Tag: Kashmir

Why are Kashmiris voting in Indian election they’ve long boycotted? | India Election 2024 News

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Haroon Khan huddled with his friends on the lawn of a polling station in the heart of Nowhatta, a part of the city of Srinagar that is known for its anti-India sentiments. Khan had just emerged from a small room after casting his vote in the ongoing parliamentary elections in India.

For years, most people in Indian-administered Kashmir have boycotted elections, which many here have seen as attempts by New Delhi to legitimise – using democracy – its control over a region that has been a hotbed of armed rebellion against India since 1989. Rebel armed groups and separatist leaders have routinely issued boycott calls ahead of every election.

Yet, as India votes in its national elections, that voting pattern is changing. Five years after the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, abolished its statehood, and brought it under the direct control of New Delhi, 21-year-old Khan and his friends outside the polling booth chose a new form of protest: voting.

“We have not achieved anything from boycotts or choosing other means [stone pelting] of protests to express our dissent,” Khan said. “Many of my friends, neighbours are languishing in jails for years now, nobody cares for them.”

Khan is not alone.

The Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley’s three seats in the lower house of India’s parliament, the Lok Sabha, have been given three different dates for voting in the elections. Srinagar, the only city that has voted so far – on May 13 – saw a 38 percent turnout for the region. That’s the highest voting percentage since 1989. The figure stood at 14.43 percent in the last elections in 2019.

That is no endorsement of India or its policies, say voters and local politicians. Instead, they say, it is a reflection of a dramatically changed political landscape in the region that they feel has left them with no other option to show their dissent against New Delhi.

‘Choose those who can speak for us’

Kashmir is disputed by India and Pakistan, both of which claim all of it, and parts of which each controls. The South Asian neighbours have fought three wars over the Himalayan region.

Since 1989, when the armed rebellion against Indian rule broke out, tens of thousands of people have been killed. A massive Indian army presence oversees most aspects of life in the part of Kashmir controlled by the country.

Still, the special status that Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed gave it some autonomy: Outsiders could not buy land there, for instance.

The 2019 abrogation of Article 370 – the Indian constitution provision that gave that special status – changed that, and things have worsened since then, said Khan. The region’s legislative assembly has not had elections since then either, so many Kashmiris feel they have no voice at all in the policies that shape their lives.

“The purpose I voted today was to choose my local Kashmiri representative who can speak on behalf of us to India. I want my friends to be released from jails,” said Khan.

Voting for the ‘lesser evil’

For the first time in decades, separatist leaders and armed groups have not called for an election boycott – most separatist leaders are currently in jail.

Meanwhile, since the 2019 crackdown, traditionally pro-Indian parties have become vociferous critics of New Delhi. Their leaders have been arrested, and they have accused India of betraying the people of Kashmir through the abrogation of Article 370. Parties that were once treated almost as sellouts to New Delhi are now seen as potential voices of the people, according to voters and analysts.

Faheem Alam, a 38-year-old web developer who cast his ballot in Srinagar’s city centre, Lal Chowk, said his vote was for a “lesser evil”, alluding to the BJP, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, as being the “bigger evil” compared with other political parties.

“I am voting for the INDIA alliance,” he said, referring to the grouping of opposition parties that is challenging Modi’s bid to return to power for the third time in a row. “I don’t like any political party, but I am casting my vote to keep the BJP at bay.”

Modi’s recent election speeches targeting Muslims – the prime minister described them as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children” – have added to Alam’s worries.

“Kashmir is Muslim-majority, but what is happening with Muslims in other states of India is appalling. Therefore, I came out to vote to save our region from the BJP,” he said.

Mainstream Kashmiri political parties have welcomed the shift in protest strategy, from boycotts to voting. Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, the candidate of the National Conference (NC) from Srinagar, said Kashmiris had paid a price for the “criminalisation” of participation in elections over the years.

“All these years, the mainstream political parties have been discredited in Kashmir. Election participation was considered [a] sin,” Mehdi told Al Jazeera at his party headquarters in Srinagar. “Today, Kashmiris have lost their identity. We are being ruled by outsiders.”

Waheed ur Rehman Para, Mehdi’s rival from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), agreed.

“People have now realised that [their] vote is a weapon,” Parra told Al Jazeera. “Today, there is a complete silence in Kashmir. People are even afraid of talking, but by participating in the elections, they have conveyed their dissent to New Delhi’s 2019 decision.”

Since the revocation of Article 370, the Modi government has imprisoned hundreds of human rights activists, journalists and political leaders, even placing restrictions on politicians from the NC and the PDP, which swear allegiance to the Indian nation.

Some 34km (21 miles) from Srinagar, in south Kashmir’s Pulwama – once an epicentre of armed uprising against Indian rule – people were queued up at the polling booths to cast their votes last Monday.

In the last parliamentary election, the Pulwama district, which falls in the Srinagar constituency, recorded just 1 percent polling in comparison to 43.39 percent this time.

Muneeb Bashir, 20, a computer science engineering student at AMC Engineering College in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, is a first-time voter.

“We need young leaders to represent the aspirations of Kashmiri youth. The situation has changed here [in Kashmir] from boycotting days,” Bashir said, referring to fears that the BJP is trying to change the demographics of the Muslim-majority region by allowing people from other parts of India to buy land, take up jobs and settle in Kashmir.

Behind Bashir in a queue was 25-year-old Muneer Mushtaq. His reason to cast a vote for the first time was to save the “preamble” of India’s constitution, he said. That part of India’s fundamental law lays out the values at the heart of the modern Indian state – which it defines as a secular, socialist nation.

“It has been 10 years since Kashmir saw an assembly poll,” Mushtaq said, referring to the state legislature elections. “This vote is against the government of India.”

