jalil Indrabi, he said that he had nothing to do with it and accused police of not investigating the case judiciously.

Singh then left Kashmir first for Punjab, and then fled India in 2005. He was first traced to Canada and later migrated to US where he ran a trucking business in Selma, Fresno County in California.

In 2006, the Jammu and Kashmir government has sought extradition of the alleged killer Major but the process never reached anywhere.

Jaleel Andrabi’s wife and brother have been waiting for the last 15 years for Singh to stand trial and Sikandar Ganie’s wife had to be put in a sanatorium in Rohtak when she couldn’t understand where her husband was killed by people he was working with. Four other counter insurgents whose pictures were taken by Andrabi disappeared for ever. Police officials who dealt with the case believed that Singh had exterminated all the people who could expose his role in the Andrabi murder. Only Ashraf survived and he has been in hiding for many years now expecting death for giving the statement incriminating Singh.

Andrabi’s family and other human right activists believe that Indian Army and Ministry of Home Affairs helped Singh flee India with a fake passport and also never tried for his extradition.

Now, with Amnesty International’s new statement urging India not to block way for Singh’s trial, it remains to be seen whether Singh will face trial for his all he stands accused of. Singh can refuse trial by a civil court and opt instead for trail by military court as he is protested by the AFSPA. But, it seems like a case of impunity beyond the AFSPA impunity where the serving officer of Indian Army is does not even face trial.

Maybe, once Singh comes within the domain of law, several more cases like that of Abdul Majid Shah re-surface. Shah’s body was found in the Jehlum river with a stone tied to him. Shah’s family believes that Singh hanged him to death for having a relationship with the younger sister of Singh’s then lover, who also became his wife for a while before he married another woman against whom he is charged of domestic abuse in US.

Children of conflict

2010-08-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

JUST as the bus took a turn on a narrow winding road to Patnitop, I woke up. I hadn’t been sleeping, but it felt like waking up. The first cold breeze, the mountains, the clouds and huge swathes of sky — I was on my way home. After 15 months in Delhi, this was my sixth visit home, the first by road. This time, I had come to find answers — what was it about Kashmir that made my life in Delhi miserable, each evening agonisingly long? Why did I wake up each morning joining together the faint traces of a Kashmiri dream? What was it about Kashmir that I missed the most?In Delhi, news from Kashmir is filtered, and when confirmed by reporter friends in the Valley, every incident seems bigger and more hurtful. The Shopian incident, the fake encounters in Machil, stone pelting, the firings on the crowds, and the dead; all freeze to icicles — cold and numb. Each evening we discuss Kashmir, or what is left of it.

The bus journey takes almost 18 hours, hundreds of treacherous curves, potential shooting stones and checkpoints to reach the Jawahar tunnel — a 2.5 km long stretch of darkness that is the world’s only connection to Kashmir. The darkness lasted for more than two minutes, and just when we made it out, everything seemed accentuated. The small white flowers were as distinct as the Kalashnikovs that lined the road. The huge writing on the sign boards was clear — ‘CRPF welcomes you to Kashmir’.

I was lucky I wasn’t shot, but the guy next to me had his intestines splattered on the road

I was home — the guns and the roses, the mountains and the convoys, the searches and parades, the waving paddy fields with soldiers standing still, almost like camouflaged scarecrows.Everytime I see soldiers, I remember life till now. When I was ten, my mother would dress me like a girl during crackdowns so that soldiers wouldn’t pick me up. On long afternoons, my friends and I would play the militants — hold cricket bats and tennis rackets like guns and shoot at each other, using plastic balls for grenades. I was 14 when I was first slapped for not carrying an identity card. I was 20 when soldiers made me walk barefoot on a hot July road for answering back. I almost got shot at 22 while covering the ‘Muzaffarbad chalo’ rally in 2008. I was lucky, but the guy next to me had his intestines splattered on the road.Just before the bus reached Srinagar, I realised that one thing I hadn’t seen in Delhi was concertina wires, and I missed them terribly. They are far more interesting than barbed wires. Once, late at night, my arm got trapped in them and it took two friends and four cuts to get out. Now, near Broadway cinema, were long stretches of concertina wires sprawled alongside the roads and I almost smiled. I looked at my arm and the marks were still there, like the memories.The next day, two boys were killed. I have been home for six days, and the city has been shut for four. Life is slow; the mornings, the afternoons, the evenings — all are distinct. In the two days the city opened, I went to the new Café Coffee Day. The lights were sparkling, the glass tables shining and the barbecues sizzling in the garden. It was all surreal — from the people to the menu. The return to Kashmir is a return to the surreal.The day after, two porters were killed by the army in Machil, and protestors clashed with soldiers half a kilometre from my home. The soldiers chased them in gypsies and the boys ran, warning us on the way to do the same. My Kashmiri friends and I ran at once, but our journalist friend from Delhi couldn’t understand immediately and took a moment to follow. We hid in a dark garden under a starry sky at a relative’s home. It was his first real feeling of fear, he said. And when I laughed loud, he begged me to shut up with his finger on his lips.

I laid down on the moist grass, looking up at the sky in silence. I knew what I had missed all along. I missed Kashmir — as it was, as it is.

Kashmiri youth aquitted after 14 years still not free.

2010-05-04T03:55:00.000-07:00

ZAHID RAFIQ

NEW DELHI , MAY 2

For Ravi Kazi, a lawyer in Delhi court, a bail application of his
client has become, by far, his most important case these days. Kazi, a
Kashmiri Pandit, represents Mirza Iftikhar Hussain, who was acquitted
in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar bombing case after 14 years of imprisonment,
for a fight which Iftikhar had while in prison. Since Iftikhar’s
aqquital on April 8, Kazi has been trying unsuccessfully to get the
bail; today was another failed attempt.

“What will I tell his sisters and mother today? They will think I am
not getting him out because I am a Kashmiri Pandit and am not helping
him,” Kazi says to SAR Geelani and another Kashmiri Muslim friend, who
were also waiting for Iftikhar’s bail. “The judge is on leave today.
Inshaallah, I will get him, free on May 4,” Kazi finally told one of
Iftikhar’s sisters on April 30, the last hearing date.

A bail application was made for Iftikhar in which the court of
Additional Sessions Judge, Nivedita Anil Sharma granted the bail in
the sum of Rs 15000 with one local surety in the same amount, a surety
bond of SAR Geelani, an Arabic lecturer at DU, was put before the
court but after enquiry, it was dismissed on default.

“I then got my friend, a senior editor of an Urdu magazine, to submit
the bail bond but the court rejected it on the ground that he has no
command over the accused’s conduct in Kashmir while himself sitting in
Delhi,” said Geelani. “How can we get a local surety in Delhi who has
command in Kashmir also,” Geelani said.

Then, another bail bond of Geelani was filed which the court sent for
enquiry and when the charge sheet was filed that the accused’s Kashmir
address was not written on the file. “We said that the address should
be confirmed from the prison authorities where the accused was for 14
years,” says Kazi. “But the court decided to send an IO physically
from here to Kashmir to confirm the address and when he has come today
after all confirmations, the judge is absent,” Kazi says.

“It never takes so long to get a bail in these cases and especially in
a case where the accused has been acquitted after 14 years. There was
no justification for adopting the procedure. It seems that it is
simply to delay his delay his release,” Kazi said.

In 2008, in Tihar (Jail No. 1), Iftikhar, while in 12 th year of his
under-trial imprisonment, had a fight with another inmate Satinder
Singh Pal alias Twinkle who was serving time under MCOCA. Iftikhar had
hurled a paper weight at Twinkle which hit his head and resulted in an
injury which two MLC termed as ‘simple’ injury. Iftikhar, too, had
been attacked by a ‘bladebaaz’ Mohd. Idrish, a friend of Twinlke,
before the incident, according to a submission by the prison
superintendent to Additional Sessions Judge SK Savaria, which he had
reported to the authorities.

Iftikhar, 25 at the time of his arrest, had rented a shop in Missouri
and police ad clamed the involved in the blast. Iftikhar, the least
visible charecter in the judgement, according to police, was arrested
at the New Delhi Railway station while on his way to Gorakhpur with
another co- accused Naushad, who was convicted in the case. Police
claimed to have recovered from Naushad a currency note of Rs two which
they claimed would be handed used by Iftikhar to recieve a payment of
Rs one lakh. The court after 14 years acquitted Iftikhar for want of
evidence saying the two rupees note was in no way different or
special than other notes.

For Iftikhar’s family, the court dates first give them hope and then
crash it, making Iftikhar’s absence more prominent than in the last 14
years. “Since he has been acquitted, our mother waits everyday for
him. It is hard to tell her that he wont come tomorrow as well. I hope
she sees him one of these days or she will die of longing,” says
Gulshan Mirza, Iftikhar’s sister.

And for Kazi, Iftikhar has become the litmus test. “This Pandit is
having some sort of a revenge, his mother will think if there are more
of these strange procedures on the next date,” Kazi whispers to
Geelani. “And their house isn’t far from where we used to live in
Kashmir ,” he ends.

Two Cars and a woman...

2009-11-14T05:19:00.000-08:00

In Mangolpuri in outer Delhi, this morning, a Scorpio first crossed over the road divider breaking the cement railings and then rammed into a still Bullet motorcycle throwing down 25-year-old Sanjeet Khatra on the road. The white Scorpio, with four people in it, then reversed back and accelerated to hit him again. It kept ramming into him till Khatra was bleeding and dead on the road. A minute later, Pawan Garg came running out of the drivers seat and stood beside Khatra’s damaged body. “I have won the battle,” he shouted in anger.

Pawan Garg, 30, was then beaten by the people, who were walking on the road and saw it all happen. His wife, sister-in laws, and father came out of the Scorpio when people started breaking it and kept crying on the pavement. “He was beaten for a long time and the car was broken too but then police van came and took him away,” says Vijender, a betel leaf seller on the same road. Khatra was rushed to Sanjay Gandhi hospital where he was declared brought dead. Garg, according to police, was also taken to a hospital by the Police Control Room van, where from he absconded later.

