[India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous and militarized flash points, smoldering for decades.]
By
Sameer Yasir, Suhasini Raj and Jeffrey Gettleman
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The
police detaining an activist of the Jammu and Kashmir Youth Congress during a
protest
against the Indian government in Jammu on Saturday. Credit Rakesh
Bakshi/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
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SRINAGAR,
Kashmir — On the streets of
Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over
their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People
glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside. Many were
cutting back on meals and getting hungry.
A sense of coiled menace hung over the
locked-down city and the wider region on Saturday, a day after a huge protest
erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
Shops were shut. A.T.M.s had run dry. Just
about all lines to the outside world — internet, mobile phones, even landlines
— remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.
A correspondent for The New York Times got
one of the first inside views of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a
population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious by the seismic
events of this week.
[Despite a communication blockade, Indian
photographers managed to publish images of life inside Kashmir.]
People who ventured out said they had to beg
officers to cross a landscape of sandbags, battered trucks and soldiers staring
at them through metal face masks. Several residents said they had been beaten
up by security forces for simply trying to buy necessities like milk.
India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday
to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its
archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying
between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous
and militarized flash points, smoldering for decades.
Anything dramatic or provocative that happens
here — and India’s move was widely seen as both — instantly sends a jolt of
anxiety across this entire region.
On Friday afternoon, witnesses said tens of
thousands of peaceful demonstrators were moving through the streets of
Srinagar, chanting freedom slogans and waving Kashmiri flags, when Indian
forces opened fire.
The huge crowd panicked and scattered.
Sustained bursts of automatic weapon fire could be heard in videos filmed
during the protest, and at least seven people were wounded, hospital officials
said, some sprayed by buckshot in the eyes.
Afshana Farooq, a 14-year-old girl, was
nearly trampled in the stampede.
“We were just marching peacefully after
prayers,” said her father, Farooq Ahmed, standing over her as she lay shaking
in a Srinagar hospital bed. “Then they started shooting at us.”
India has put Kashmir, home to about eight
million people, in a tightening vise, after India’s Hindu nationalist prime
minister, Narendra Modi, swept away the autonomy that this mountainous,
Muslim-majority region had enjoyed for decades.
His decision was years in the making, the
collision of India’s rising nationalist politics, frustration with Kashmir’s
dogged separatists and a long-running rivalry with Pakistan.
For the past three decades, the Kashmir
Valley, part of the region controlled by India, has been a conflict zone, a
restive area chafing for independence. In the 1990s, Pakistan opened the
floodgates for jihadists to cross the border, setting off years of heavy
fighting.
Many Kashmiris see India as an oppressive and
foreign ruler. They resent all the changes over the years that have diluted
what was supposed to be an autonomous arrangement for Kashmir, settled in 1947,
when the region’s maharajah agreed to join India with guarantees of some
self-rule.
No one disputes that Kashmir needed change.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed here and the economy lies in
ruins.
Mr. Modi has said the new status will make
Kashmir more peaceful and prosperous. In a televised speech on Thursday, which
most Kashmiris could not watch because their television service had also been
cut, he insisted that turning Kashmir into a federal territory would eliminate
corruption, attract investment and move it “forward with new hopes.’’
In the valley, nearly all of about 50
Kashmiris interviewed said they expected India’s actions to increase the sense
of alienation and in turn feed the rebellion.
Elders in several rural areas reported that
dozens of young men had already disappeared from their communities, often a
telltale sign of joining the insurgency.
Officials in New Delhi circulated photos on
Saturday that showed open fruit markets and crowded streets, saying the valley
was returning to normal. But security personnel in Kashmir said large protests
kept erupting, including on Saturday.
“At any point day or night,” said Ravi Kant,
a soldier based in the town of Baramulla, “whenever they get a chance, mobs of
a dozen, two dozen, even more, sometimes with a lot of women, come out, pelt
stones at us and run away.”
“People are so angry,” he added. “They are
unrelenting and not scared.”
Tens of thousands of troops from the Indian
Army, the Central Reserve Police Force (a paramilitary unit) and the Kashmiri
State police have been deployed in just about every corner of the valley. In
some villages, even remote ones, a soldier was posted outside the gate of each
family’s home.
The difficulties of negotiating such a tight
security cordon are compounding the stress. Shamima Bano, a middle-aged mother,
broke into tears the instant she heard her son’s voice over the phone.
“Are you alive?” she cried.