Unlike in the past, many women were also queueing up to vote.

Rukhsana, a 30-year-old voter from the village of Naira in south Kashmir, said her vote would help to release jailed youth in her village.

“There are lots of atrocities taking place in Kashmir. Our youth are jailed. I am sure if we have our people at the helm of affairs, our miseries will lessen,” she said.

Shopian, another district in southern Kashmir where armed groups have long had influence, also witnessed a 47.88 percent voter turnout compared with 2.64 percent in the 2019 general elections.

Who’s to credit? And who’s to blame?

Taking to X, Modi and Indian Home Minister Amit Shah both credited the abrogation of Article 370 for the higher voter percentage in the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency.

“Would especially like to applaud the people of Srinagar Parliamentary constituency for the encouraging turnout, significantly better than before,” Modi tweeted.

Modi reshared images posted by India’s Election Commission of long queues of voters in Srinagar.

Shah said the abrogation of Article 370 was a win for democracy in Jammu and Kashmir.

“The Modi government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 is showing results in the poll percentage as well. It has enhanced people’s trust in democracy, and its roots have deepened in J&K [Jammu and Kashmir],” Shah wrote on X.

“Through the surge in the poll percentage, the people of J&K have given a befitting reply to those who opposed the abrogation and are still advocating its restoration,” he added.

Yet, the BJP’s opponents point to the fact that the party has not fielded a candidate in any of the three Kashmir Valley constituencies – which experts say reflects their acknowledgement of the deep anger it faces in the region.

Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst, said that contrary to the BJP’s claims, it was actually “BJP-phobia” – built up also by the NC and PDP – that had made people vote in larger numbers this time than in the past.

At the same time, he pointed out, almost two-thirds of voters in Srinagar had still skipped the election, despite there being no boycott call. And the 38 percent voting percentage in the constituency is only about half of the 73 percent voting in 1984, the last national election before the armed rebellion broke out.

In Budgam’s Chadoora district, located about 14km (9 miles) from Srinagar, Inayat Yousuf, 22, cast his vote against “outsiders” taking over the reins of power in Kashmir. His worry: A giant majority for the BJP in the election could embolden it to change Kashmir in its image even more.

“The issues of development, jobs will always be there,” Yousuf said. “But this time, it is about our identity.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Why isn’t the BJP fielding a candidate in Indian-administered Kashmir? | India Election 2024 News

These are the first parliamentary elections since the Indian government revoked the region’s semiautonomy.

Voters are going to the polls in Indian-administered Kashmir.

These are the first parliamentary elections since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked the region’s partial autonomy in 2019.

The prime minister says repealing Kashmir’s special status has helped integrate it with the rest of the country.

He also says it’s brought peace and development after decades of separatist violence.

Why then has Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not nominated any candidates to contest the three seats in the Muslim-majority region?

Presenter:

Laura Kyle

Guests:

Noor Ahmad Baba – retired political science professor at the University of Kashmir

Sunil Sethi – chief spokesman for the BJP in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir

Radha Kumar – author and academic

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

New OTT Releases This Week: Rebel Moon Part 2, Article 370, All Indian Rank and More

The biggest release for this week undoubtedly has to be Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, a direct sequel to the sci-fi thriller Rebel Moon, where a group of warriors attempt to wage a war against the tyrannical Motherworld and save what is left of their home planet. Synder has already planned for four more movies from the franchise.

On the home front, Manoj Bajpayee’s sequel crime thriller Silence 2 seems to be the only new major release. However, we have Yami Gautam starrer Article 370 and Varun Grover’s All India Rank to balance. While the former is a highly political drama based in Kashmir, Grover’s latest explores the lives of JEE aspirants enrolled in Kota’s coaching centres.

However, if you are in the mood for a no-brainer, we recommend Prime Video’s reality television series Going Home with Tyler Cameron, in which the American television personality enters into the home renovation space and starts his construction and home renovation company after the sudden demise of his mother.

Those looking for something hilarious should watch British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr’s latest Netflix special, Natural Born Killer. In it, he candidly discusses the audience’s taking offence at almost everything, whether it is jokes on gun control, religion, cancel culture, or consent.

Documentary lovers could go for Our Living World on Netflix, which takes one to the hidden corners of the Arctic, Amazon, and more where wildlife exists. From the rhythm of their everyday lives to the impact of climate change, explore the best-kept secrets of nature with this documentary series.

K-drama lovers can watch Chief Detective 1958 on Hotstar, which follows a detective and his team. The crime thriller serves as a prequel to the series Chief Inspector.

New episodes are also dropping this week for Sony Liv’s courtroom drama  Raisinghani vs Raisinghani and Adrishyam – The Invisible Heroes, based on the life of intelligence officers, and historical drama Shōgun and pirate heist series Lootere on Hostar.

Top OTT Releases This Week

Here are the top OTT releases of the week worth binge-watching.

Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver

When: Now Streaming

Where: Netflix

Now that danger has re-surfaced in the form of Admiral Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), an enemy that seemed to have been defeated in Rebel Moon, Kora and other warriors must come together and wage a war against the brutal forces of the Realm. Meanwhile, the warriors and Kora are forced to face the troublesome demons of their past. While the tyranny of the Motherworld continues to unleash, albeit any traces of mercy whatsoever, unbreakable bonds are forged, heroes emerge, and legends are made.

Article 370

When: Now Streaming

Where: Netflix

Yami Gautam is essaying the role of an intelligence officer from Kashmir tasked at the Prime Minister’s office with combating terrorism and corruption in the country. As a Kashmiri Pandit and a first-hand victim of corrupt political leadership and terrorism in the valley, Gautam’s character has an emotional connection with this newly assigned duty.