In Kiradi, few kilometres from the spot, houses of Khatra and Garg, separated by a lane, stand facing each other, their shadows merging. Garg's house is locked and surrounded by policemen, and Khatra’s are mourning. “He was my best friend, we went to school together, college together and shared everything. My friend is dead,” Savita, Khatra’s sister said. Khatra had applied for a teacher’s job recently after after doing a course in Primary Teacher Training from a college in Janakpuri.

The family says that they had no animosity with the Garg’s except that there had been a couple of arguments over parking space in the lane. “There was a fight last year in November between them over their cars and since then there has been nothing. I don’t know why it happened,” Khatra’s mother, Shankuntala said. “My son used to tell me that Pawan always gave him spiteful looks and I used to tell him not to look back at him.” Outside, in the lane, Khatra’s silver grey Alto is parked.

Police sources, however, say that it was Garg's wife, Parul, who lay at the heart of the animosity. “It seems that the two had illicit relations and Garg had come to know about it. It is a crime of passion and there of dozens of eye witnesses who saw it happen,” said DCP Outer Delhi, Atul Katiyar. Khatra’s mother says that her son had no relation with Garg's wife and the two families hadnt talked to each other in a long time. Khatra’s older brother, Sudhir, however, said that Garg had doubts about his brother’s relation with Parul. “He sometimes used to say that my brother has some relations with his wife and sometimes even said that he had relations with his children but I used to tell him that it was only in his head,” said Sudhir Khatra.

Garg and Parul had a son and a daughter and Garg owned a utensil shop just outside his house.

Parul has recorded her statement with the police and so have other members of the family. Police are looking for Garg, who absconded from the hospital. “We are looking for him but it is highly shameful that he could abscond from the hospital and the police had no idea,” Katiyar said. Police sation Mongolpuri had earlier registered a case of death due to rash and negligent driving but later changed it to murder.

----------ENDS---------

Sellling 10 rupees for 12- this is Old Delhi.

2009-06-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, JUNE 9

On the side-walks of the congested Chandni Chowk, the old curiosity shop is selling new glittering coins. Sitting on the pavement, Arun Aggarawal, 31, sells Indian money to Indians and is making profit out of it. And he is not alone; all the money changers and old coin sellers are onto this new business and it is thriving. The new ten and five rupee-coins from the RBI which haven’t yet been seen in the open are being sold in Chandni Chowk for Rs 12 and Rs 7 respectively as a dozen policemen book some illegal bike parkers just metres away.

The till-now-unseen ten rupee coins dated as 2006 and 2008 issued by RBI have not been circulated till now and when people see the shiny steel and copper coloured coin all along Chandni Chowk, they can’t resist buying it. “It is unique and I will show this coin to everyone because no one has seen it yet. It first thought it was a fake but now I know it is real but that doesn’t mean I will spend it,” says Vineet Bhardawaj, 24, an Employee in a MNC, moments after buying two coins worth Rs 20 for 24. “I know it sounds stupid but this is a collector’s item.”

The ten-rupee-coin has been minted in 2006 but not yet seen in the market. The 8 grams bi-metallic coin with Nickel- Copper on one side and ferrous steel on the other designed by National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad with the theme of Unity in Diversity is the black markets open heaven right now. When asked by The Newsline why the coins had not been circulated properly in the market, Raghu Raj, spokesperson of the RBI said he had no idea that this was happening and refused to comment .

Outside the Geeta studio in Chandni Chowk, a thickset man in his fifties squats besides two bowls full of these new coins perched on a small table. First, the coins attract few people and the people attract more people and soon the entrance to the studio is barred and curiosity shop is in bloom. The discoloured Victoria’s are pushed back, Lincoln’s semi hidden and even the rusted ones are discarded. It is the new coins which are attracting crowds.

“Which country’s coin is this”? asks a interested Waseem Ahmad while looking at the bowls. His hands fiddle with the coins and he finally picks up one. “India ke hain, kaheen aur nahi milenge. Sirf hamare paas hain. (These are Indian and you wont find them anywhere other than me).” Ahmad, 31, a software designer buys one.

“We have never done so much business as we have in the last 20 days. I must have sold 10,000 coins till now and I am selling,” says an equally busy Aggarwal.

Aggarawal buys the coins from an agent for Rs 10.50 in bulk and sells it for 12 in retail. “The person who sells me the coins is an RBI employee and now everyone has his own agents and we are earning good money,” says Aggarwal.

----- ENDS-----

son kills father: father nails him after death.

2009-06-25T08:22:00.001-07:00

ZAHID RAFIQ
NEW DELHI, JUNE 15

When Satish Prakash, 30, bludgeoned his reclusive father Raghubir Singh, 65, to death three days ago in Alipur area believing that his father had an extra-marital affair; he didn’t know that his father’s diary would help police to nail him out soon. In his small room, alongside perfume bottles, fairness creams, pornographic magazine, Singh maintained a diary recording everything that happened to him but there was no mention of any women. Alipur Police have arrested the son charged him with murder.

On June 13, police received a call from the Singh home saying that their father had been murdered and was lying dead in his room. When police came, they found blood splattered on the walls and dried up on the sheet. Sigh was lying dead on his bed with several injuries on his head, neck and ears.

Singh, a retired clerk with Comptroller and Auditor General’s office, lived his own home as a recluse. “His room had a separate entrance, and he cooked for himself even though his wife and family lived in the same house,” a police official said. “We came to know that he hardly ever talked to anyone in his family.”

The Singh family had a dispute over property among themselves and there were regular fights and quarrels before the night when Singh was finally murdered. Police often received calls from the family and usually from Singh himself who felt that his family wanted to kill him. “He called some days ago pleading us to come to his home because there was a quarrel. We went and he said that his family and he are at odds and they would kill him. We said that this is a family mater and what else could we do,” says the police official.

Some days later, Singh was murdered. Police found his well maintained diary, in which he had written who in his family were trying to kill him. “He thought that his son Satish Prakash might kill him but in the last entry in his diary, he was afraid of his grandson LIkesh, who he felt would kill him,” says police. When the police questioned the sons and other relatives, they say, they were already sure that someone among them had killed him. “His youngest son, Prakash, broke down soon and accepted that he along with his friend, Salim, had killed his father because he never cared for his mother and had an extramarital affair,” says Atul Katiyar, DCP Outer. Prakash and Salim convinced two more of their friends who entered into Singh’s room that night and covered his face with a pillow and bludgeoned him with a musli. Singh stopped resisting and breathing but his son didn’t stop till he was sure that his father was dead.

Police have registered a case of murder against the son and his friend Salim and are hunting for the other two accused.

IN his home, there is mourning for the son but none for the murdered father and in diaries, there is no hint of an extramarital affair but police believe that he might have skipped the part out.

------ENDS

Finally, the long novel of daryaganj ends in a sad way...

2009-06-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

ZAHID RAFIQ
NEW DELHI, JUNE 22

This Sunday, Daryaganj just wasn’t its usual self. There were no yellowed texts stacked against the walls, no literature scattered and littered on the pavements, no hawkers shouting names of authors and no book lovers pushing their way through the bookish pavements. Daryaganj just wasn’t its usual self this Sunday and it might not be the same way ever again. As Daryaganj police decides to bring down the instances of pick pocketing and traffic congestion and MCD distances itself from the issue, the 45-year-old-book market for which people come even from other states faces the brunt.

“Police can close the market anytime if there is a law and order problem because of it. It is 45 years old but if state has the permission for the market once, it can as well take it back,” says DCP Central Jaspal Singh. Singh did not know that his subordinates had closed the market on Sunday though.

The around one-kilometer stretch of Delhi, which is the book lovers ‘Perian spring’, does not have any official permission but the book hawkers had been allowed to sit there every Sunday for the last four decades. But now, the Daryaganj police decided that it would not allow the market to be there in its present shape because of the traffic jams and crimes like pick pocketing and teasing of women.

The police say that it is hard to manage the market on Sundays because of so much rush. The SHO of Daryaganj police station is on a leave and the Additional SHO closed the market saying he was short of staff. “It is not only the book sellers but the cloth sellers and others have also come there. There are regular jams and eve teasing and they have started to use even the road for their goods,” says Adnl SHO, Daryaganj, Madan Lal.

The customers, many of who buy books only from here, some collect books, some art, and some even plan their visits to Delhi in a way that they could buy books here on Sunday left without a whimper this Sunday. Customers asked each other on the pavements as there was not even a single hawker to ask and when they heard that police had cleared the market, it is an immediate heartbreak. “This was one place where we could buy books really cheap and those books which we cant find anywhere. How can the police just come and close this market? We have come from 20 kilometers just to buy books,” says Pradeep Sharma, an MBA student.

Infact, the police hadn’t even told the hawkers that they would not be allowed to sell books on Sunday. “We came out in the morning with our sacks and an hour later, police came over and asked us to empty the pavement as it was because of us that the crime rate was increasing,” says Subhash Aggarwal, President of the Sunday Daryaganj Book Bazaar Association. The book bazaar employs around 250 people who sell books there.

There have been questions on this market even in the past and the issue is currently subjudice. The MCD says that it has nothing to do with this market and police can do what ever it wants to if it is a law and order problem. “We are not even in the picture. This market has no documents and is illegal and it has been allowed to be there only on humanitarian grounds. The police surely can close it,” says MCD spokesperson Deep Mathur.

For the ignorant customers who might be planning to come next Sunday, and the hawkers who have a stockpile of books in Godown, the future is uncertain.

