Paying tributes to all the slain militants, Jama’at appealed to the UN and other international human rights bodies to “take effective steps against the forces involved in these human rights violations and file a criminal case in the International Court of Justice against these brutal forces personnel for violating the most precious human rights and committing war crimes in Kashmir.”
(Source: risingkashmir.com/news/jei-urges-world-community-to-safeguard-civilian-rights-in-kashmir-335985.html)

This is how Jama’at-e-Islami J&K seeks to mislead the Muslim youths while at the same time misinforming the international bodies, particularly the United Nations. Propelling the Kashmir issue into the religious antagonism is precisely how the militant ideologues have swayed a section of Kashmiri youth.

In fact, the false narrative of victimhood and the psyche of retaliation spread by religious fanatics among the valley’s emotional and angry youths are catastrophic. Therefore, today’s generation in Kashmir is going haywire, choosing death over degrees and education, hitting the streets, injuring and killing the police personnel and getting themselves injured and killed.

The masters of militancy in Kashmir seem to have organised themselves, with local youth spearheading a pernicious and dangerous revival of extremism. According to the reports, there are around 300 militants in Valley. But what is most shocking is the emergence of the well-educated and urbane militant youths aspiring for death over degrees.

A new and more virulent form of militancy has unfolded in Jammu & Kashmir. It has shifted from the cauldron of the gullible and semi-literate youths to the academic arena including even the PhD scholars.

Among the well-educated militants was a young PhD scholar, Manan Bashir Wani who quit his doctorate in Allied Geology and joined the militant ranks in January this year. Recently, he got killed in an encounter which encounter broke out at Shartgund Bala village in Handwara. Tellingly, Manan came from the area where one of the top ulema of Deoband, Allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri was born. He is considered an authoritative Indian Islamic theologian of the 20th century for his notable exegetical contributions in classical Islamic sciences, particularly in the Hadith.
Mannan’s village is adjacent to that of Shah Faesal, the first Kashmiri IAS topper who is seen as source of inspiration for many Muslim Civil Services aspirants. But one wonders what indoctrinated Mannan into choosing militancy over the scholarly path of late Anwar Shah or the cotemporary youth icon Shah Faisal! Clearly, the rebellious Muslim youths appear unmindful of the dangerous turn that the extremism has taken in Kashmir. A utopian death cult bred by the foreign interests and inspired by the radical jihadist outfits in Pakistan in particular and the Middle East in general has held the pluralistic Islamic tradition in Kashmir hostage. What the political leaders fail to do is wean away the youth from this nihilistic path. They actually lack the ideas on how to combat the pernicious ideology of the jihadists.

Recently, ahead of the urban local body (ULB) polls in Jammu and Kashmir, Governor Satya Pal Malik averred that 225 militants who are active in the state, must realise their efforts will achieve nothing. “The LTTE was ten times stronger than you (militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir). They were supported by 12 countries. They got nothing, and you will also get nothing by violence,” he said. But this proved to be nothing short of an optimistic remark on the fate of militancy. It has had no effect on those believing in an ‘armed struggle’ as an integral part of their religious conviction. As a result, more and more educated and urbane youths seem to join the militant ranks, as they held funeral prayers for the slain militants.

Remember the death of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in mid-2016 whose funeral prayer set off a fresh wave of militancy in the valley. Similarly, the funeral prayer for the slain PhD scholar-turned-militant is seen as call for fresh recruitments into militancy.

Though the educated youth joining militancy is not an isolated incident in Kashmir, it has gained momentum during the recent days. Just like the PhD scholar Manan Wani, Sabzar Ahmad was another research scholar-turned-militant. He was rather an IAS aspirant. Going by his family’s statement, he was preparing for the civil services exams and had joined Jamia Milia Islamia in PhD program before he joined the militancy in 2016. Before joining the militant ranks, he had completed his M. Phil. from Jivagee University in Gwalior, M.Sc. from Barkatulla University in Bhopal, Bachelors in Education and B.Sc. from Government Degree College in Anantnag, as widely reported in the media.