The film stirred controversy because of its convenient theatrical release during the elections. The political thriller still runs in theatres in some parts of the country. The film is directed by Aditya Dhar, who earlier helmed Vicky Kaushal starrer patriotic drama Uri: The Surgical Strike.

All India Rank

When: Now Streaming

Where: Netflix

National Award-winning lyricist Varun Grover lays bare an unsettling side of the coaching centres in Kota, the mecca for all engineering enthusiasts, with the story of a 17-year-old Vivek (Bodhisattva Sharma) who has just been admitted here. He hails from a typical middle-class family, which has all their hopes of a better life thrust on his young shoulders, who are expected to crack the competitive exam with flying colours and be admitted to IIT, the most prestigious engineering college chain in India.

Grover has beautifully captured the everyday lives in these hostels and, of course, the aspirations, dreams, fears and the smallest nuances of emotional turbulences faced by the students. The film marks Grover’s directorial debut and makes a decent attempt at decoding why Kota might be a hotpot of so many students committing suicide each year.

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout

When: Now Streaming

Where: Zee5

Manoj Bajpayee reprises the role of ACP Verma from Silence in this sequel film. While he dealt with a high-profile murder case in the first part, he is at the cusp of uncovering a heinous crime racket this time, as he attempts to catch hold of a man who killed 10 people in a bar. He still quotes poetry, wears rowdiness on his sleeves, and has a complex persona. Although Bajpayee has aced the role, the film doesn’t seem to offer much opportunity for the refined actor to flaunt his talent.

See You in Another Life

When: Now Streaming

Where: Hotstar

See You in Another Life follows the story of a teenage drug peddler who ends up trafficking explosives used in the terrorist attacks across various train stations in Madrid in March 2004, causing more than 193 deaths. The intriguing thriller is based on Manuel Jabois’ book featuring an actual interview with a teenage boy called Gabriel Montoya Viday, who was also the first person convicted for the attacks. The six-episode-long mini-series attempts to explore the psyche of similar young people besides the obvious execution of the attack in totality.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Kashmir’s famous apple orchards are under attack — from a rail line | Business and Economy

Indian-administered Kashmir – Muhammad Shafi was working in his apple orchard in October last year, in Indian-administered Kashmir, when a group of men barged in and started measuring his land without asking for his approval.

When he asked the men who they were and what were they doing on his land, Shafi said their response left him stunned. They were government officials sent to mark and measure his orchard for the construction of a railway line.

“They said the land will be used to lay a railway track and a road,” Shafi, 65, told Al Jazeera at his home in the Himalayan region’s Bijbehara area of Anantnag district. “They asked us to refrain from working on our lands.”

Since the officials’ visit, Shafi’s 1,500 sq metre (16,145 sq ft) apple farm has been deserted. Buds have formed on the branches, trees are mulched and it is time to spray them with pesticides.

But Shafi cannot tend to his farm, which is now lined with two 15cm (0.5 ft) concrete poles earmarked by the authorities for the proposed 77km (48-mile) Anantnag-Bijbehara-Pahalgam railway line, one among five such projects totalling about 190km (118 miles) across the picturesque Kashmir valley.

The land to be acquired for the construction is highly fertile for growing apples, the best-known export from the region.

Kashmiris harvest apples at an orchard on the outskirts of Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, Tuesday, September 8, 2020. Kashmir’s apple orchards provide a livelihood for millions of families [Dar Yasin/AP]

‘Apple bowl of Kashmir’

Apple farming is the largest employment generator in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, with nearly 3.5 million farmers – 27 percent of the region’s population – involved in growing the fruit, whose export contributes more than 8 percent to the region’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The apple growers say they have invested their entire lives – and their limited resources – in raising the orchards, only for them to be forcefully taken away by the authorities. Shafi’s orchard effectively belongs to the government now, an acquisition he did not sign up for.

Many residents said that government survey teams came to measure their orchards accompanied by police and security forces – in effect to prevent any meaningful resistance from farmers. “We are not even allowed to protest or raise our voice,” said Shafi. “We are helpless.”

Wamiq* from southern Kashmir’s Shopian district said he received a notice from the government on February 23, which said that his 5,000 sq metre (54,000 sq ft) apple orchard would be taken over by the government to construct a railway line.

Still, many Kashmiri farmers have taken to street protests since the land acquisition began. At one such protest in Shopian, known as the “apple bowl of Kashmir”, Wamiq said the farmers had little option but to fight for their land.

“There is already a dearth of job opportunities and now they are depriving us from the only means we have. We don’t have any other skill, we don’t know how to survive without this and no money would compensate [for] the loss,” the 25-year-old said.

“We will anyway die of starvation if they take our land, so it is better to die while fighting for our land,’’ he added.

Residents of Reshipora in Shopian stage a protest, wearing shrouds to reiterate their demand for the return of their land allocated for the proposed railway line, on April 2, 2024 [Faisal Bashir/Al Jazeera]

Connectivity boon and fears

To be sure, Kashmiris have long sought better connectivity. The Kashmir valley region has one national highway that often gets blocked by landslides and falling rocks during inclement weather in summer and snow during the winter, disconnecting it from the rest of the country, sometimes for days.

Three decades ago, in the mid-1990s, the Indian government began a railway project in several phases, to end that dependence on the highway. This project is expected to be completed by August and will for the first time connect Kashmir to the rest of India through an all-weather rail line.

Last year, the Indian government approved a project to extend this rail initiative further, within Kashmir. The move could help improve transport within Kashmir.

But many Kashmiris say the construction of the railway line would mean acquiring nearly 278 hectares (686 acres) of highly fertile lands, most of which are home to apple orchards.