-----------ENDS-------------

2009-06-12T04:08:00.000-07:00

It rained here last afternoon after a long time. It wasnt the first time though, but strangely it felt so. I walked out and sat on the little ashy verandah with my feet against the rusted railing, and smoked. The sky turned grey, and the white Delhi summer light changed to those old kashmiri kerosene lamp lights. The cigarette felt hotter nnear my fingertips. I lit another.

The rain fell on the railing and broken drops flew over to me, wetting the cigatte. I dint mind. The leaves rustled and the sky gargled and for a moment i believed i was in Kashmir. A few girls walked by, and the wind blew, revealing a few already revealed legs, rumaginga few already rummaged thoughts and dammpning a few few already damped souls. I was in delhi, i remebered. And i remember Sohail's dilemna who was now standing by my side and talking about Kashmir too. His girlfriend left him, he told me one ight. "because she wanted to have sex," he said with a surprised look on his face. "You should have done that before her even asking for it," i replied shrugging my shoulders and sypathising with the girl.
How can you say this, zahid?
Why? What wrong did i say?
If you kill one man, you kill the whole humanity... If you fuck one woman, you fuck the whole humanity...
I spurted out my smoke and he laughed. We both did, for a long time afterwards.
"Wasnt i right?"
Of course, i said.
Now sohail was standing, his arms pressed against the railing, as if about to to do pushups. O yea, he has recently joined and gym. He loves it. Its unisex, and hez even made a few friends.

A night in the maternity hospital in Srinagar

2009-04-24T02:26:00.000-07:00

ZAHID RAFIQ
SRINAGAR, FEBRUARY 23

There is no crowd pushing forward to gate crash, no fake excuses by attendants to get inside, no obstinate denials by the security and no bribed entries later. The gates are flung open, men smoke on the porch and the benches. The dark moonless night has fallen and Lal Ded (LD) hospital, the valley’s biggest maternity hospital, is silent except for the dogs and few far away voices.

Pale light floats through the long corridors narrowed by people leaning against the walls, some sleeping on green, blue and red Styrofoam mats, and some chatting in whispers on the wooden benches. In the labour room on the first floor, women moan rhythmically in pain, calling their mothers and fathers as they would have called them once as children. The high pitched shrieks woven together with subtle moans float through the entire floor, and attendants pace uneasily through the corridor.

Saleema Jan, 62, squatting and leaning against the wall gently rocks herself, her palm covering her forehead as she mumbles a prayer. Her daughter Mehtab Bano is inside the labour room, crying out her name in an agonizing pitch. Saleema Jan is in pain outside.

“Adamas adam phatun, yehai che, gubra, qayaamat aasan (a human growing in a human and then separating: the pain, my son, is beyond words),” says Jan, the tips of her fore finger and thumb anxiously rubbing the corners of her dry lips, her tongue flickering out to wet the tiny fissures. “If my daughter sees that I am even weaker than her, she will loose all strength and can’t face this ordeal.”

Jan remembers the old days when she was afraid of going through the pain again after giving birth to two sons. But, the desire for a daughter made her bear all the agony again. “I used to be happy that I will have another child but then I would remember this moment when every muscle twitched in pain and my hands would shiver with the thought,” she says.

Twenty years ago, the rate of Caesarean deliveries was much less. Women would bear children without surgeries and sections. Jan delivered four babies, but never by a Caesarean section. “Back then, boad operation (major operation) caesareans were looked down upon and women who delivered after cesareans were thought of as lazy and weak,” she says. “But today most deliveries are by an operation in the theatre.”

According to a report published by a doctor in 2006, 85 percent of the deliveries in LD happen by caesareans. As per the WHO guidelines, not more than 15 percent of the total deliveries should happen by caesarean. The report cites “Adequate trial of labour not given to the pregnant women” as the main reason for the high cesarean rate in the hospital.

“If a woman gets a cesarean in her first delivery, it is almost sure that her second delivery will also come by a cesarean and the chances of a third child being born to the woman are negligible,” says a female gynecologist. The gynecologist says that women now demand cesareans because they do not want to go the pain. “I write on the medical records that the cesarean was demanded,” she says. She has herself had cesareans for her deliveries.

On the second floor, above the labour room, families wait on benches, and blankets. Cups of tea pass around. There are no shrieks, no moans here. Only faint sounds of occasional steps come from inside the Operation Theatre.

Fahmeeda Akhtar, 47, waits with a soft mink blanket on her lap. Her daughter is inside too, but under the knife undergoing a caesarean. “Vani gaeses bahaar haavun aemis shur sund (Now God should show her the blossoms of this child),” Fahmeeda says, her hands buried under the tiny mink blanket. Her son- in- law has gone out to buy a baby feeder and other things they would need in the post operative ward.

There is no waiting room for attendants to wait for their patients. It looks like a hostel corridor, young boys striking up old chats.

Outside the post-operative ward, Mohammad Shafi Dar, 29, removes his ankle-high fur shoes. He wears no socks. The skin of his toes is dead and white, and his feet smell. The woman sitting next to him pouts her lips and slides a couple of feet away. “I have removed my shoes after three days. My wife had some complicacy and I have not had a wink of sleep for the last four nights,” says Dar. Dar lives in Pulwama where government doctors denied treating her wife and he had to come here in the middle of the night three days ago. “They (government doctors) have started a nursing home near the hospital and they asked us to come there and pay 18000 rupees. They said they cannot do anything if we did not come to the nursing home.” Dar became father to a son this evening. Under creases of weariness and oil, his brown face lights up with the mention of his son. “Only women have the patience to undergo the childbirth. But, we have our own responsibilities and they are also painful too. I cannot share my wife’s pain, or I would have already done,” says Dar.

The bathrooms are stained and messy, and water trickles from the tap. The ceramic is yellowed and rusted: it should have been white once. Someone forgot to flush the commode.

Inside the wards, the lights are dimmed, and patients sleep on the beds- two on a bed. On some beds, husbands sleep with wives.
The floor is packed with the attendants, some sleeping with their lips agape, some hidden under the blankets looking like a sac, some snoring loudly and other irked by the grumbled noise. It is midnight and the warm corridors, by now, are covered with bodies of slumping old fathers, frail younger sisters, ageing mothers and anxious husbands- all sleeping on each other. It is warm, quiet and cozy.

The staircase back to the labour room is like an elevator to war zone- women holding their bellies up with both their hands, walking slowly, as if walking on water. A male nursing orderly carries around a pregnant woman in a wheel chair, her head thrust back, her teeth biting on her lower lip in pain, her hair open with slight traces of an old knot.

Two male orderlies walk in and out of the labour room, carrying in drugs, injections and other supplies. Mohammad Yousuf, 37, a male nursing orderly has been working in the labour room for five years. He doesn’t tell his friends that he works here- only his immediate family knows. “What should I tell I tell my friends that I work in labour room all day? They will make fun of me,” says Yousuf. Yousuf remembers the time when he first came to the labour room and he would carry the moans and agony with him to his home and his life outside. “Back then it was different but now I have seen so much. The moment I leave this room, I forget everything. I don’t even hear the shrieks anymore here. I have become used to it,” Yousuf says. “If I remember it, then, I won’t be able to do anything. If a woman remembers it, she will never give birth again.”

A young girl rushes out of the corridor, crying for her father. Inside, life is conceived of an agonizing ordeal. “Papa, sister gave birth to a boy,” she cries.

In the side corridor, Saleema Jan is still sitting, now on a blanket, chatting with two other mothers. They talk of old times, of village nurses and of their own pain, but with smiles. All of them are all grandmothers now.

--------ENDS-----

Better stones than bull

2009-04-10T02:04:00.000-07:00

COUNTERPOINT
Better stones than bull
Hilal Ahmad reacts to We the primitive (Write Hand) by Ajaz ul Haque