According to a senior police official posted in south Kashmir, a number of militants have engineering background while some others are graduates. There are scholars in their ranks as well. The list includes even an assistant professor from Ganderbal, Muhammad Rafi Bhat who was recently killed in an encounter in Pulwama. More to the point, Zakir Moosa, the current chief of Al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Kashmir Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind was also an engineering student. Even the present operational chief of Hizb Riyaz Naikoo is a non-medical graduate. Similarly, Eisa Fazili from Srinagar, Syed Owais Shafi from Kokernang and Aabid Nazir from Shopian were all counted as brilliant students of bright future. But they joined the militant ranks and ruined their promising life and educational career.

The pace with which the educated youth joined militancy surprised even the terror groups and their ideologies. Recently, for the first time in the three-decade militancy in Kashmir, the United Jehad Council (UJC) led by a US-designated global terrorist, Syed Salah-ud-Din, has appealed to Kashmiri youths to “stay away” from armed struggle and concentrate on studies. Similarly, in his statement on October 13, Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen chief Sheikh Jameel-ur-Rehman said: “I appeal to the students to concentrate on studies first and stay away from the armed struggle. The militant commanders should also desist from giving training to budding students”. In this statement which was e-mailed to local news agencies, he said students were “our valuable asset,” and if they don’t concentrate on studies, then “those pro-India elements will find it easy to stretch the period of our subjugation.”

Notably, Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen drew its cadre mainly from Alh-e-Hadith school of thought. Though it had vanished from the militancy landscape in the region, it has made a comeback in 2015 when another well-educated and qualified youth, Mughees Ahmad Mir of Parimpora joined the outfit. He, along with a number of rebels paid allegiance to the Islamic State and thus they have been killed in gunfights with forces during the past 12 to 18 months. An Urdu banner by the militants which appeared for the first time in valley near the residence of Mughees Ahmad Mir, read:
“Mughees Bhai Ka Ek Paigham….Kashmir Banega Darul Islam” (Mughees conveys only one message; Kashmir will become the ‘abode of Islam’). This slogan was written boldly on the banner. It also carried al-Qaeda insignia and images of Osama bin Laden and separately Mughees with a gun in his hand and his month-old son on his lap, as Srinagar-based Kashmiri journalist Ahmed Ali Fayyaz reported in The Quint.
thequint.com/news/al-qaeda-isis-show-signs-in-kashmir-valley

This is a brief account of how the studious Kashmiri youths abandoned their studies to join the militant ranks and got killed. But the crucial question is: Who are the ideologues who approach the university students and even research scholars and influence them to the extent that they agree to choose death over degrees? We must find concrete answers to these questions: how do the Kashmiri students and research scholars turn into militants? Do they make a sudden decision or does someone brainwash them slowly, steadily? And most importantly, what are the effective ways to weed out these underground brainwashers.

Regular Columnist with Newageislam.com, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a classical Islamic scholar and English-Arabic-Urdu writer. He has graduated from a leading Islamic seminary of India, acquired Diploma in Qur’anic sciences and Certificate in Uloom ul Hadith from Al-Azhar Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Courtesy: http://newageislam.com/
 

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Managed by a group of eight unemployed youth, YouTube channel ‘Kashmiri Kalkharabs’ is the first such channel in Jammu and Kashmir to have received a ‘Silver Button’, which, the California-based video-sharing firm gives as a token of appreciation for having crossed 100,000 subscribers.

The Kashmiri Kalkharabs

With an aim to make people laugh in the conflict-ridden Valley, the members of the channel themselves act and self-produce small humorous videos on different themes concerning daily life in Kashmir.

“In a conflict zone like Kashmir there is a need of humour since most of the people are under depression, we try to make them feel good by our videos,” Parveez Ahmad Bhat, founder of the channel, told TwoCircles.net.

