Kashmiri schools and small businesses remain quiet as shutdown nears third month
Protesters blocked a road in Srinagar with the words “Go India Go Back” as the civil disobedience movement enters its third month. Photo by Taha Zahoor.
SRINAGAR — Nisar Ahmad starts his day early. The grocery seller in Indian Administered Kashmir opens his shop in the morning just for a couple of hours and then shuts it for the day to protest against the Indian government’s stripping of Kashmir’s autonomy on Aug. 5.
“This is a democratic way to register our protest… it is peaceful method of resistance,” Ahmad said.
The government’s move allows outsiders to buy land in Kashmir for the first time, opening up the Muslim-majority region disputed with Pakistan to greater Hindu settlement.
Since Aug. 5, Internet and phone access has been limited or blocked, with gradual restoration over the last month. Mobile phone service became widely available for the first time earlier this month. Hospitals have been short on medical supplies. Roads have been blockaded and guarded with troops but slowly more travel has been allowed. Curfews prohibit most travel after dark. Assemblies of more than four people are banned in some places. Security forces have sprayed pellet fire on unarmed protesters, as this Religion Unplugged photo essay shows.
An unknown number of arrests – some activists estimate 13,000 youth – have chilled families in the Himalayan valley. At least 2,000 Kashmiri leaders, including business leaders and human rights activists, were arrested ahead of the shutdown and the days after it. Their locations remain unknown.
Leaderless protest of shuttering shops
Ahmad is part of a mass civil disobedience movement, echoing the non-violent resistance of Mahatma Gandhi against the British to win India’s independence in 1947.
People in Kashmir continue to protest, trying not to break laws and to dispute the government’s narrative that life is going back to normal there.
Like Ahmad, shopkeepers open for just a few hours in the mornings and evening and keep their doors shut during the day. Only a few street cart vendors selling vegetables and fruits do business during the day at some spots in the capital, Srinagar, but fewer than normal. The usually bustling markets selling everything from woollens to housewares remain quiet and shuttered.
This is partly because Kashmiri militants shot and killed a shopkeeper in August for opening his shop just a few hours.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan. India rules the Valley of Kashmir, the Jammu region in the south and the Ladakh region bordering China. India and Pakistan both claim the region in full. Shortly after India’s independence and the partition of Pakistan from India, the Kashmiri king agreed to join India under a constitutional provision, called Article 370, that allowed autonomous rule in the region. That was revoked in August and largely applauded by Indians outside Kashmir, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party, criticized for its Hindu nationalism.
Nearly 7 million people live in Kashmir Valley, 97% of them Muslim. A separatist movement has pushed back against Indian forces. About 47,000 people have been killed in conflict and 3,400 people “disappeared” in the last three decades, according to the government’s own figures.
Abrogating Article 370 has been a longstanding demand of Hindu nationalists. The BJP campaigned on the promise to scrap Article 370, winning Modi’s re-election in May by a wide margin.
Locals in Kashmir fear that removing the constitutional guarantees will pave way for Hindus to settle in Kashmir’s lush Himalayan valleys and snow-capped mountains and dilute its Islamic character. Kashmiri Hindus have long campaigned for the government to resettle them after losing their homes and property in Kashmiri militant violence in the nineties.
A sometimes violent insurgency, backed by Pakistan, against Indian rule has dragged on for the last three decades. Separatists, who want an independent Kashmir or to join Pakistan, have started agitations in 2008, 2010 and 2016 that went on for months. Hundreds of protestors were killed by security forces, and militants have also kidnapped and killed security forces. Kashmir’s separatist leadership issued “protest calendars” asking people to defy the government and specifying when to open and close their shops. So some closing shop may wish to stay open but close to avoid backlash from militants.
But the ongoing civil disobedience movement in Kashmir, called “civil curfew” locally, is different. It is nonviolent and not enforced or guided by any sort of leadership in Kashmir.
“It is a spontaneous reaction against the revocation of Article 370,” said Bashir Ahmad, who runs a provision store in upscale Rajbagh in Srinagar. “The government is responsible for causing disruption in Kashmir by scrapping Article 370 and laying restrictions. Now the same government wants to restore normalcy by lifting the curfew. We have had enough. We are just doing what we feel is right.”
Schools open but empty
Students have stopped going to school and college as well, despite the government reopening schools. Most parents don’t send their children to school because they fear the potential violence that could erupt.
“I will rather prefer that my son doesn’t get promoted to the next class than take the risk of sending him to the school in an atmosphere full of uncertainty and tension,” said Abdul Rahim, whose son studies in the 2nd grade in a Srinagar school.
The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel have been stationed outside and in the classrooms at the SP Higher secondary school in Srinagar, Kashmir’s premier school. A security picket separates the entrance of the school from the road.
Out of 1,200 students enrolled, only a handful of students turned up at SP after the government announced that schools were opening. The staff members say just a few students showed up briefly and left without any class work.
The strategy of opening schools to restore normalcy had worked for the government in 2016 after the killing of militant commander Hizbul Mujahideen Commander Burhan Wani caused protests and unrest for three months. Burhan Wani was the poster boy of Kashmiri militancy who glamorized rebellion by posting pictures and videos on social media. He inspired many young Kashmiris to pick up arms against India. He was 22 when he was killed by Indian security forces during a home invasion.
The Indian government says that restrictions like banning assemblies and imposing a communication blockade in Kashmir are measures to save the lives of people. Senior government officials have told the media that not a single bullet was fired after the abrogation of Article 370. But Kashmiri legislators contest those statements by saying that by not allowing the peaceful agitation by people of Kashmir, the government is inciting people to resort to violence.
“They don’t understand this new kind of protest in Kashmir,” said Justice Hasnain Masoodi, the member parliament of the National Conference, a Kashmir-based political party. “Indirectly, they are telling people your protest will not be registered unless it is accompanied by violence.”
The government insists the civil disobedience is being forced by anti-India elements, despite the shopkeepers saying they are closed voluntarily to send a message of resistance.
“There seems to be an attempt by militants or anti-nationals or mischievous elements to force people not to open their shops,” government spokesperson Rohit Kansal said. “When there is an attempt to force people to act in a particular direction, action will be taken.”
Taha Zahoor is an independent Kashmiri journalist using a pseudonym to protect his identity.