For quite some time now, I have noticed Ajaz ul Haque’s writing on stone pelting, and several other contentious issues concerning Kashmiri society, suffused with a sort of mawkish sentimentality. Typical of that behaviour is that you often sweep a whole world of ideas and arguments, sometimes bizarre and irrational, but mostly unrelated to the issue in debate, to make a point. His first column was titled, in a Swiftseque manner, as “Stone Age… All Jammu Kashmir Stone Pelters Association.” Its plebeian play on words, however, brought a smile on my gloomy face. Though he advocates no further debate on the issue, funnily, he had a second take on stone pelting in his latest column We talk stones as world scales new highs! We talk stones because our world has been reduced to stones. I reckon 80000 or more gravestones are a lot of stones when you count them one by one in all the graveyards scattered across the state, in the marshes of Wullar and rocky mountains of Doda? And which world has scaled heights? The world that reduces to rubble in a few years an ancient civilization in Iraq on a flimsy suspicion, and leaves half a million dead, innocent children among them? These heights are too subjective for a ‘queer’ issue of throwing stones in downtown Srinagar, or rustic landscape of Bomai. These heights are better are left to those who have scaled them.
But I would heed to the advice he dispensed in the crispy staccato sentences of the Write Hand. He says we should not debate stone pelting at all, for even the discussion on the subject seems medieval and absurd. According to him throwing stones means destruction. And only the insane are insane enough to summon destruction upon themselves willfully. Stop. I would agree and let history decide if it was to fair for a people to throw stones at someone they believed had snatched their rights. The star intellectual of the Left, Tariq Ali, once famously remarked `if you have an ugly oppression, don’t expect a beautiful resistance’. Ali was, perhaps, talking about equivalence, not proportionality. Otherwise, the proportion with which you deal with a very sly and ugly usurpation would bring out `baddest’, maddest, and ugliest resistance from a completely dispossessed and enervated nation. And that would be its justification.
However, I don’t want to touch the religious or ‘common sensical’ aspects of the act of hurling a stone at a trooper who doesn’t allow you more ‘civilized’ form of resistance, that is, a demonstration. But I want to take issues with reasoning arrived at by Haque to pulverize stone throwing, stone throwers, supporters of stone throwing, and the imagined goblins-- the guides of stone throwers.
Haque brings in the subject of medieval thinkers. History tells us medieval thinkers were brought up, educated, and later nourished by the kings and commons for the sole purpose of discussing practical as well as abstract matters, the lawfulness of donkey flesh for example. It was probably because practical endeavors were left to practical men in a society highly stratified. A British character in a very popular movie tells his soldier friend that a British soldier wouldn’t die for the queen in the sweltering plains of India if he were to think on worthiness of the queen’s, and his own, life. Also, the medieval thinkers would not worry their ‘lazy and unfruitful minds’ about the war tactics of the crusaders who according to some intellectuals of those times comprised the entire brigandage of Europe assembled by the Pope. In return, the ordinary crusaders wouldn’t mind “open ended” hair splitting debates of the scholastic thinkers, if they were aware of such debates in the first place. The thinkers and the crusaders were unanimous about the need for confronting their Islamic enemies. For thinkers it was none of their goddamn business to discuss whether it was civilized or savage, biblical or heathenish, for besieged crusaders to hurl thousand pound rocks or barrels of scalding fuel on the soldiers of Salahuddin’s. It was the natural thing to do.
Growth of societies is an evolutionary process. Free societies now discuss whether they should elect a lesbian to rule a nation or not. Colonial societies, like Kashmir, on the other hand discuss whether they should throw stones at their tormentors or not. People aware of their colonial stranglehold wouldn’t have discussed it, had not the policemen and enlightened men thrust this discussion upon them. Thus it seems natural in the present scheme of things that some boys throw stones. If they use Kalashnikovs, they are branded as terrorists. You see people are never short of labels. Savage is one more term in this enlightened vocabulary. Although I believe savages would take great offense at the mention of this word, as they have tasted the encounter with the civilized world, which ravaged their lands with a gun in one hand and the bible in the other. Once free, and later ‘scaling a few heights’ the Lassas and Gullas of Nowhatta might in future discuss some delicate issues, like if it was fair---in ethical, moral, ideal, or intellectual sense---for some people to moonwalk as journalists while serving the government institutions.
Often it happens that when you run out of arguments, you turn to personalities. Shall one be branded as a police collaborator if his/her ideas on stone throwing perfectly gel with those of the city police chief who presided over shooting of dozens of boys in Srinagar last summer, while his counterpart in Jammu didn’t touch even those who waved communal flags from army trucks and set ablaze Kashmiri drivers? I would say, never. Similarly, when some people are arguing in favor of stone throwing how come they become the invisible monsters who, according to Haque, are “inciting ignorant” boys and keeping them in a state of darkness. Please refer to your own sermon in last Sunday’s column on how a newspaper is sanctified space for a healthy debate. If someone from London wants to refute the pronouncement of a cleric, why should he be invited to Kashmir for throwing stones to prove his sincerity?
It is again being highly presumptuous to label the stone throwing boys as a monolithic bunch of ignorant, illiterate, and uneducated creatures. I first threw stones at police when I was a 13 year old schoolboy. Though my reading those days was limited to a few borrowed Enid Blyton volumes, I was nevertheless preparing for a serious education. And I knew why I was throwing stones. My friends who have “scaled heights” in different fields in different parts of the world tried this “savagery” quite often in their lives before leaving this land. They don’t regret it. They merely think another generation is doing what it deems right. And these stone throwing boys would age like me, like my friends, and do whatever they are destined to do, except, perhaps, becoming pen pushers like me.
Further, if you read the statements of the police, they seem “concerned” that a sizable number of these boys were college going students who had parked their bikes on roadsides and then indulged in Kani Jang. When a 10-year old girl was raped by a soldier in Badarpayeen, Handwara some years back, Kashmir University students threw stones when they were not allowed to march peacefully beyond the gates of the University. Perhaps, they thought it natural to do so then, rather than writing an article in a newspaper with book-addled brains.
According to Haque’s interesting logic, the arguments of people who favor stone pelting might carry weight if they actually do what they preach. Means, thankfully, there is some scope for the “savages” to enter the world of the civilized. But if we look hard enough in the real world, rather than from the prism of half-learned, intellectual twaddle, we might actually find quite a number of people who have taught by example. Sheikh Aziz was shot near Chahal simply for requesting police and the CRPF troopers to allow the peaceful marchers to proceed ahead. I, and several other journalists who sometimes venture out of closets, were witness to the incident. Shakeel Bakshi was beaten blue for leading peaceful demonstrations. Nayeem Ahmad Khan was beaten in custody for the similar reasons. Geelani, emaciated by surgeries, led the demonstrations, urging the boys to maintain “Islamic decorum.” Masarat Alam, also a stone thrower in his youth and educated in the finest school of the Valley, has been jailed for as many times under the draconinan PSA as the number of articles-sans-substance written against stone throwing. What about Jalil Andrabi who tried to seek justice for his fellow people in the judiciary of those very people who pumped several bullets in his handsome body, and then dumped him in a dirty marsh? Look hard. You won’t have to ‘scale highs’ to find people who taught by example, and still are. Besides, it is a proposition fraught with danger of embarrassment. If Shakeel Bakshi does throw stones now, would Haque follow the suit?

Dooru votes for Geelani- stays away from polls.

2009-01-08T01:07:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, DECEMBER 7

In Dooru village, there are no queues scaled outside the polling station, no buzz of the earlier phases is repeated. There are no election posters pasted on the walls, nor any banners hanging over the dusty streets. Men huddle outside shops, women gaze through windows and children run around with their faces flushed and eyes wet by the tear smoke only to see if someone today betrays ‘the sentiment’ or ‘the leader’ here. In this village in Sopore, where defiant Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani was born, no one even walked past the polling station today.

And at a time when Kashmir defied the separatist poll boycott, Dooru did not let down Geelani. “We don’t want any roads, any jobs or any benefits. We only want Freedom,” says Sayeed Naseer, a 36 year old businessman. “The occupational force always tries to lure the victim with these luxuries but we will not succumb to them and forget our slain brothers.”

Pitched battles were fought all through the day between security forces and people. Four persons had been injured in the tear smoke shelling and baton charge by the forces. Youngsters carried stones in their hands fuming with anger over the high voter turnout in the neighboring village Dangarpora- the native village of Congress candidate Abdul Rashid Dar who won the 2002 polls from here.

“They have betrayed our cause, our dead, and our graveyards but we will never forget what we have suffered” says Naseer.

Naseer surrounded a dozen men gets up from a shop pavement ridiculing the election process and speaks in support of the boycott. His accent is slightly familiar, his words somewhat heard. Bilal Hassan, an engineering student, talks about graveyards and independence, properly punctuating the sentence. Even he talks in the same way. In Geelani’s village every one talks like him, uses the same set of words he has used over the past two decades, and even the Quranic references are from the same pages. Here, Geelani is followed and revered in style and ideology but the people are quick to add that that they do not chase Geelani. “Geelani comes second, first comes the sentiment for Azaadi. We support boycott because we believe in Tehreek (movement)” says Hassan.

The 79 year old Hurriyat leader had once contested and won elections from Sopore before the armed rebellion started across the valley. But today, he is the fiercest opponent of elections are so are the people from his native village. “We will now only vote under United Nation (UN) observers, not till then. We will decide our future by siding with independence, not petty candidates,” says Abdul Rashid Rishi, a college student. “Why is India afraid to do that if it is so sure that Kashmiris want to be with it? Let us vote freely, and then see what we vote for”.

Inside the polling booth, the presiding officer looks bored. “No one came to vote, nor do we expect anyone,” says the official. Outside, the people were getting ready, forming small groups to attack the security forces from different sides.

The Apple Princess

2009-01-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, AUGUST 26

While apple festival blossoms in Himachal Pradesh today, Ghulam Rasool walks over the rotten apples littered all across his orchard in Baramulla. In the peak fruit season in Kashmir, the apple orchards are as deserted as the streets. Kashmir sees one of its most discouraging fruit seasons after the economic blockade and the subsequent strict curfews.

“I have lost most of my fruit and what is left is all rotting. The economic blockade has brought us to dust”, says Ghulam Rasool Bhat, president of fruit growers association, Kashmir. We don’t have any interest in out fruits anymore when we see the losses we have incurred. We have lost 60 percent of our fruit already”.

The fruit industry in Kashmir is one of the major sources of livelihood for Kashmiris. More than 30 lakh people in the valley are directly dependent on the industry and 10 lakh more are indirectly dependent on it. They include the drivers who carry the fruit or the workers who load and unload fruits.

Nazir Ahmad Bhat, a fruit truck driver is one of the many who have been hit the worst. Nazir had brought the truck on loan and most of it still remains unpaid. “Now, I will beg the bankers to remit me the interest. I earned nothing this season, not enough to support my family.” His three daughters all aged below 9 are sharing their fathers misery. “We have no money to buy food or to anything. We don’t know what to do now”.

His truck (JK05-9318) was attacked and damaged near Samba on way from Jammu. Even though Nazir has a little to live on, he is too afraid to go resume his job. “I fear going out and drive the fruit trucks. We can live on meager meals but my family doesn’t want me to be killed in Jammu”, says Nazir. “They pick up Kashmiri truck among 20 others and start bashing us. I dread the petrol bomb which is thrown at Kashmiri drivers”.

With the Kashmiri fruit rotting in the orchards, apples from Himachal Pradesh are fetching more money in the fruit market. “Earlier, Himachal apples would go at Rs 350 but now they are close to Rs 500 because Kashmiri apples are not in market. The Kashmiri fruit is nowhere around”, says Arjun Kumar, Commission agent in Delhi.

As ‘apple prince’ and ‘apple princess’ will be crowned in Himachal tomorrow, Nazir’s youngest daughter, Suman, sleeping next to the flaked green wall, cries for milk.

Limping through the protests, old women walk to Eidgah.