Hailing from Panzinara, a sub-urban area nearly 15 kilometres away from Lal Chowk, Srinagar, the youngsters enact in the typical local getup. They create small humorous videos in the Kashmiri language. Most of the videos have a social message. “I started this channel a year ago,” said 26-year-old Parveez. A graduate from Amar Singh College Srinagar, Bhat couldn’t find a good job and thus started the channel. “Because of unemployment I started the YouTube Channel but didn’t know at that time how to go ahead with it,” he added.

He was supported by his friends who like him were educated but unemployed.

Parvez says they make comedy videos while keeping all aspects and sensitivity of society in the mind. Apart from making videos on social, environmental and day to day issues, they also do comedy on political issues in the Valley. “We made a video a few weeks ago on Abrogation of Article 35 A, it was an instant hit and got more than 7k likes on our channel,” he said adding that “we also give social and political messages through our videos”. Having roughly started just a year back, the Channel has over 1,36,000 subscribers. “You were asking us why we did not receive the Silver Button even when we have got 136k subscriptions on our YouTube channel,” said one of the members of the group. “Here it is and it is because of your support and appreciation of our work.”

His colleague thanked Allah before asking its audience to continue to pour its support in future as well. A graduate from Srinagar’s Amar Singh College, 26-year-old Bhat was having a hard time finding a stable job. “Hence, because of the unemployment, I decided to start a YouTube Channel.” Bhat was initially supported by his friends who were educated but unemployed just like he was. “We didn’t have any serious plan. It was just a normal experiment, and it worked for us,” Bhat, who mostly plays the protagonist in the videos, said.

Bhat believes in making comedy videos while also keeping all aspects and sensitivity of society in the mind. Apart from making videos on Social, environmental and day to day issues, they also do comedy on political issues in the Valley. “We made a video a few weeks ago on Abrogation of Article 35 A, it was an instant hit and got more than 7k likes on our channel,” Bhat further said.

In the group, no one has formal training in what they are doing. They shoot videos on phone and edit it. “We are self-taught,” he confided.

“Now, we hold meetings where we discuss ideas and then we go for shoots in our locality,” he informed. “And we have started earning money from these videos as well,” Bhat added. These videos have also turned them into local celebrities.

“We receive a lot of love from people. People contact us almost on an everyday basis and appreciate our work. We had not expected this much,” Bhat asserted. “People tell us we have brought happiness in their lives,” he added. As per Bhat, the group now aims to improve the quality of the work after receiving the silver button. “We are happy to receive the Silver Button. Our hard work has paid us. Now we will start shooting videos on DSLR camera and will try to improve the quality of our work,” he said, adding: “We now aim for Gold Button, Insha Allah!”

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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New Delhi: A snow sculpting team from India led by a young Kashmiri artist Zahoor Din Lone has been selected for the second consecutive year for Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championship 2018 to be held in the United States.

The snow sculpting team ‘Callisto’ was selected from India for the first time in 2017 for the international snow sculpture championship which is being held annually in the US. The team consisting of four artists Zahoor Din Lone, Sunil Kushwaha, Ravi Prakash, Mridul Kumar Upadhyay won spirit award last year.

This year the team led by Kashmir Artist Zahoor Din Lone has been selected again. However, this year the team has replaced Mridul Kumar Upadhyay with another Kashmiri artist Irfan Lateef Mir for the championship.

Irfan Lateef Mir a resident of Lolab area of Kupwara district, another young sculpture artist from valley has been included in the team by Zahoor for this year’s championship. Mir is an Artist who explores different mediums and does most of his works with metal wire.

The championship is being organised by the International Snow Sculpture Organizing Committee (ISSCOC) for the last 28 years in Breckenridge, Colorado, US. This is the first ever snow sculpting team from India to represent team India in any International snow sculpture championship.

Zahoor Din Lone who hails from a small village of Pattan Singhpora in north Kashmir has pursued Masters in Fine arts from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi after completing his Bachelors in Fine arts from the University of Kashmir.