Shamshada Akhtar, a farmer in Anantnag, is among those who may soon lose their orchard. “We spent ample money raising the orchard – the labour costs, fertilisers, pesticides every year for more than 12 years… For what? Only to let authorities take it away on some meagre compensation,” the 43-year-old said.

Officials have not disclosed details of the compensation that would be paid but many growers say they do not want the money.

“One-time compensation is not going to feed us forever. The orchards are not only the source of livelihood for us but for our future generations,” said Akhtar. “This is an emotion for growers like us.”

The fear of losing land – and livelihoods – among residents in Indian-administered Kashmir is compounded by distrust of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which in 2019 scrapped the region’s special semi-autonomous status and brought it under the direct control of New Delhi.

The government claimed the move would bring peace, speed up investment and create more jobs in the country’s largest Muslim-majority region, which for decades has been the site of a bloody rebellion against Indian rule and in which tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians, have been killed.

Now there are rumours, said Shafi, that the land taken over for railway projects will be used primarily to improve connectivity to a Hindu pilgrimage site in Pahalgam, a famous tourist resort in the Anantnag district.

Altaf Thakur, a regional spokesman for the BJP, rejected those rumours. The railway lines, he said, “will be used by all the people throughout the year and no religious colour should be given to it”.

A paramilitary soldier stands guard inside a railway station before the flagging off of the first electric train in the Kashmir valley on the outskirts of Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on February 20, 2024 [Dar Yasin/AP]

‘Neither needed nor wanted’

Then there are ecological concerns as well. Some experts believe the railway lines will reduce forest cover, posing a threat to the local economy and ecology.

Kashmiri environmentalist Raja Muzaffar Bhat told Al Jazeera the authorities should instead “put in efforts to save the land instead of using it for construction purposes”.

“The main railway connection was much-needed but the railway lines through Shopian, Anantnag and other districts require ample trees to be cut, which will put the livelihoods of lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of people in the region at stake,” he said.

Bhat argued the land acquisition is also a violation of a law implemented in 2019 that guaranteed fair compensation, transparency and rehabilitation for those affected by such infrastructure projects. “It’s a democratic law in which you have to consult every stakeholder before acquiring any land,” he said. “Without taking the locals into confidence, putting concrete poles on the land without any notice is unlawful.”

But BJP spokesman Thakur dismissed the charge that laws have been violated. “This step has been taken after taking the environmental factors into consideration and after consulting all stakeholders in the region,” he told Al Jazeera.

When asked about allegations of land grabs by the government to expand the railways, he said: “At this moment, I don’t know what people want but for these railway projects, some land would be needed and some trees will be cut during the process. So we all should wholeheartedly welcome this development in the region.”

Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, said infrastructure projects “seen as more innocuous” before 2019 are now regarded by the Kashmiris “with more suspicion”.

“Especially given that for many in Kashmir, it’s not a lack of development that concerns the local residents but more so, the level of control of the government in New Delhi,” he said. “For many in Kashmir, it’s a case of New Delhi bringing in more of what is neither needed nor wanted.”

Kugelman said that there is “no reason to believe” that locals would have problems with temporary visitors, such as the pilgrims or the tourists. “The concern is more about the potential for new investors and other residents that plan to come for the long haul – and what that may mean in terms of longer-term social and demographic implications.”

Meanwhile, at Bijbehara, Shafi, a father of four, said he initially worked as a labourer in others’ apple orchards to feed his family until he was able to buy a farm for himself. He said the trees he worked on for nearly a decade have finally started bearing apples, fetching the family about 500,000 rupees (about $6,000) annually.

Now, he rarely visits his orchard. “It distresses me each time I see my orchard, the budding flowers on trees,” he said as tears well up in his eyes.

“It haunts me to even think about how I would be able to provide a livelihood to my children.”

*One farmer’s name has been changed at his request because of fears of retribution from the government.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

India’s Modi to visit Kashmir, first since special status scrapped in 2019 | Narendra Modi News

The visit comes ahead of India’s national election due by May, the first since the region lost its autonomy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will shortly hold a rally in the main city of Indian-administrated Kashmir, his first visit since the disputed region’s semi-autonomy was scrapped in 2019.

Modi’s government stripped the Muslim-majority territory of its special constitutional status, splitting the former state into two territories – Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir – directly ruled from New Delhi. Inherited protections on land and jobs given to the Indigenous residents were also removed.

The move, widely welcomed across India, angered many in the densely militarised territory. Rebels in the Himalayan region have waged a rebellion since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan, which controls a smaller part of the Kashmir region and, like India, claims it in full.

On Thursday, thousands of armed police and paramilitary forces in flak jackets were deployed, and new checkpoints were set up across Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city Srinagar, where the Hindu nationalist leader is scheduled to address a public gathering at about 2pm (08:30 GMT) local time.

The forces laid razor wire and erected checkpoints as they patrolled all the roads leading to the football stadium where Modi will speak. They randomly frisked residents and searched vehicles while navy commandos in motorboats patrolled the Jhelum river that snakes through the city.

“Various development works will also be dedicated to the nation,” Modi said in a statement on social media platform X ahead of the visit, including programmes “boosting the agro-economy” as well as tourism.

A government statement said Modi will also inaugurate infrastructure around the revered Muslim shrine of Hazratbal.

Thursday’s event is seen as part of Modi’s campaign ahead of national election scheduled in April and May, the first since the region lost its autonomy. The last election for the region’s legislative assembly was held in 2014.

Modi’s government claims New Delhi’s direct rule of Kashmir brought about a new era of “peace and development” in the region, but critics and many residents say it heralded a drastic curtailment of civil liberties and press freedom.

Most schools in the city are shut for the day, and the authorities have called on government employees to attend the rally.

Omar Abdullah, a former chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, accused the government of organising buses to bring in crowds to attend the rally, alleging that “almost none” would be attending willingly.

