[In the wake of Thursday’s attack — the deadliest in three decades of insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir — the mood in India is tense and angry. In a search for scapegoats, some have lashed out at Kashmiri students and shopkeepers in other parts of India.]
By
Joanna Slater
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Indian demonstrators
shout slogans against Pakistan during a protest in New Delhi
on Feb. 17 after an
attack on a paramilitary police convoy in Kashmir.
(Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty
Images)
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NEW DELHI — Hours after a suicide bomber
rammed an Indian security convoy in Kashmir last week, the threats began.
In the northern Indian city of Dehradun,
students shared posts on social media calling for their Kashmiri classmates to
be kicked out of their universities. Groups marched through the streets,
shouting that Kashmiris were traitors and should be shot. Landlords renting
rooms to Kashmiri students were threatened.
“I have never felt so insecure in all my
life,” said Aqib Rashid, 22, a physiotherapy student. Joining hundreds of other
Kashmiri students, he left Dehradun for the city of Chandigarh, a four-hour
drive away in the state of Punjab.
In the wake of Thursday’s attack — the
deadliest in three decades of insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir — the
mood in India is tense and angry. In a search for scapegoats, some have lashed
out at Kashmiri students and shopkeepers in other parts of India.
On Tuesday, the governor of a small state in
northeastern India expressed support for a total boycott of Kashmir in response
to the Feb. 14 attack, which killed 40 paramilitary police personnel. The
assault was carried out by a local teenager who had joined Jaish-e-Muhammad, a
Pakistan-based militant group.
India blames Pakistan — its neighbor and
rival — for the attack, but Pakistan rejects such claims. India will hold
national elections this spring, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised
that “every teardrop” shed by the families of the attack victims will be
avenged.
With nationalist sentiment running high,
social media posts interpreted as criticism of the Indian security forces — or
as possible support for the attack — have been met with backlash. Several students
in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India are facing criminal complaints over
social media posts critical of the Indian army. A professor in the northeastern
state of Assam was reportedly suspended for her Facebook posts on the attack.
Khawaja Itrat, 21, heads the Jammu and
Kashmir Students Organization in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab. In the
hours after last week’s attack, he began receiving reports of trouble elsewhere
in India, especially in Dehradun: people gathering in the streets shouting
anti-Kashmiri slogans, or telling landlords that they had 24 hours to make
Kashmiri students leave.
The mob was not targeting only students.
Aabid Majeed Kuchay, a Kashmiri who is dean of academic affairs at a management
institute in Dehradun, said an angry group of 500 people came to his college
two days in a row. They demanded that Kashmiri students no longer be admitted
and that Kuchay be suspended. To prevent violence, he told the administration
to succumb to their demand. With the help of the college and local police,
Kuchay fled to the city of Jammu.
Meanwhile, Itrat’s student organization
worked with local authorities to evacuate Kashmiri students, many of whom were
hiding in their apartments. Itrat said his group arranged for more than 500
students to leave Dehradun.
In Chandigarh and the neighboring city of
Mohali, there were also unexpected kindnesses. A local gurudwara — a Sikh
temple — said that it, too, wanted to help. After receiving a request to
shelter the students, “we immediately agreed,” said Sant Singh, a member of the
committee that oversees the Gurudwara Singh Shaheedan shrine. “Everyone is
welcome, regardless of religion.”
A Sikh social service organization offered
help with food and transportation for the students. “We wanted to be there for
them as a community, as human beings first of all,” said Nazia Kamboj,
education coordinator for Khalsa Aid. “They shouldn’t feel alienated in their
own land and amongst their own people.”
On Monday, over 50 students were staying in
the outer complex of the gurudwara in rooms normally reserved for visitors.
Mattresses and blankets were laid out on floors, and suitcases were piled to
one side. The next major task: finding taxis and buses to start the students on
their journey home to Kashmir.
But the students were unlikely to forget
their ordeal, and it remained unclear whether they would return to their
colleges.
“I would prefer to complete my studies and go
back if the situation improves, but my parents are against it,” said Junaid, a
21-year-old civil engineering student who asked to be identified by one name
for safety reasons. He was the first person in his family to study outside
Kashmir, he said. “Now I think I will be the last.”
Niha Masih and Farheen Fatima contributed to
this report.
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