Zahoor will be leading an Indian four-member team to the United States for this Snow Sculpture Championship. Before participating in the US-based championship in 2017, Zahoor has earlier participated and gained experience of snow sculpture from ‘Snow Fiesta-2014’, organized by the Eplanner event management and J&K Tourism in Gulmarg.

“It was due to the ‘Snow Fiesta’ camp that I got an international opportunity and an opportunity to lead team India at the international platform in the United States,” he said while thanking Eplanner.
“I submitted work samples of the sculpture camp in which I participated in 2014. That camp really helped me to grab this opportunity. And we were selected for US championship in 2017. This year we again applied and got selected. In the valley we have enough talent but the lack of the platform to explore,” he said.

However, due to the callous attitude of state government last year, he said, “We didn’t receive any support or logistic help. We managed out tools, uniform and other miscellaneous expenditures ourselves.”

The ISSCOC receives hundreds of submissions across the world to the event and sixteen teams are chosen to participate in the championship.

Snow artists from around the world will compete January 22-28, 2018 in Breckenridge at the International Snow Sculpture Championships. Sculptures, which remain on display through February start as 12-foot-tall, 20+ ton blocks of snow.

Related:
Kashmiri youth struggles to fund trip to represent India in International Snow Sculpture Championships
Indian team led by Kashmiri youth wins ‘Spirit award’ at snow sculpting championship in USA

This story was first published on Two Circles.
 

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File Photo: Aman Farooq/KI

One has to muster every last ounce of one’s incredulity at the latest hare-brained idea to use plastic bullets for crowd control in Jammu and Kashmir.

We are told by The Times of India that “non-penetrative plastic bullets may be used in Jammu and Kashmir for crowd control or stone-pelting mobs to reduce collateral damage during counter-insurgency operations”. The South Block oracle has spoken. You shall gulp it, hook, line and sinker, without a simple ‘where, what, why and how’, query.

We are informed, “The government sources, however, said the pellet guns will continue to be used as the last resort in the non-lethal category.” Please suspend all reasoning as a plastic bullet makes the medicine go down. Apologies, Dr Dolittle.

Plastic bullets, if you please, are not plastic. They are plastic-coated metal bullets. And the hype about them being “non- penetrative”! Tell me another fairy tale.

A paper known more for its matrimonial ads than its editorial content sagely echoes some government spokesperson illiterate in technology or ballistics: “Plastic bullets can be fired from a normal AK-47 rifle but in a single shot mode. Burst mode firing is not possible with them.”

Contrast this with the well known democratic Israeli paper Haaretz, which “learned that soldiers sometimes separate the rubber-coated bullets, which come in packs of three, and insert them separately into the adapter on the rifle muzzle to achieve a more harmful effect — even though the army forbids this”. So much for fact-checking by the ever gullible mainstream Indian media!

In an appeal to the High Court of Justice in Israel, the deputy chief of army staff declared: “Because of the characteristics of the plastic bullet, which are quite different from those of live ammunition, the correct use of this bullet at certain distances is not supposed to be fatal.”

The feisty Israeli human rights group B’Tselem points out the numbers presented by the Israel Defense Forces in its deposition. “In the next 8 months (August 1988 – March 1989) following the introduction of plastic bullets, 154 were killed as a result of army action, 61 of them as a result of the use of plastic bullets.”

The deputy chief of army staff explained the restrictions on the use of plastic bullets: “The soldier must aim the weapon to strike below the knee. He must avoid aiming at the legs of women and children. He must observe a minimum and maximum range when firing plastic bullets.”

However, from “testimony of officers in the Israeli army reserves” given to B’Tselem, the following facts emerge:

Training in the use of plastic bullets lasts for less than a minute, using 3 bullets (one round) at a distance of 70 meters.

The “refresher courses” that are supposed to follow two weeks later rarely take place.

Instructions stipulate that firing must be from a minimum distance of 70 meters, and not after physical exertion.

Estimating a distance of 70 meters is difficult by day and even more difficult at night.