For hours, she had waited in a line of 400
people to use the one phone that the authorities opened, at a government office
in her neighborhood. Her college-age son was in the Indian city of Mumbai,
about to go into surgery, she said.
The lockdown’s effects are visible
everywhere. Schools have been closed. Parks are deserted. Baby food is running
out. In many areas, residents needed to produce a curfew pass to leave their
homes, even for medical emergencies.
At the Lala Ded hospital, sick people had
traveled more than a day to get here, only to find a skeleton crew. Many
doctors couldn’t get to work. Many patients were curled up on the floor.
“It’s a living hell here,” said Jamila, a
doctor who goes by one name.
Kashmiris said that of all the crackdowns
they have lived through, this was the worst. A spokeswoman for India’s home
ministry said Saturday she would answer questions about the complaints but had
yet to provide a response.
Since the 1990s, Kashmir’s insurgency has
steadily dwindled. A few hundred young rebels roam the valley, poorly trained
and outnumbered by an Indian force nearly 1,000 to one. But still, the Indians
can’t stomp them out.
Pakistan is widely suspected of covertly
supporting some of these rebels, though to a much lesser extent than what it
did in the 1990s. Pakistan controls a slice of Kashmir that is much smaller
than the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the Kashmir
Valley and was India’s only Muslim-majority state until Mr. Modi downgraded it
to a federal territory.
Decades ago, Jammu and Kashmir had its own
prime minister and Indians needed travel permits to visit. Before last week,
the region had the power to frame its own laws.
“It was a full container and they have made
it empty, slowly, slowly,” said Mohammed Latif Kotroo, the owner of one of
Srinagar’s signature houseboats, a tourist attraction that now floats empty.
Many Kashmiris fear that Mr. Modi’s sweeping
decision, which also wiped away a decades-old provision that gave Kashmiris
special land ownership rights, will encourage millions of Hindu migrants from
India to move into the valley, fabled for its stunning alpine scenery and
fertile soil. Kashmiris fear they will be turned into a minority in their own
land.
Indian officials deny this and say they don’t
want to destroy Kashmir’s special character. But they have also said that the
new status would make it easier for non-Kashmiris to buy land, which they
argued would catalyze outside investment and lift the stagnant, war-torn
economy.
India did not consult any Kashmiri leaders
before revoking Kashmir’s autonomy, which several Indian legal experts said
could be unconstitutional. The original autonomy provisions said any change to
Kashmir’s status must be done in consultation with Kashmiri representatives.
In the past week, the Indian authorities have
arrested hundreds of Kashmiri activists, including some elected politicians.
Constitutional lawyers predict the issue will end up in India’s Supreme Court,
which has shown some independence, if not in all cases, from the government.
Many Kashmiris have never trusted Mr. Modi.
His government is deeply rooted in a Hindu nationalist worldview that is
extremely popular with India’s Hindu majority — Mr. Modi just won a thumping
re-election in May — but has created great fear across India’s Muslim minority.
Mr. Modi knew that stripping away what little
autonomy Kashmir still enjoyed was not going to go down well with Kashmiris.
A few days before his government announced
its plan, security officials suddenly evacuated thousands of Indian tourists.
The reason, they said, was a possible terrorist plot backed by Pakistan. Now,
many Kashmiris say this was a pretext before the clampdown.
“They all lied, the governor, all of them,”
said Fayaz Ahmad, who runs a medicine shop.
Kashmiris are desperate to get information.
But with the internet out and phones and television service disrupted, space
has been created for the wildest rumors. A few small Kashmiri newspapers have
continued unbowed, putting out thin paper editions — four pages, maybe eight —
that are carefully passed hand to hand throughout the day.
Copies used to cost 3 rupees, or about 4
cents. Now they go for 50. There is no digital version.
Several people said they were feeling so
anxious that they couldn’t sleep.
“Sleep has vanished,” Mr. Ahmad said. “We
don’t trust anyone.”
One of the holiest days on the Muslim
calendar, Eid, is coming on Monday. Many families are distressed they can’t
celebrate it with out-of-town relatives — because they can’t contact them — or
go outside to purchase a sheep to sacrifice.
A herdsman in downtown Srinagar guarded a
small flock of sheep on Friday, sitting on a patch of grass, waiting for
customers who never came.
As a car carrying a reporter slowed down to
approach him, he sprang up and jogged to the window.
“We are ready to pick up guns,” he said,
unprompted.
He then glanced at a pack of soldiers across
the street and walked away.
Sameer Yasir and Suhasini Raj reported from
Srinagar and Jeffrey Gettleman from New Delhi.