2009-01-08T01:00:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, AUGUST 12

After every slogan she utters a sigh. In the middle of a massive procession, Taja Begum slowly limps her way through the packed streets. The wrinkles on her face look deeper, the veins on her temples engorge with blood as she raises her fist in the air and shouts “we want freedom”. At 71, Taja with an ailing body has already walked six kilometers with the thousands of people. She too is one of the many thousands who defied curfew in Kashmir today.

“I am suffering with several ailments but no ailment can stop me today. I will walk till I fall down. And I will not fall down”, Taja says as another old woman holds her arm as she stumbles over one the numerous stones that the street is littered with.

Taja like hundreds of old women is a part of the procession on its way to Eidgah. People from all over Srinagar and neighboring towns were marching to join the funeral prayers and bury the Hurriyat leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz who was killed yesterday at Chehal village in police firing.

The women kept joining the protest at every neighborhood, every lane, and every by-lane. “I too like every Kashmiri have only one dream- freedom. We don’t believe in any Indian imposed curfew. We have shown that again today”, Noora Begum from Srinagar shouts amidst deafening slogans. Noora joined the procession at Shaheed Gunj coming out through a narrow alley with a dozen other women, most of them above 50.

With sticks in hand sometimes to lift up and most of the time to support their weak bodies, they keep muttering prayers for the safety of the people in the procession. “Enough Kashmiri blood has been spilled. We deserve freedom now. Help us”, says Rehat, another old lady, as she looks towards the smoke filled sky with her hand outstretched. Someone shouts a slogan and she joins in, her shrill voice and high pictch resonates around. A young boy holds her hand now. “My sons carried me on their shoulders when they felt I had exhausted my self. There are enough sons to carry me if my legs don’t support me”.

As the dead body of a boy killed in Hyderpora passes in an ambulance, Taja begins to hit her chest slowly and slogans turn into suppressed sobs. Through the wrinkles on her face, the tears find their way quickly. Noora consoles her, first wiping her own moist eyes.

As the procession reaches Safakadal, Taja has slumped into the back rows moving feebly. Noora is nowhere in the people.

With a green cloth tied around her head, the veins of her temples engorged and a stick in hand, an old woman from Safakadal makes her way into Eidgah. “No curfew can keep us in homes now”, she says with the stick cutting across the air.

Butt Clermont- A dream afloat on water...

2009-01-08T00:58:00.000-08:00

It is a dream afloat on water. It is a reality, writ on fringes of a dream.

On a secluded bank of the mesmerizing Dal Lake, these carved wooden palaces have been the most sought after tourist destination in Kashmir. In the lap of the Zabarwan hills, canopied by blue skies and overwhelming Chinars, the Butt Clermont house boats are arguably the most scintillating homes on water.

Only eight kilometers from the city center, Lal Chowk, Clermont nestles quietly in the Naseem Bagh- the garden of breezes. It has played host to some of the most famous people to have visited Kashmir in the last half of the century. From celebrities to politicians, almost everyone who came to Kashmir has come here.

The photos of the guests in the reception room seem to shrink me as I begin to recognize them. My eyes are flickering across the frames searching for that one photo. Instead, I find Joan Fontain, the famous Hollywood actress, smiling seductively. A little away Neil Armstrong stares with his moony eyes. I find American ex-Vice President Nelson Rockefeller standing besides Mr. Butt, the owner of the houseboat. And finally, I see him. George Harrison, the Beatle, hung on the wall.

The guest book reveals even more names imprinted in history- Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, Dilip Kumar and P.G Wodehouse, the humorist writer. The recent addition is Peter Jennings and Micheal Palin.

“All these people came to stay in our houseboat because of the service we provide. The way we care for the guests and give them attention is what they like” says Mr. G.N Butt. “We have been working hard to keep our guests comfortable ever since Clermont was established.

The history of houseboats in Kashmir dates back to the mid-19th century which was the peak of Indian Raj in the neighboring India. The maharaja of Kashmir submitted to British dominion, but insisted on one condition: that the occupiers and other non-natives refrain from setting up any fixed buildings in the state. The British agreed. And instead came up with mansions on water.

Butt Clermont was established in 1940 by a handicrafts businessman, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat. "My father was regularly going to Calcutta to sell handicrafts," says Ghulam Nabi Butt, Owner of Butt’s Clermont. "There he met a British couple working in a shipping company and they became good friends. One day they asked him if he can arrange a houseboat for them during their Kashmir visit and he agreed".

Bhat returned to Kashmir and set-up a houseboat at Naseem Bagh. For seven year, before the partition, the British couple, their friends and relatives were the regular visitors to the houseboat. "After partition they left Kashmir and didn’t return. But they transferred this property to our name." says Ghulam Nabi Butt. Since then it has been a favorite destination for tourists.

The Butt’s Clermont Group consists of five houseboats. Each houseboat has bedrooms with attached bathrooms, a living room and a dining room. One of them is a special honeymoon houseboat.

The boats are luxurious and aesthetic. Intricately carved cedar woodwork, magnificently stitched crewelwork on the curtains and tinted chandeliers set the rooms completely apart. The Kashmiri silk carpets grace the flooring.

Adding to the beauty of the houseboat is the touch of Kashmiri Cuisine. One can order from the entire range of Kashmiri delicacies. And the aroma of the famous Kashmiri Kehwa at the Clermont’s is something not to be missed. The cooks can even make foreign dishes with an equal skill.

Three shikaras, canopied longboats await the guests to take them into the vast expanses of the Dal Lake and the floating gardens. The butt Clermont’s unlike other houseboats on Dal Lake has a beautiful garden on one side. Besides playing soccer in evenings, the garden is famous for candlelit dinners and barbecue parties.

The 'God fearing Communist' of Kashmir politics.

2009-01-08T00:55:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, SEPTEMBER 30

While separatist leaders made yet another show of strength with tens of thousands of people assembling for special Eid prayers today, this festival brings no cheer to the families of the young protesters, who were killed in police firing during the recent ‘Azaadi’ groundswell.

Here is a sordid story of two Srinagar families, who lost their sons during the recent protests. Their kitchens have no whiff of spicy mutton, no smell of pastries which lingers across the homes of the valley today on Eid. There are no new dresses for children.

Tanveer Ahmad Handoo’s mother, Haseena is quite and there are no festivities in their home today. Handoo was killed in Police firing on August 14 near his mobile repair shop in Sekidafar locality of downtown city. Tanveer’s son, Musaib cries for new clothes rolling his body on the ground, banging his fists on his mother’s legs. “I will not wear the old clothes, buy me new ones”. Suraya, Tanveer’s widow is 26 and happiness has eluded them.

There is no source of income for her anymore. “His father used to buy new clothes for him every Eid. How will I explain to my son that there is no one left to buy anything for him”, says Suraya, Tanveer’s widow.

Shehzada cries as her daughter Nazima fiddles with the empty vessels which would be full of dishes every Eid. But this Eid, they have cooked nothing for Eid, not even rice. Sameer Ahmad Batloo, Shehzada’s son was killed in Police firing about hundred meters away from his home. “We were poor but my son would somehow manage bakery and mutton for Eid. We were happy in our poverty- what Eid now without our son,” says Shehzada. “He would buy clothes for me on Eid. He loved me and now he is dead,” says Nazima, Sameer’s sister.

JKLF chairman, Yasin Malik had distributed Rs 50,000 each as “Maqbool Bhat Award” among the families of the six protestors who were killed in the protests. The families said that no other separatist group has come forward to help them in any way. “We are thankful to Yasin sahib that he helped us when misfortune befell us. At least someone cares for those who laid their lives”. Few voluntary groups - HELP Foundation and Sakhawat Center of the Iqbal Memorial Trust have, however, visited the families and helped several of them financially.

Unlike Jammu where special ex-gratia was given on a priority basis to the families of the slain protestors, the J-K Government has not come forward with any help to the families of 54 protestors who were killed in police action in Kashmir.

The house of the dead- one day before Eid

2009-01-08T00:54:00.001-08:00

SRINAGAR, SEPTEMBER 30

While separatist leaders made yet another show of strength with tens of thousands of people assembling for special Eid prayers today, this festival brings no cheer to the families of the young protesters, who were killed in police firing during the recent ‘Azaadi’ groundswell.

Here is a sordid story of two Srinagar families, who lost their sons during the recent protests. Their kitchens have no whiff of spicy mutton, no smell of pastries which lingers across the homes of the valley today on Eid. There are no new dresses for children.

Tanveer Ahmad Handoo’s mother, Haseena is quite and there are no festivities in their home today. Handoo was killed in Police firing on August 14 near his mobile repair shop in Sekidafar locality of downtown city. Tanveer’s son, Musaib cries for new clothes rolling his body on the ground, banging his fists on his mother’s legs. “I will not wear the old clothes, buy me new ones”. Suraya, Tanveer’s widow is 26 and happiness has eluded them.
There is no source of income for her anymore. “His father used to buy new clothes for him every Eid. How will I explain to my son that there is no one left to buy anything for him”, says Suraya, Tanveer’s widow.

Shehzada cries as her daughter Nazima fiddles with the empty vessels which would be full of dishes every Eid. But this Eid, they have cooked nothing for Eid, not even rice. Sameer Ahmad Batloo, Shehzada’s son was killed in Police firing about hundred meters away from his home. “We were poor but my son would somehow manage bakery and mutton for Eid. We were happy in our poverty- what Eid now without our son,” says Shehzada. “He would buy clothes for me on Eid. He loved me and now he is dead,” says Nazima, Sameer’s sister.

JKLF chairman, Yasin Malik had distributed Rs 50,000 each as “Maqbool Bhat Award” among the families of the six protestors who were killed in the protests. The families said that no other separatist group has come forward to help them in any way. “We are thankful to Yasin sahib that he helped us when misfortune befell us. At least someone cares for those who laid their lives”. Few voluntary groups - HELP Foundation and Sakhawat Center of the Iqbal Memorial Trust have, however, visited the families and helped several of them financially.