There is no certain method of ensuring, even for experienced snipers, when firing from a distance of 70 meters, that the weapon is aimed precisely below the knee. The plastic bullet is less heavy than the regular bullet, and its aim is less accurate.

At a distance of 70 meters it is difficult to distinguish with certainty the age of children.

In a situation where the soldier is engaged in dispersing riots, he will often have to fire after engaging in physical exertion.

The claim that the plastic bullet is not fatal results in the “trigger-happy” phenomenon.

I would be happy to evaluate the training manuals of the Central Reserve Police Force and the Jammu and Kashmir Police on this. Any takers?

In a written opinion, the eminent Israeli surgeon Dr Yitzhak Vinograd notes that “the kinds of injuries resulting from live gunfire are also caused by plastic bullets fired at short range”. “Shooting from a long range can also be very dangerous,” he writes. “In my view, the use of plastic bullets has an immediate fatal potential at short range, and from a distance of more than 70 meters there is also the possibility of later fatal complications, several days after the injury, as a result of untreated infection.”

A government spin doctor goes to India Today to sell plastic bullets and they buy the yarn. “A top officer of the MHA said, ‘We have conformed to highest standard by going with options mentioned in UN Pre-Deployment Training standard list. Our aim is to prevent any civilian casualty and minimise collateral damage.”

The sheer number of injuries inflicted on non-combatant civilians in Kashmir gives lie to this gentleman’s assertion. He is being economical with the truth.  He should perhaps read the United Nations Infantry Battalion Manual, which forbids the use of “weaponry like rifles” by UN forces “until and unless the level of threat is elevated to one of a military nature.” Instead, it insists on the use of “non-lethal weapons” such as Oleoresin Capsicum spray, tear gas, smoke grenades, water cannons, flash and stun grenades. The use of rubber bullets by UN police units is banned by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Reading this manual would be quite instructive for all in India’s home and defence ministries.
 
Ravi Nair is executive director of South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre. He is a recipient of the MA Thomas National Human Rights Award and the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the defence of minority rights in India. Feedback at ravinairsahrdc@gmail.com

Courtesy: kashmirink.in which is the magazine of Greater Kashmir
 

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Kashmir is a tinderbox now. Areas like Charar-e-Sharief and Khansahib assembly segments in Budgam used to witness 70% plus polling and during 2011 Panchayat elections, the turnout was 80 to 90% in Budgam district.

What is the reason for this huge shift? Why 99% people  in Budgam district which is part of Srinagar Lok Sabha seat have boycotted the recent elections? Why was there so much of violence? Different people have different reasons for this massive election boycott and subsequent violence, but I view all this development in a different  perspective.

The rise of BJP–RSS lead Hindutva forces across India and subsequent riots , murders & torture of Indian minorities especially  Muslims has added fuel to  anti India sentiments among Kashmiri youth. The 5 month long 2016 summer agitation is also linked to it. Dozens of provocative videos depicting atrocities on Indian Muslims have become viral on social media from last few years. Almost 90% of Kashmiri youth who own smart-phones  have these videos in their cell phones and this has made them believe that India is no more a secular country and BJP –RSS combine are posing a direct threat not only to Indian Muslims but they are a threat to Kashmir as well. The increased incidents of stone pelting from last few years in Kashmir can be related to growing activities of rightwing Hindu extremists across India.
 
Tagores’s My Heaven:

12-year-old Faizan Ahmed Dar, a Seventh Standard student was shot dead on April 8 by security forces on poll duty in Dalwan village of Badgaon district in Central Kashmir. Photo credit: Greater Kashmir.

Famous Bengali poet Ravindra Nath Tagore who was awarded Noble prize for his book Gitanjali has around 157 poems. One of the poem  is titled “My Heaven”.  More than 100 years back Tagore prays to God that the people of his country (India) should be fearless and society should not be divided in the name of caste, language and religion.