“Government employees are being herded at five am in sub-zero temperatures into vehicles … ferrying them to the PM’s rally,” Mehbooba Mufti, another former chief minister of the region, posted on X.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan re-arrested days after release | Media News

Aasif Sultan, a former editor of Kashmir Narrator magazine, has been re-arrested under ‘anti-terror’ law days, two days after his release following five years in jail.

A Kashmiri journalist, who was released after spending more than five years in jail earlier this week, has been re-arrested by police in another case under India’s stringent “anti-terror” law, according to his lawyer.

Aasif Sultan, 36, has been sent to a five-day police remand after he was produced in a court in the city of Srinagar on Friday, Adil Abdullah Pandit, Sultan’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Pandit said that Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case regarding violence inside the central jail in Srinagar under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which international rights groups have described as a “draconian” law. Srinagar is the largest city and summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Rights activists have said getting bail under a UAPA case is nearly impossible, which means Sultan could stay in jail without trial indefinitely.

The case is related to “the sections of rioting, unlawful assembly, endangering human life, attempt to murder under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 13 of UAPA for advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity”, according to the lawyer.

At the time of the violence, Sultan was already lodged in jail. The riots inside the jail had erupted over a move by authorities to shift prisoners to jails outside Indian-administered Kashmir. Hundreds of Kashmiris have been lodged in jails in other parts of India, making it difficult for families to meet their relatives.

‘Harbouring militants’

Sultan worked as an assistant editor for a Srinagar-based English magazine, Kashmir Narrator, which is now defunct, when he was arrested in September 2018 on allegations of “harbouring militants”.

His family has denied the allegations, saying he was being targeted for his work as a journalist.

On February 27 he was released from a jail in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh about 1,400km (870 miles) away.

But the brief joy for his family in Batamaloo locality in Srinagar turned into grief on Thursday when Sultan was re-arrested.

“He saw his five-and-half-year-old daughter for the first time since his 2018 arrest. His daughter is asking about him and we don’t know how long this fight can be,” one of Sultan’s relatives told Al Jazeera on the conditions of anonymity, referring to the difficulty in securing bail under the UAPA.

“He looked very weak and wanted to rest. His blood pressure was also unstable. When we asked the police, they said he was accused in another case.”

Sultan was able to secure bail in the 2018 case in April 2022, when a court said that investigation agencies had failed to establish his links with any armed group. There has been an armed rebellion in Kashmir against Indian rule since the 1980s.

But authorities immediately charged him under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a law under which a person can be jailed for up to two years, without a trial. Amnesty International has termed it a “lawless law”.

Sultan’s release on Tuesday came more than two months after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashed his detention order under the PSA.

Laxmi Murthy, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, an organisation that advocates freedom of expression, said, “The re-arrest of Aasif Sultan is another example of ‘lawfare’ or the (mis)use and overuse of draconian laws to harass journalists.”

“Since the process is punishment, Aasif Sultan will have to spend the next few years of his life proving his innocence.”

Since India scrapped Kashmir’s special status in 2019 and imposed central rule, authorities have cracked down on free speech under which multiple journalists and activists have been arrested — mostly under “anti-terror” laws such as the UAPA.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Ahead of election, tension brews in Kashmir over tribal caste quotas | Indigenous Rights

Tral, Indian-administered Kashmir – Like many people from his nomadic tribal community, Bashir Ahmed Gujjar, a 70-year-old shepherd, never went to school.

Poor and often on the move, formal education was not an option.

Things changed for the Gujjars, his community, after the government introduced quotas for what are known in India as Scheduled Tribes (STs), in state-run educational institutions and government jobs in 1991 as part of an affirmative action programme for historically marginalised groups. Gujjars were included in the beneficiaries.

Families decided to send their children to school and college. “My children, my nieces and nephews have all been fortunate enough to have received education because of the ST status bestowed on us by the government,” Bashir told Al Jazeera at his home in the region’s Pulwama district. He said his niece now works as a teacher in a government school in Tral because of the job quotas that Gujjars can avail.

Now, he fears the next generation of his community could lose out on those gains of the past three decades.

Earlier this month on February 6, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government passed a legal amendment to include another community, the Paharis, within the list of STs. At the time, federal Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda said the law would not erode the education and job quotas currently available for existing tribes — but would add additional quotas for new communities.

But the government is yet to explain how it plans to do that, leading to fears among the Gujjars and Bakarwals, two major tribal communities originally covered by the affirmative action, that they will now need to split their benefits with the Paharis who have historically been seen as better off.

“We have no hope for the future. The government is giving our share of guarantees to others,” Bashir said.

The government move has sparked a wave of protests by Gujjar and Bakerwal community groups, demanding that the amendment be repealed. The move has also spawned caste divisions in a region already on the edge over other controversial moves by the Modi government in recent years.

The decision to add Paharis to the list of STs could affect the national elections, expected to be held between March and May.

‘Using reservation to sway Paharis’

The Paharis consist of Hindus and Sikhs – who mostly migrated from what is now Pakistan when the subcontinent was carved up during partition in 1947 –  and a significant number of Muslims.

Constituting about 8 percent of the region’s 16 million people, nearly two-thirds of Paharis live in the Jammu area towards the south of Indian-administered Kashmir, while a few reside in forests in the north.

The current tensions are rooted in the events of 2019 when, in a sudden move, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government abolished the special status of the region and brought it under New Delhi’s direct rule.

Since then, the Gujjars and Bakarwals allege that the BJP has been trying to induct the Paharis into the ST category.

India’s affirmative action to uplift its historically marginalised groups – mainly underprivileged castes and Indigenous tribes – also includes a provision to reserve seats for them in legislative assemblies.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, also referred to as Jammu and Kashmir in official documents, state assembly seats for the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities were reserved in 2004.