Unlike Jammu where special ex-gratia was given on a priority basis to the families of the slain protestors, the J-K Government has not come forward with any help to the families of 54 protestors who were killed in police action in Kashmir.

Doctors join the protests

2009-01-08T00:53:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, SEPTEMBER12

Saima Khan marches with her white apron carefully folded over her arm alongside hundreds of other doctors. She doesn’t carry a stethoscope today, in fact none of them does. Instead, there are colored placards raised from their hands and pro freedom slogans escaping their lips. Saima is a 4^th semester medical student and it is the first time she has come out to protest. In fact, it is the first pro freedom protest of Kashmiri Doctors and Government Medical College (GMC) students of Kashmir.

After Friday prayers, scores of doctors and medical students from GMC, Srinagar came out on the road shouting slogans for Azaadi. The protest march was organized by the medical fraternity which includes doctors, senior specialists, registrars, Post Graduate students, paramedics and all ministerial staff of GMC. The protestors marched around the streets of Karan Nagar shouting ‘We want freedom’ and ‘Indian forces go back’.

The young medical students were angry at the way security forces had dealt with the recent protests in Srinagar. “I saw how the security forces had shot unarmed Kashmiri protestors in their heads and chests. The last month of my duty changed me completely when I saw bullet wounds and deaths”, says an intern doctor, Muzzafar.

Several female students and doctors were a part of the protest as well. “Our parents only asked us to be careful but did not stop us from joining this march. We don’t want to live with India”, says Saima.

As the procession kept moving, other people began to join in. When the procession had marched for two lanes only, the size of the protestors swelled considerably. The roads were lined by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers but the protestors avoided any confrontation with them. They however kept shouting slogans against the security forces. “They (CRPF) can kill a few hundred or thousand more Kashmiris but they will never be able to kill the spirit of freedom in Kashmiris”, says an animated Adil Khan, a young doctor. “I and my colleagues have seen 14 year boys writhing in pain because of bullet injuries and we understood how things are divided on a communal basis. But when Indian soldiers come to us for treatment, we treat them the way we would treat our own people.”

Several doctors took videos of the processions with their own cameras and phones. “We have made our own blog where in we wrote everything tat we saw in hospitals as doctors. We have started uploading videos and pictures on the internet”, says a senior doctor. “The moment the march ends, some of us will rush to our computers and protest online”, another doctor adds.

Lal Chowk- one day before 'Lal Chowk Chalo'

2009-01-08T00:45:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, OCTOBER5

The streets of Lal Chowk covered with wilted Chinar leaves crackle under the feet of soldier’s heavy boots. The cold wind gushes through the deserted streets touching, on its way, the ‘forbidden’ Ghanta Ghar (Clock tower). It is one day prior to the ‘Lal Chowk rally’ scheduled for October 6 and Kashmir is under Curfew for the third time in last two months. And Lal Chowk- the Red Square of Kashmir is transformed into a cantonment.

The base of the historic Clock tower is coiled around by rusted barb wires and the broken glass frames at the top lean out from the tower. Every road leading to the clock tower is barred- by red traffic cones, by white iron barricades and hundreds of AK- 47 wielding soldiers.

Lal Chowk or the ‘Red Square’ has a place in the history of Kashmir and more importantly in the political changes in Kashmir. It was here at the feet the clock tower that Sheikh Abdullah in front of thousands of Kashmiris recited a Persian poem of love, saying “I have become you and You have become me” to Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India. Then with the beginning of militancy in Kashmir, Lal Chowk became the site for frequent encounters and attacks between security forces and militants. And, two months back, it was atop the same clock tower that half a million people armed with banners and placards hoisted green flags.

After the recent wave of mass protests in Kashmir, the separatists in the valley called for a peaceful march to Lal Chowk on August 25. But on August 24, the state arrested all separatist leaders and clamped strict curfew in the valley lasting for nine days. The security forces had, at that time, blocked even the view of clock tower with tin sheets fixed on iron bars and concertina wires rolled on the streets of Lal Chowk for several meters.

The call for ‘Lal Chowk Chalo’ was revisited by the separatists keeping it after the month of Ramadan and Eid. This time as well, the state machinery came down heavily imposing curfew in the entire valley one day prior to the day of the march. Lal Chowk is again surrounded by armored vehicles and the Clock Tower is out of bounds.

The roads are silent except for the snarling wind and raucous laughter. And there are voices of distant screeching tyres, piercing shouts, mellowed voices and of reverse gears.

From Songs to Slogans

2009-01-08T00:43:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, JUNE 18

No one in the valley hums songs anymore. It is slogans that linger in air. In Kashmir, it is the season of slogans. People breathe slogans, discuss them, when it comes to rallies or processions, the place reverberates with separatist slogans. And when people assembled near the Tourist Reception Center (TRC) to present memorandum to the United Nations office, the transition in slogans with the change in leaders was quite visible.

As hundreds of thousands of people began to gather and fill the huge ground and its adjoining roads for several kilometers, the slogans rung clear and loud. It was all freedom. ‘We want freedom’ was the only slogan for an entire half an hour while JKLF leader Yasin Malik spoke. “Freedom for this side: freedom for that side” was Malik’s slogan- referring to both parts of Kashmir.

‘Hum Kya Chahte- Aazadi’(what do we want –Freedom) was rhymed from the loud speakers mounted on top of trucks, buses and trees. Then someone holding the microphone would whisper ‘ho aayi aayi’ (it has come, it has come) and the thousands would reply ‘Aazadi’ (Freedom). A few young boys would suddenly huddle around in the middle of a bigger procession, tap their feet vigorously on the dusty ground below and sing ‘Bharat ko ragda- de ragda’ (we have stomped India- Stomped it).

When Hurriyat hardline leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, made his way through the mammoth procession, the slogans changed. Pakistan made its way gradually. ‘Pakistan se rishta kya- la illa ha illal la’ (what is our bond with Pakistan- that there is no god but God) – the crowd shouted. Slogans like ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’ (Kashmir will become Pakistan) resounded in a few corners of the ground. When Geelani concluded his speech, raising another slogan ‘hum Pakistani hain- Pakistan hamara hai’ (we are Pakistanis- and Pakistan is ours) and people said zaroor (definitely). Most of the faces in the crowd drooped, hands didn’t clap, and lips didn’t open to utter slogans. Someone sitting in the crowd shouted ‘Hum kya chahte’ and people raised hands and replied ‘Azadi’.

“Freedom, that is what we have assembled here for. That is why we have died- for

Youth vote in Kashmir - for varied reasons

2009-01-08T00:42:00.000-08:00

GANDERBAL-KANGAN, NOVEMBER 23

Mohammad Rizwan, 22, is inching closer to the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in Ganderbal to “choose the lesser evil”. Standing in the queue since morning, Javaid Ahmad Dar, 19, is out in the line to get his unemployed older brother a job. Twelve-year-old Yousuf Ahmad in Kangan town did not play cricket with his friends today, only to defeat the National Conference candidate.

In a free-for-all election in Ganderbal and Kangan today, young men vote with mundane expectations. Scores of teenagers, jostling and haggling in the long queues for polling admit that they were in the front rows of separatist rallies two months ago, shouting slogans and pelting stones. Few among them were hurt and even arrested by the security forces.

After the separatist call for a poll boycott, a low voter turnout was expected in the valley already seething with anger and swelling with peaceful pro-freedom protests. But, to everyone’s surprise, the voter turnout was huge- both in the first phase and today in the second phase. Mohammad Rizwan, an arts student, defends his decision to vote by saying that ‘even if no votes were cast, someone will still win’. “They (Politicians) are all social evils but we are here to choose the lesser evil,” says Rizwan. “Boycotting the conduction of elections was an option but not casting our vote makes hardly any sense now. Someone or the other will sit on our heads for the next six years, so why not choose the one who is at least better than the rest”.

To some young voters, these elections have nothing to do with the sentiment of Azaadi but are only a contest for choosing ‘better local administrators’. “Te election is only for local governance. We were leading in the pro-Azaadi protests and still stand fast for the freedom of Kashmir,” says 19 year old Javaid Ahmad Dar, standing in a polling queue at Rabitar village in Ganderbal. “We are only choosing a better administration. We need better drinking water, better roads and better education”.

Today, another reason which brought the young voters out is the presence of local candidates. The votes are either cast for or against the local candidates- who happen to be friends, relatives or neighbours of the voters - and not the parties they represent or their equations with the centre. It is either ‘sympathy’ or ‘hatred’ towards the local candidates which has brought young voters from playfields and separatist circles to the polling booths. “We know the candidate for whom we are going to vote. He is our neighbour and we cannot let some one else win and our neighbor loose,” says 18 year old Parvez Ahmad Najar, Kangan. “After all, our neighbour will still be helpful to us than someone we hardly know”.

The long lines everywhere are a mix of young and old. The youngest, however, are yet to reach 18 – the minimum age to exercise the right to vote. Thus Yousuf Ahmad, a class seven student tries to hide the faint fuzz of a moustache with the collar of his chequered black ‘phiran’. “I study in class 12,” says Yousuf in a creaking voice, his fair face and ears blushing. The others standing in the queue burst in a friendly laughter. “Tell him we study in seventh grade. We look our age,” says one of his classmates. Ahmad is one among hundreds of under-aged voters, waiting eagerly in queues. “I would rather have played cricket with my friends but I only want to defeat Mian Altaf- the NC candidate- because he did not do anything for us in the last six years,” Ahmad says.

Another reason for the youth voter turnout was after recent protests in the valley in which 53 unarmed protesters were killed in police and CRPF firing, people in the valley were disillusioned with the regular ‘chalo’ calls from the separatist camp. Some young voters say that they came out to vote today after Azaadi seemed a distant and dangerous dream which caused Kashmir hundreds of thousands of lives. “What Azaadi? How can we even think now that India will give us freedom? If they would have to do so, they would first wipe away half of Kashmir,” says Shugufta Yousuf, a college student. Dressed in a long ‘phiran’, with her index finger raised up in air, Yousuf shouts, “Franchise is my right and I will cast my vote for the improvement of my society and my life”.