Faizan Ahmed Dar, the 12-year-old boy from Dalwan had been taught the same poem in his local school. In neat handwriting this little boy answers the question written with red pen: “What does Tagore wish for India and Indians”?  Faizan pens down the answer in blue pen: “He wished people of free India should be fearless, proud of their culture and loving”.

While writing this answer Faizan would have never ever thought that he would become a victim of violence which is someway related to  growing religious intolerance across India that has a direct effect not only in Alwar, Muzaffar Nagar or Dadri but in the remote Dalwan village of Kashmir as well. India has once again been divided in the name of religion.

The way 55-year-old Pehlu Khan from Rajathan was murdered by cow vigilantes is a blot on Indian democracy. Irony is that local BJP leader and MLA who was on a TV show, didn’t have words to say sorry to Pelhu’s son’s. Similarly, a communal BJP leader Adityanath Yogi who is known for his anti-Muslim stand was appointed Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

How can we expect peace and calm in this whole scenario?  Pertinently Pehlu Khan had not purchased two cows for slaughtering them but he wanted to have their milk, but nobody listened to him; reason was his religion.

Conclusion:  
How can we call it a democracy when people are asked to vote under the shadow of gun?  While I am writing this piece I see at least 300  military personnel outside my house to guard a small polling station with 2 rooms. This polling station is among 38 polling booths where re-election for Srinagar parliamentary seat is being held by Election Commission of India (ECI). It was so shocking to see CRPF personnel’s being kicked out in some village during recent elections. Why shall these poor people become victims of state’s  high headedness? 

Our youth are becoming more and more violent day by day and Indian state instead of listening to them will continue to use force on them. Why is BJP lead government  pushing our youth towards militancy?  People of Kashmir need peace and resolution of their political problem. It cannot be achieved by holding elections or use of force but through a meaningful dialogue which is unfortunately not happening. BJP and its offshoots should stop harassing Muslims, Dalits and other minorities across India.

Indian leadership has been portraying past Assembly and panchayat elections  as a referendum  in their favour. Now there has been only 7 % voting in recent  by-election in 3 districts of Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal, will  BJP, Congress and other Indian mainstream political parties have a courage to call this complete election boycott a referendum?  It is the time when New Delhi must stop acting like an ostrich.

Courtesy: Greater Kashmir.

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Image: Reuters

Pulwama Degree College in South Kashmir bears the marks of a place touched by conflict. The telltale stones and shattered glass seen in so many parts of the Valley have arrived here as well. It is deserted, apart from a lone gatekeeper. Opposite the building marked “IT Centre” is scrawled the legend, “Love you Burhan”.

The college has been closed since Monday. On Saturday, this desolation had been filled with students and security forces, flying stones, tear gas fumes and pellet showers. About 54 students were injured in the clashes that day. Some of those seriously wounded had to be shifted to hospitals in Srinagar.

Saturday’s violence has galvanised campuses across the Valley. The Kashmir University Students’ Union had called for protests in all colleges and universities on Monday in solidarity with the students of Pulwama. Students in Baramulla and Sopore towns in the north, Anantnag and Tral in the south and Srinagar in central Kashmir clashed with security forces. About 70 more students were injured in these incidents, many of them in Srinagar. Among the critically injured are two students with brain injuries.
 

On Tuesday, universities, colleges and high schools remained closed, while protesting students in Banihal blocked the Jammu-Srinagar highway, the Valley’s primary supply line. A dour silence descended on Pulwama town, which had gone into shutdown mode, with shops closed and streets sparsely populated. Naveed Dar, a second-year arts student at Pulwama Degree College, had limped to a dim, curtained tea shop in town. This was the first day he could walk after being beaten up by security forces.

“I thought these were stories, these things don’t happen,” Naveed Dar said, bemused. “We came to see the real face of the forces.”

On Wednesday, schools opened but colleges and universities stayed shut.
 

A skirmish

It started last Wednesday when two armoured Army vehicles known as Caspers entered the Pulwama college campus, said Taufiq Farooq, a first-year arts student who was hit by pellets that day. “You know the situation here, students started pelting stones and the Caspars went back,” he recounted. “Then there was a protest outside the administration block; why had an Army vehicle entered the college?”