Members of these two communities – who form about 10 percent of the region’s population – now allege that the BJP is trying to patronise the Paharis community for political benefits ahead of the general election.

A Gujjar settlement with houses made of mud and stones in Tral [Tarushi Aswani/Al Jazeera]

More than 200km (124 miles) away from Tral, in Jammu, Javid Chohan, another Gujjar, said the government was trying to curb protests through a heightened police presence and internet blackouts.

“The BJP is using reservation to sway the region’s Pahari-speaking population to strengthen its Hindu vote bank in Jammu,” he told Al Jazeera. Unlike the Paharis, the Gujjars and Bakarwals of the region are predominantly Muslim.

Pro-India political parties also allege that the BJP is using the community to peddle its politics, like it did with its promise in its 2014 and 2019 election manifestos to resettle thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, called Pandits, displaced by the rise of an anti-India rebel movement in the late 1980s.

“First, they used Kashmiri Pandits to win the 2019 election. This time, the Paharis are being politicised. The BJP is pitting communities who have lived in harmony for centuries against each other,” Waheed Ur Rehman Para of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), told Al Jazeera. “They are stealing from one’s plate to feed the other.”

Naik Alam, an elected representative of the Gutroo village in Tral, said the BJP was “simply misusing” law to show that Hindus can also get a reservation in a Muslim-majority region.

A tribal Gujjar woman sits with her child outside their house in Tral [Tarushi Aswani/Al Jazeera]

What’s the BJP’s election game plan?

In the 90-member legislative assembly in Indian-administered Kashmir, the BJP, which predominantly relies on Hindu votes, has traditionally done well in the Jammu region, where Hindus are in the majority. But it has struggled to make political inroads in the Kashmir region, where Muslims are in majority.

Spanning Jammu and Kashmir are nine seats in the legislature that are reserved for STs. Critics of the BJP argue that winning these could help it secure an overall majority in the legislature: The state assembly elections are also expected to be held later this year.

In 2020, the federal government granted 4 percent reservation, as a linguistic minority, to the Paharis, who form the majority in at least 10 constituencies. If given the ST status, the group could contest the seats reserved for STs in the legislature and challenge the traditional dominance of Gujjars and Bakarwals in these sets. Gujjars and Bakarwals are predominantly Muslims, who rarely vote for the BJP.

Gujjar activist Guftar Ahmed Choudhary said the BJP’s move would backfire.

“We are protesting for our rights. Our youth leaders are being targeted and even pressured by the authorities to give up the movement… This is completely unconstitutional and the BJP will suffer in the coming elections,” Choudhary told Al Jazeera.

A protest by the Gujjars and Bakarwals in Srinagar [Courtesy of Gujjar-Bakerwal Youth Welfare Conference]

But according to BJP’s Kavinder Gupta, a former deputy chief minister of the region, reservations for the Paharis were long due. He alleged that Kashmiri political parties regarded the community as second-class citizens and ignored their development.

“We were only trying to bring the Paharis into the mainstream since they have always been sidelined by the Kashmiris,” Gupta told Al Jazeera.

Lawyer Ahsan Mirza, a member of the Pahari Tribe ST Forum, a group working for the welfare of the Paharis, said the community had been previously assured by the BJP of a place in the tribal quota.

Iqbal Hussain Shah, another Pahari activist in the Jammu district of Rajouri, echoed Gupta’s comments to argue that the Paharis were discriminated against for decades. He also suggested that even Muslim Paharis would now back the BJP, a Hindu-majority party.

“Gujjars and Bakerwals got the ST status in 1991 and the BJP got us this status finally, after three decades. All Paharis will definitely support the BJP in the upcoming election,” he said.

But Zahid Parwaz Choudhary, the head of the Gujjar-Bakarwal Youth Welfare Conference, sees a more sinister plan on the part of the BJP.

“Now that Paharis are declared as STs, the community would eat into the opportunities aimed at the social and economic empowerment of the Gujjars and Bakarwals,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It is simple: BJP knows it cannot secure many votes in Kashmir, so they are using the Paharis to cut the vote share of other political parties.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Where ‘love transcends language’: Kashmir’s silent village | Health

Dadkhai, Jammu and Kashmir, India – Dressed in their finest shalwar-kameez and sporting well-trimmed moustaches, a group of men deliberate over the terms of a dowry, as the women prepare halwa with dried fruit and a pot of traditional, salty Kashmiri tea, in the adjacent kitchen.

In the modest home of Muhammad Sharief in Dadhkai, a tiny community nestled high in the Himalayan mountains, the two families have gathered to plan the upcoming marriage of Reshma Sharief, 19, and Mukhtar Ahmed, 22.

Muhammad Sharief, 40, the father of the bride, waits patiently as the men continue their discussions. They ultimately agree upon a dowry of $1,200 in cash, plus a few gold ornaments. The elder men murmur prayers as sweet treats are brought out from the kitchen. The home’s rough-cut wooden roof, mud floor and bright walls, coloured in pink and green, hum with the sounds of celebration.

But while the two families have followed all the customary nuptial rules, this marriage will be far from ordinary: Both the bride and groom, like dozens of others in their village, are deaf-mute.

Misra Begum and Muhammad Sharief, the parents of the bride, sit in front of the groom’s father, Ghulam Khan, after the marriage-fixing ceremony has finished [Sharafat Ali/Al Jazeera]

The condition has spanned generations of Dadhkai since the first case was recorded more than a century ago. Whenever a marriage takes place, thoughts inevitably turn towards the day the new couple has children. Even when the parents are not deaf-mute, there is always a fear that their children will be.