-----------ENDS---------

War on You- Tube

2009-01-08T00:41:00.000-08:00

SRINAGAR, AUGUST 20

On the streets of Kashmir, this latest wave of mass protests is fast transcending from stones to the cyber space. And in a matter of few weeks, it has bloomed into a war on You Tube.

Kashmir, which earlier found its way into the video site only by the famous Led Zeppelin song suddenly witnesses a surge in the videos. Led zeppelin has been pushed down the list in a space of few weeks only. And this time as you hit the key, videos of processions, protests and the stone pelting take the top spot.

The ‘war’ on You Tube started with the famous Chris de Burgh song, Revolution. Chris’ voice has the background of pictures from Kashmir – a montage that reflects Kashmir’s turbulent years. Soon after the first upload, the hits started and the links were sent through emails and social networking sites. This video of Chris marked Kashmir’s stint with You Tube.

“We started uploading Kashmiri resistance videos to inform the world community. We want them to get an idea about what is happening in Kashmir”, says Younis Rashid (Name Changed), 23, who constantly uploads videos on the net. Younis is a Kashmir University student, who along with his friends records video clips with their Cellphone cameras. “Sometimes, we use our phones or else use the available or downloadable footage. Cyber space takes our struggle to a new level.”

Videos from Kashmir have mostly been uploaded during the 9-day uprising in July, which took place immediately after the Amarnath land transfer controversy. In fact, it was for the first time that cellphones were used to capture images and videos during these 9-days. Hundreds of cellphones wuld focus on procession, on stone pelting angry boys and the fluttering flags. And it somehow saw its way to the internet. “In rallies and processions, flooded with people, raised hands with camera phones capturing everything is a very common sight now. I also recorded some moments from the march to Pampore but I did not know how to upload it on the net, then I gave it to a friend who knows computers and someone told me that it is available on the internet now,” says a 22-year-old Arooj Ahmad (Name Changed).

The responses which are posted to the videos reflect the condition on ground in Kashmir right now. Most of the people write abusive messages and it is a full blown fight.

With the number of hits (clicks which the videos get) to these videos from Kashmir increasing, more and more Kashmiri people are trying the You Tube. For Kashmiris, cyber space is a new front that they pay attention to while still clutching to stones.

Kashmiri blood spilled again- Shiites cant mourn now!!!

2009-01-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

The white smoke from a whirling shiny steel tear smoke canister reels up in the cold winter air, and incessant ambulance sirens cut across the jumbled far away voices. Smoke lingers like a heavy curtain over the road, making scores of slogan shouting mourners look like silhouettes emerging out of mist. Several people lie flat on the black tarmac and on side pavements mumbling, ‘Ya Hussain- Ya Hussain’. On the eighth day of Muharram, a four kilometer procession of Shiite mourners in Srinagar slowly turns into a protest march but still does not make it to its destination, only leaving more than 30 mourners wounded, scores in jail and countless crying.

“What harm have we done to you? We are only following our religion, please let us go and mourn our loss,” an old woman pleads before a group of J-K policemen and CRPF personnel. “One day, God will seek an answer from you for wielding this baton on a mourner.”

The Muharram procession in Shiite sect of Muslims mourns the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussain. It was the battle field of Karbala in Iraq where Imam Hussain and his 72 followers were martyred. Across the world, Shiites mourn the first ten days of Muharram which is the first month of Islamic calendar.

The procession was banned by in 1989 after militancy started in the valley. Shiite mourners today hoped that the new government will be lenient with the processions and not injure any of them. “We thought that the democratic government has been restored and we would not be beaten mercilessly but we are again disappointed and our religion is being suppressed,” says Aamir Ali, 26, a mourner.

As the procession advances slowly, the protestors pelt the tear smoke shells back on the police party, and move forward in a fast run. Police retrieves a few meteres, but fires dozens of tear canisters back straight at the crowd. The crowd again disappears behind the smoke and police follows for a baton charge.

“If the government can provide security for so many yatris, why can they do it for us? Why is out faith and religion being strangled,” says Ajaz Hussain Joo, a mourner.

Zamin Ali, a five year old boy, in the middle of a group of women mourners resisting arrest, sobs without noise. Tear drops trickle over his nose blushed by cold, as his grandmother tightens the black band on his head. “I want to go home. Please take me home,” he cries.

The Imam Bada is now just a few lanes ahead and that is where the procession is headed. Police again fires tear smoke canisters and the mourners scatter again. No mourner gets past the Dalgate crossing.

More than fifty meters ahead in a narrow lane, next to Imam Bada, two long files of mourners raise Pro Hamas and pro Hussain slogans. The men move their heads in unison, their hard palms strike the hollow rib cages in rhythm with the slogans and the women cry. Girls are perched on top of windows and lightly beating their chest, in sync with the rhythm. The high pitched slogans halt abruptly, a mellowed song of mourning begins and one leads to another.

All the Shiites want to reach here to mourn together. Today, this lane is out of bounds for the Shiites other than those who live in the locality. There are no concertina wires though, no bullets have been shot today but ambulances ferry injured to the same hospitals no differently than before.

2009-01-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Lal Chowk- A day before elections.

The soldiers walk back in two long queues, their rifles slung on shoulders and tall steel Tiffin boxes dandling in hands. As the sun snuffs out, their day ends and Lal Chowk (clock tower) is released from the siege. One day before Srinagar goes to polls, Lal Chowk is again deserted with barricades and barb wires sprawled all across the roads, and no civilians in sight.

Black and white election posters are strewn across the tiled pavements near the clock tower. Some posters are still left on the walls, most of them with torn edges and sides. A large colored poster of Shabir Shah, the separatist leader, his finger raised and hundreds of tiny heads listening to him is still pasted to the wall. The text on Shah’s poster is a couplet of Allama Iqbal. “The nation whose youth’s self has a resilience of steel; no swords are needed in that nation.” A smaller black and white poster in which Muzzafar Shah, the Awami National Conference candidate, urges people to vote for him tomorrow is pasted over it.

The clock tower is out of time on all sides and the digital advertising panels are blank. The base of the tower is wound with barb wires. Three months back, it was here at a similar dusk that torch flames danced till late and fire crackers sparkled high up the sky. It was the Amarnath land revocation order that led thousands of men and women to come out and celebrate on the streets.

“We don’t even know where the polling booth is and we don’t want to know. We don’t want to vote nor will anyone from our family,” says Mohammad Ayub, a resident of Abi Guzar. Ayub was in all the protests and celebrations and is confused at the turn of events. “I thought that we would soon be free but we are voting in large numbers. We should think what we want. I cant understand a thing.”

The Maisuma area is silent and as usual guarded by countless soldiers. The narrow street is deserted and silent. Few boys walk past, talking among themselves. Even they don’t know where is polling booth is. “We will set it on fire if we knew where it is. It must be in some Superintend’s office. Where else can it be?”

Drugs in Kashmir

2008-08-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

The building is in ruins. Garbage is piled in the courtyard, mostly bottles. There are no doors, no windows. Colored polythene and tin sheets cover all openings to light. It is dark inside. I pull out my mobile phone, use it as torch. The walls are cracked with black spots painted on the pale background by cigarette stubs. There is a peculiar smell across the place- as we walk in, it becomes intense. Few old food items lie around. The center of the floor is dark wet and all shit. The smell is unbearable now.
As I step in the room, hundreds of half burned match sticks creak under my sole. Countless sanitary napkins lie in a heap. Cigarette stubs cover the rest of the room. The cement floor is hardly visible. We have to make our way slowly through the left over cough syrup bottles, ink erasers, playing cards and cigarette packets. It is the drug den of Dalgate. Or rather, was.
Almost a month ago, the entire neighborhood started a campaign against the drug dealers in the Dalgate area. Two families were selling drugs in the area and the neighbors ostracized them, pooling in money to buy their houses. “It had become hard to live in this area for us because of these two families. Drug addicts from all around would be roaming in our streets. But for the last month, no one (drug users) comes”, says Shabeer, a resident of the locality. “This is not the first time they (drug dealers) have moved out of here. But they keep finding their way back”, he adds.
The drug trade is almost open in Kashmir- with Srinagar as the drug capital. A study carried out on drug abuse in the Valley by Government psychiatry Hospital reveals that more than 17 per cent of Kashmiri youth—mostly in the age group of 16 to 35—are addicted to drugs. Heroin, brown sugar, cannabis and deadly medicinal opiates top the list.
On a pavement at the main road, a boy is lying under a wheel cart. I sit at his feet. His eyes are sunk deep with dark circles around them. His hazy eyes are closed for most of the time as he asks us to leave. I make up a story about my drug addict friend who fractured his leg and thus asked me to buy stuff for him. But the dealer he told me about has left his house. He slowly gets up sniffing at his yellow handkerchief. “Yes, they left. You will have to cross the bridge now”, he says with concern. I inquire about money as I have very little with me. “You can get things for 100 rupees, even 50”, he stutters.
Yasin, lying half awake on the pavement (name changed) is 13, an orphan who sells clothes at Batamaloo. His friends got him into drugs. He does brown-sugar mostly. He has done it today. “I earn 150 rupees a day. The stuff costs me half of it”. He sprawls back on the dusty pavement, his oversized pink jacket covered with soil and his head resting on a half burnt wooden piece.
We pass the bridge, ask a hawker for brown sugar straight away. No one talks to us. Hostile looks and snarling words greet us everywhere. I reach two guys sitting on the pavement and pull out a 50 rupee note. The younger one smiles. His eyes twinkle. The other guy taps his shoulder but they leave. We follow. They don’t stop. Our clothes betray us, so do my friends’ glasses and bag.
Most of the drug trade in Kashmir happens around Dalgate, Chattabal, Bemina and Sumo stands. “It is in Sumos and other taxis mostly that stuff is transported”, says Ishtiyaq, an auto driver who was a drug user a year back.
The cannabis is grown locally and is available across the Valley, especially in South Kashmir. More refined drugs like brown sugar and heroin, according to local substance abusers, make their way from Delhi to South Kashmir and then to Srinagar. In fact, the crude opioids are actually sent from South Kashmir to Delhi where they are refined and sent back.
“Brown sugar and heroin mostly come from Sangam (a village in south Kashmir),” says Aijaz Ahmad as he smokes with a couple of guys. “We often go there to buy stuff. It is less expensive there. For the same stuff I earn 1500 rupees in Srinagar as compared to only 500 in South Kashmir”.
Nannu (name changed) leans back in his Ford Car. The music plays loud and the smoke envelopes everything inside. He takes a deep puff at his cigarette- his eyes red, fingers shivering. I am on the back seat passively smoking Charas, the local weed. “It is fun man. What is life without Charas dude?” says Nannu passing over the joint to me. Naanu is a doctor in one the biggest hospitals in the state. His father and mother are doctors as well. “I am high all of time but that doesn’t hinder my work. It makes me more efficient”, he says, as wisps of smoke come out of his lips.
For the rich like Nannu and his engineer friend Jimy, deals happen with much more sophistication. One phone call and things reach you, provided you know the number and they know you.
“While all these people keep killing themselves, someone somewhere is getting rich”, a photographer in Dalgate laments”. “It is better you catch him but I know you wont. He must be one among you educated people.”
It is dark across Lal Chowk. I walk back home. The stench is still lingering inside me. My head is dizzy, stomach revolting. I sit on the pavement and puke on the side of the road. Yasin would still be half awake under the cart, sniffing at the handkerchief, his pink jacket almost black by now. Nannu would still be in his car playing with smoke. Or maybe, operating someone on the surgical table, his eyes red, fingers shivering.