According to a statement by Army spokesperson Rajesh Kalia, soldiers had gone to visit the administration to talk about a “painting, drawing competition” in the college. But students did not know the purpose of the visit. “Students thought they were going to raid or pick up students,” Farooq explained. This is common after there is stone-pelting. Anything can happen any time.”

Two days later, Farooq said, a security cordon was laid right outside the college’s gates, and not 200 metres away as the police claimed. According to another student Rayees Mohammad Bhat, however, the cordon was farther away, near the toll post leading into the town, and it was a regular exercise.
Either way, the college students started pelting stones just outside the gate. “They used tear gas from the start,” said Farooq. “After 10 or 15 minutes, they started using pellets.” What followed next, according to Farooq’s account, was a thrust and parry between the students and the security forces that lasted nearly four hours until the evening.

The security forces’ vehicles retreated at first, then they drove up to the gate and started firing shelling into the college, Farooq continued. “They must have called the police station because two Rakshaks [armoured police jeeps] then entered the college premises and stopped at a barricade near the gate,” he said.
 

Trapped in a stone-pelting crowd, they first fired sound shells, then they stepped out of the Rakshaks and started shelling and spraying pellets. Angry students managed to chase the vehicles out of the campus.

Some students, thinking they had driven away the forces, moved into the administration building to protest against the incursion. Then the police and the CRPF returned with bunkers and reinforcements. “Stone-pelting inside the college had stopped then,” said Farooq. Yet, students at the administration block came under heavy shelling. Though they retaliated with stones, they were forced into classrooms.

“I went into a classroom after I got injured,” said Farooq, whose shoulder and upper arm are still peppered with pellet scars. As pepper and tear gas clouded the classrooms, many girls fainted. When vehicles carrying the injured students tried to make their way to the hospital, boys were pulled out and beaten up, he alleged.
 

To the library

There were students who did not join in the clashes. Naveed Dar, for instance, said he had taken cover in the geography department building and then the library, where he saw girls fainting from the gas fumes. Then the security forces also entered the library.

“Some teachers came and said nothing will happen, come out,” Naveed Dar recalled. “We were leaving but then the girls were beaten up so we went back in.”

They tried to go out again, twice. The first time, the girls were sent out unharmed but the boys who followed them were beaten. The second time, the security forces said they could all come out, nothing would happen, Naveed Dar continued.

“When one boy came out, they beat him up and he fell down,” he said. “Then they said run now, and we ran. Whoever came in their way was beaten. I was hit twice in the legs and once on my back.”
 

After that, he made his way to the principal’s office, which had been vandalised by the students, to find crying girls crouching there. Then the teachers told them to get into a college bus, Naveed Dar said, and that’s how they managed to escape.

Shahbaz Ahmed Dar, recovering at a Srinagar hospital, said he was attending class when he saw girls being sprayed with tear gas shells by the security forces outside. When he went out to protest, they beat him up. He now has a fractured knee and shoulder injuries.
 

‘Mild force’

Pulwama Degree College Principal Abdul Hamid was not available for comment. But when contacted by local newspapers a couple of days ago, he had said, “ I too rushed towards the gate and saw two police vehicles entering the college. I stood in front of the vehicles and pleaded, with hands folded, to the policemen not to enter the premises…I told the policemen that 5,000 students were in the college and the situation would turn bad. However, the policemen did not listen to my pleas.”

Bhat admitted that there was shelling on students but he claimed it was only from near the gate. Afterwards, they did return with reinforcements to the administrative building, but it was to rescue, not to attack.

“There were SOS calls from the college, from girls and teachers, saying we are trapped, we have been locked inside our rooms,” he said. “That’s when the police went inside. Mild force was used and the miscreants were chased away. The teachers, staff and students were let out.”