“We confront this fear with unwavering faith, bravely pushing it back into the shadows,” says Muhammad Hanief, the village head attending the festivities at the Sharief household.

Throughout the celebration, the bride-to-be remains in the kitchen, adhering to the traditional conservative values of her Gujjar ethnic group. Her fiance attends to the guests, helping to serve food as family members offer their congratulations.

Alam Hussain, 63, is one of the oldest deaf-mute people in the village community of Dadkhai – and the only one of his family with the condition [Sharafat Ali/Al Jazeera]

Outside in the courtyard, villager Alam Hussain, an elderly man with a white beard, deep wrinkles and a skinny build, quietly tends to a herd of cattle. At 63, he is among the oldest deaf-mute people in the village, and the only one in his family with the condition.

“I don’t remember how many deaf-mute people there were during my childhood; memory betrays me in my old age,” Hussain says, pointing an index figure to his head while shaking his other hand in the air, conveying his struggle with memory loss.

He communicates through a sign-language interpreter: his neighbour, Shah Muhammad, who treats Hussain with respect and deference, pointing to the high esteem in which elders in this community are held.

But Hussain, who is unmarried, spends much of his time alone. The only work he finds is in the summer, when he takes cattle out to graze. In the past, he says, it was particularly challenging for deaf-mute villagers to find a partner. As the number of people unable to hear or speak has grown over the years, the social landscape in Dadhkai has shifted.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Panic as Kashmir ‘survey’ seeks personal details, links with alleged rebels | Police News

Muhammad Shadab had gone to pray in his neighbourhood mosque in Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar when he was given a questionnaire by the mosque’s management.

The questionnaire was part of a so-called survey by the disputed region’s police, seeking his personal details, including phone numbers of family members, possible links to armed rebels, records of foreign visits or a member settled abroad, and even the number of CCTV cameras at home.

Other details the residents were asked to record in the survey last month included their Aadhaar – or unique identity card – number, the number of vehicles they owned, and specifics on the exact location of their house, including streets and landmarks.

Shadab, 55, told Al Jazeera he had been panicking since he was handed the questionnaire. “I couldn’t believe I had to provide such extensive details – even of my female family members,” said the former government employee now running his own business.

“It was intriguing for all, even for the mosque committee members. They were instructed [by the police] to distribute the forms, collect them from us, and submit the filled-in documents within a week.”

The questionnaire, accessed by Al Jazeera, was circulated in Srinagar and other areas of the region. Many other residents said officers in plain clothes came to their houses with the document, asking them to fill it and submit it to the nearest police station at the earliest opportunity.

Another layer of surveillance

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is split between India and Pakistan, which rule over parts of the territory but claim it in its entirety. The two nuclear powers have fought three of their four wars over the territory.

After a popular anti-India rebellion broke out in Indian-administered Kashmir in the late 1980s, New Delhi deployed nearly 700,000 troops to suppress the movement, making the region one of the world’s most militarised conflict zones. The military-to-civilian ratio in the region stands at one soldier for 30 residents, according to a 2020 study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the decades-old conflict, most of them civilians, while there are widespread allegations of torture, arbitrary detentions and denial of basic rights by the Indian security forces.

Surveillance has been a major component of India’s strategy in Indian-administered Kashmir, which has only intensified, especially since 2019 when New Delhi scrapped the region’s partial autonomy and brought it under its direct control.

Hundreds of security checkpoints are spread across the region to monitor people’s movements. Technology has helped authorities widen the surveillance infrastructure, with hundreds of high-tech cameras with facial recognition features installed in several cities and even villages.

Security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, emboldened by laws such as the Armed Forced Special Powers Act (AFSPA) or the Public Safety Act, enjoy general impunity in the conflict zone as they carry out raids and arrests, or single out Kashmiris, mostly young men, on the streets for random checks.

Since India penalised dissent and cracked down on protests against its 2019 move, even critical social media posts have invoked scrutiny by security agencies.

Government employees have been instructed to desist from criticising the state on social media or risk dismissal. In 2022, police warned the region’s shopkeepers of penal action if they failed to install round-the-clock CCTV cameras outside their shops and share footage with police when demanded.

‘Psyops to create deliberate panic’

However, residents say the ongoing police survey adds another layer of surveillance by broadening the information demanded by the government.

Additionally, there is no clarity on how the police intend to store and process the collected personal data, exacerbating apprehensions of misuse and possible breaches.

Shadab’s 28-year-old daughter, a banker who “unwillingly” provided her details in the questionnaire, said she was in disbelief over the exercise.

“What details are left to be asked? It plays with your psychology. You feel helpless,” she told Al Jazeera.

The Peoples Democratic Party, a pro-India political party in the region, said it was concerned over the survey, calling it an “alarming development” and an “assault on the identity of ordinary Kashmiris”.

However, a senior police officer in Indian-administered Kashmir, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the survey was being misrepresented in the media.

“Police rules as enshrined in Jammu and Kashmir Police Rules Manual warrant this kind of census. This data compilation is not about terrorism but routine crime, too. This exercise was conducted in the past, too,” he told Al Jazeera.

Quoting government sources, some Indian media reports said the details of the residents were being collected to “minimise damages to property and protect the locals” in case of a gun battle with rebels.

“The form will ensure that the police and security forces have the precise details,” said a report in the Hindu newspaper, adding that the army also conducts such exercises.

Rights activist Ravi Nair, of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, told Al Jazeera the survey by the Kashmir police is a “dead giveaway”.

“The deep state is doing a mapping exercise for intrusive surveillance … The process violates the privacy rights of every Kashmiri citizen,” he said, adding that the move should be challenged in court.

Mohamad Junaid, who teaches anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, said the so-called census “acts as psyops to create deliberate panic” among the Kashmiris.