Dance of freedom

2008-08-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

the resistance dance of kashmir- 'Ragda'

With arms entwined, bodies pressed together forming a huddle, feet tapping to a rhythmic slogan, Kashmir has its first dance of resistance. ‘Ragda’- as it is known in Kashmir has emerged as the symbol of anger and resistance in the ongoing mass movement.

Some one standing in the middle of the circle chants ‘Bharat ko Ragda’ (we have stomped India) and the people in the huddle shout- ‘de Ragda’ (stomped it) while vigorously stomping their feet on the ground. “It is a mark of Kashmir’s anger against all betrayals and inhumanities. This dance best describes the passion we have for freedom”, says Jamshed Shah, 19, a boy standing in the middle of the huddle.

The dance was first visible during the 9- day uprising in July over the Amarnath land row. When the order was revoked, the streets of Lal Chowk were stomped till midnight- and the dance was born. Earlier restricted to Srinagar city only, ‘Ragda’ gradually made its way to all parts of Kashmir.

In a massive gathering of people today at Eidgah, nearly filling the ground with an estimated capacity of 10 lakh, the ‘Ragda’ dance was complimented by the beat of drums. The thud of drums followed by the pounding of the feet could be heard from quite a distance. “We got the drums yesterday because we thought it would go well with the dance”, says Tariq Ahmad (name changed), a university graduate who bought the drums.

Women stand close by the side and clap to the beats, young girls jump to have a peep in, and their voices screeching distinctly. “Do the ‘Ragda’” says Rakshanda, a 7 year old girl hunched on the shoulders of his father to people sitting on a truck. Some teenagers jump down and start the dance. The girl also joins and soon dozens of young kids form a huddle of their own and tap their feet on the road. “We love this dance and practice it at home at evenings. We have also made a game called ‘Ragda’”, says Rakshanda, as she climbs back on her father’s shoulders.

At around 7 in the evening, people on around 400 bikes rode through the entire Srinagar city, beating drums and stopping at every neighborhood to do the Ragda. “It (Ragda) is the symbol of resurgent Kashmir which has an equal passion for freedom as it had 20 years ago. We thought of this bike march yesterday and got more than 400 bikes with us”, says Yasir, a biker.

“It has become our anthem. I keep humming it unconsciously and thought I had become obsessed with it but I understood there is nothing wrong with it when my friends said the same thing”, says Yasir.

2008-08-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

letter to a dead friend

2008-08-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

dearest faiz,

You live somewhere on my bookshelf, on the second row. You live some where in my laptop, far from the nude girls. You hum in my cassette player, almost always. You looked nice in 1951. you have been always young on my CD shelf. You are alive in my room. Not a mere silouette, but a rebel... in flesh and soul.

You taught me the sensiblities of life, the madness of love, the rush of blood when the soldier rests his gun against the wrinkled neck of Ishtiyaq's grandmother, when the butt of the gun comes down on the soft knuckles of Saleem,who came out of the womb just few years ago.

No body reads your poetry here except my friends and me... of course. I love you. We are both fucked up, u know- u and me. You fought for this Pakistan, didnt you. Then why do you hide in my room. Go and see what has become of the pure land.

52 dead just now- 2 bomb blasts. It is red with blood...ur pakistan.

So is my Kashmir, fucked up. You know, i saw intestines, red with blood, hanging of this boy's belly. His mouth was open. He was gasping, taking in as much breath as he could to stay alive... but he died. Are intestines so important? How come you never wrote about them? I bet, u never saw intestines in your life. Wish you had seen the boy, at least, you would have written a poem on intestines. The intestines would have lived for ever, a nice tribute to the boy who died there and then. It would have been in the book, right next to dogs.

what could i write. 2 dead, seven injured. Fuck.

You were right always- i rememember subh e azadi... how could you understand things so early. No, u took along time as well. you got your self in jail. didnt you?

you should have written on the last page of your book.

zaahir- only read me, dont believe me...

Soccer War

2008-08-21T05:07:00.000-07:00

dearest Ryszard, sorry for stealing your title. But i had read that literature belongs to the one who needs it and loves it...

It is the story of kashmir, of politics, of freedom and of soccer...

The stands are full, the crowds ecstatic. Thousands of Kashmiri spectators are supporting the local team in a recent soccer match. For the first time in more than 20 years, Kashmir have made it into the quarter finals of India's leading football tournament, the Santosh Trophy.

Every dribble by a Kashmiri player is cheered, every shot applauded. Every save is followed by a Mexican wave in the stands.

But suddenly, a shot from the striker in the Punjab team finds the net. The crowd goes silent. The Punjab striker slides to the ground, punches the air with his fist and gestures to the crowd.

Some spectators run on to the pitch. Players flee to the dugout. Police bludgeon two spectators in the middle of the pitch. The crowd howls in protest and soon a full pitch invasion is under way.

The fans pelt police and paramilitary troopers with stones, burn banners, overturn score boards and uproot flag posts. They shout anti-India slogans with a vengeance and demand independence for Kashmir. A football match suddenly become a separatist political rally.

The police call for reinforcements. A heavy baton charge leaves more than 40 people injured. Dozens are arrested. The match is cancelled.

Soccer has a long history in Kashmir and the game has reflected some of the tumultuous politics of this disputed Himalayan region. Before the recent vicious conflict that started in the late 1980s, Kashmir had more than 20 teams representing different government departments. Today there are just four. It's hard to make a living out of the game. "This is discouraging for the players. And the last 17 years have been dreadful for football as well," says Majid Kakroo, local l star and coach of the Kashmir team.

But as violence has declined in recent years, football is regaining its popularity in Kashmir. However, you can't keep politics out of it. "Football has always been one front of our freedom movement," says 85-year-old Agha Ashraf Ali, a noted Kashmiri educationist and an ardent football fan.

He narrates a story going back to the days of the British empire, when Kashmir was ruled by the unpopular Hindu Dogra royal family. When a local Kashmiri team, the Friends Club, defeated the Dogra royal police team the crowd hailed the local players and jeered the royal players. The royal players could not take the defeat. They got the Kashmiri tonga wallas (horse carriage drivers) to take them to cantonment area where the police were stationed. Once inside they refused to pay the carriage drivers and instead beat them up. The drivers went home in rags, empty handed, beaten and bleeding.

When Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the Kashmiri leader who later led a revolt against the royals and became the first prime minister of Kashmir, heard of the incident, he and a few others armed themselves with hockey sticks and attacked a group of royal soldiers. "That was the birth of the rebellious Kashmir," says Mr Agha.

Football was introduced in Kashmir by CE Tyndale Biscoe, a British missionary who founded Srinagar's historic Biscoe School in the autumn of 1891. It was then an affordable game for underprivileged Kashmiris living under the autocratic rule of Hindu royals.

A British football team was then formed in Kashmir by Young Hardow, proprietor of the Hardow Carpet Factory. British officials working in the telegraph office in Srinagar were included in the team. British soldiers posted at Rawalpindi were brought to play matches in Srinagar and showed Kashmiri players how they needed to develop their skills.

Slowly the game began to gain popularity - as too did the political unrest in Kashmir. "When in 1941, the Kashmir team defeated Jalandhar by 7-0, Srinagar's top undergraduate college declared a holiday for three days. It was victory for Kashmir", says Mr Agha.

"The war in Kashmir changed everything," says former local star Farooq Ahmad Bhat. "At four in the evening we used to lock our homes. Who could play soccer amid the bullets, curfews and the suffering? Our standards are lagging behind by 50 years."

But now, with hopes for peace, the game is back and the stands are full. But the connection with politics is still there.

"Just get one goal in the Indian net," an old man, fists-clenched, biting on a cigarette, uttered in agitation at the Kashmir-Punjab match. That is why when the home team defeated Delhi in the Santosh Trophy competition, a banner displayed, "Kashmir defeats India".