According to Rajesh Yadav, commandant of the 161 battalion of the CRPF, just two units of the paramilitary force are stationed in Pulwama. They are deployed as and when requested by the police. He refuted the claim that students had been beaten up, saying action was taken against stone-pelters alone.
 

‘You were protecting the boys’

Similar scenes were repeated in other parts of the Valley on Monday. Iqra Sadiq, 20, lay with a fractured skull at the Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar. A first year student at the women’s college in Nawakadal, Srinagar, she had been part of a protest march into the city.

“The boys were leading us,” Sadiq said, speaking slowly. “When we reached Eidgah [a neighbourhood in old Srinagar], the boys started stone-pelting and we ran away. There were CRPF men on the right and left and a Rakshak in front of us.”

In the chaos, a stone hit her on the head. A friend visiting Sadiq at the hospital said she was brought to the hospital by four boys in an auto-rickshaw, early in the afternoon. The doctors had removed blood clots from her head, family members said, and she was expected to be released in four or five days.

“It was a peaceful protest [in the beginning],” Sadiq said. “We were shouting slogans for Azadi, student power zindabad, etc. The police told us to move ahead. They signalled that they would not do anything.”
 

Meanwhile, a lecturer at Baramulla Degree College said the slogans started around 11.15 am. “Earlier, two cops had come asking the administration if any police deployment was required, we said no,” she recounted. The college authorities had locked the gate so that students could not leave and the forces could not come in.

“Around 11.45 am, three tear gas shells were fired into the college,” she continued. “We could not see anything in the buildings. One teacher fainted. Another, who was pregnant, had a difficult time even after the smoke cleared up. Boys ran into the college grounds from the main building and the forces also came in. They cleared the boys from the grounds. One was caught near the administration section and brutally beaten. Some members of the staff were also roughed up. The police said, ‘you were protecting the boys’. There had been negligible stone pelting. It was mostly sloganeering.”

The Baramulla police confirmed that they had fired “some” tear gas to disperse the students but denied beating up the college staff. One student was trying to damage a car and he was pushed and beaten up as were three or four other boys, the police claimed. After the violence subsiuded, the police and the tehsildar went into the college to meet the students, said the lecturer.
 

Fear and anger

For students such as Naveed Dar and Shahbaz Dar, this was their first brush with the security forces. Unlike Farooq and their other classmates, they had not gone out protesting in 2016. Naveed Dar, for one, was worried about finishing his course.

The conflict in Kashmir has hit student life with its constant curfews and shutdowns. In 2016, the boys said, Pulwama Degree College was shut for six months. When it reopened, they went straight into exams. “It’s been three years and I am still in my third semester. At this rate, I will finish college in nine years,” he said.

The turbulence has also meant that students cannot imagine a future. Naveed Dar only knows he wants to get out of an increasingly violent Pulwama as soon as he can. Neither Farooq nor Naveed Dar have career plans. “We never got to think about it,” said Farooq. “When you have to think whether you’ll make it to the next day, it changes things psychologically.”

Such extended periods of closure have also meant that student politics has not taken root in colleges, not in recent years at least. Pulwama Degree College is not strict, students said. During the protests last year, pro-freedom posters and slogans went up and were not taken down by the college authorities. But there were no protests organised by the students as a group.

The last time a protest march started from the college ground was in 2009, when the Valley rose in protest against the rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, allegedly by security forces. The “Shopian Chalo” call, in fact, had come from Pulwama Degree College, said Farooq.

Unlike other parts of the country, student unions are proscribed in Kashmir. The Kashmir University Students’ Union was banned in 2010, the year mass protests erupted and its offices were demolished by the authorities. Its current iteration is not officially recognised. Could the latest spate of clashes between students and security forces lead to a new phase of mobilisation and political organisation in Kashmir’s colleges?

It remains to be seen. For Naveed Dar and Shabaz Dar, it means the last bastion of security has been breached, giving rise to new fears. But Farooq said fear has disappeared among students, it is only anger now. The next time such a clash happens, he added, it could be even more intense.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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