“No contextual information or reasons are provided by the agencies involved in it, or even whether they have any legal authority to carry out a census, especially since there is already an official census in place,” he told Al Jazeera.

Junaid said in a world where laws are meant to protect citizens, such a move would be considered illegal. “But, of course, Kashmiris have no such protections.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

‘Clear threat’: Kashmiris on India top court upholding removal of autonomy | Demographics News

People in Indian-administered Kashmir have reacted with fear and anger to a Supreme Court judgement upholding the government’s decision to remove the partial autonomy of India’s only Muslim-majority region.

For most residents, fears of a demographic change triggered by the 2019 decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government are slowly becoming reality.

“There’s now a clear threat to the people in Kashmir,” Irshad Ahmad, a university student from the region’s main city of Srinagar, told Al Jazeera.

“Over the last four years, they [the government] passed contentious laws which include laws to serve residency permits to the non-Kashmiris. Now, Indians would be able to purchase land in the disputed territory,” the 25-year-old student said.

More crucially, Ahmad said, the government has “changed the entire architecture of laws in Kashmir”, including doing away with progressive laws related to its Indigenous people and replacing them with a policy aimed at disempowering local residents.

“At the same time, they have retained draconian preventive detention laws, so clearly, Kashmiris have the right to be cynical about whatever the Indian government wishes to do here,” he said.

A Kashmiri man at a market in Srinagar on Monday when the top court verdict came [Mukhtar Khan/AP]

Another resident said he had never felt more hopeless.

“I have seen all the ups and downs in Kashmir, but the situation was never like this,” he told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity, adding that people have “accepted everything as their fate now”.

“We don’t even know what else will change in the future,” he said.

What happened in 2019

In August 2019, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government stripped Indian-administered Kashmir of its special status, which allowed it a separate constitution and inherited protections on land and jobs under Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution.

The unexpected move dissolved the elected state legislature, divided the disputed region into two federal territories – Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir – to bring them under New Delhi’s direct control. It was the first time in India’s history that a full state was downgraded to federal territory status.

The move was followed by an unprecedented months-long security clampdown in one of the world’s most militarised regions, where an armed anti-India rebellion has been raging since the late 1980s.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, both of whom claim it in its entirety after their independence from British rule in 1947. The nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours have fought three of their four full-scale wars over the territory.

Since its inception in the 1980s, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had made scrapping Indian-administered Kashmir’s special status one of its key planks to consolidate its nationalist constituency. It saw the region’s partial autonomy as an affront to its vision of a unified – and ethnic Hindu – state.

On August 5, 2019, less than three months after Modi returned to power with a larger majority in parliament, his government passed a law in parliament, scrapping the special status of the region, defending it as a move that would bring peace and development.

But the government’s unilateral move, which many legal experts said was illegal, was challenged by the region’s pro-India political parties and other Kashmiri groups and individuals in the Supreme Court, which gave its verdict on Monday.

The court upheld the BJP’s 2019 move. Its five-judge bench, led by Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud, called Article 370 “a temporary provision” and declared its removal was constitutionally valid.

The top court said the government’s move was “a culmination of the process of integration and as such is a valid exercise of power”. It ordered the restoration of the region’s statehood “at the earliest and as soon as possible” and legislative assembly elections to be held by September 30.

Modi called the court’s judgement “a beacon of hope”. He said on X, formerly Twitter, that it brought “a promise of a brighter future and a testament to our collective resolve to build a stronger, more united India”.

‘Existential threat’

Ahead of the top court’s verdict, security agencies in Indian-administered Kashmir took extensive measures to avoid mass protests.

The police asked people to desist from sharing “provocative content” on social media. Several pro-India politicians in the region said they were put under house arrest, a charge denied by regional authorities.

Unexpectedly, the Supreme Court’s verdict was marked by a profound silence in the valley, where an environment of fear has prevailed since the 2019 move.

Many residents expressed little confidence in the Supreme Court’s willingness to challenge the government’s decision.

“For us Kashmiris, the special status was not just a legal issue but the question of our identity, our existence. Its loss has created an existential threat for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, especially the Kashmiri Muslims,” Muhammad Numan, a 45-year-old businessman in Baramulla, told Al Jazeera.

“There have been ongoing efforts to assimilate the Muslim character of this place into a majority Hindu state. With the court’s approval, such efforts would gather pace now,” he said.

An Indian policeman stands guard near a cutout portrait of Modi in Srinagar [Mukhtar Khan/AP]

The region’s political parties, who had pinned their hopes on the top court, also condemned the verdict.

“This is not our defeat but the defeat of the idea of India,” said Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, as the region is officially called in India.

‘Kashmir’s colonised condition’

Kashmiri journalist Anuradha Bhasin, who wrote the book A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370, told Al Jazeera that Kashmiris have lost faith in India’s democracy after the 2019 decision.

“What Article 370 protected were the privileges of the permanent residents related to jobs, land and business investments. Young people now fear that jobs and admissions in higher education will be shared with people from outside and they will be unable to compete,” she said.

Bhasin said people from outside Kashmir are already investing in businesses in the region.

“In due course of time, there are fears and threats of changing the demography of the place, and these threats are more pronounced also because BJP, which is in power, has for years talked about changing the demography of Kashmir as a way to resolve the dispute.”

Mohamad Junaid, who teaches anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States, told Al Jazeera the Indian government has failed to uphold the interests of the people of Kashmir.

“Kashmiris have been forcibly silenced, but people know if the Indian government wasn’t crushing them under military control and repressive laws, their response would be the same as those whose sovereignty has been denied or stolen,” he said.

“Those few in Kashmir who hoped that the Supreme Court would protect their interests are probably feeling the weight of the reality of Kashmir’s colonised condition.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version