As Kashmiri students and businessmen have started fleeing from different states as well as Jammu region after incidents of harassment against them in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack, political leaders in Kashmir have asked the Centre to intervene and provide safety to Kashmiris.
The Bathindi area of Jammu has turned into a camp for Jammu Muslims who are being rescued from different places of the summer capital by mainstream political leaders of Kashmir and being kept there. “From here they are being helped to flee to Srinagar,” said a person from the area.
“A 25-member group had returned from Ajmer Sharief and were putting up at Durga Nagar Chinoor with a family when on Monday locals came out and started protesting against them,” Mohammad Younis, a businessman, told Outlook.
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He said the locals of Durga Nagar didn’t allow the group to move out. “One of the persons from the group was my relative, and when I reached there along with a police official the mob abused us. Somehow we succeeded in getting them out. At Bathindi they were in tears,” Mohammad Younis said.
Another family said they were not allowed to move out of the Janipur quarters for four days and ran out of food. He said the mob would pelt stones at them. They finally fled the place in the middle of the night, putting their lives in danger.
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Governor Satya Pal Malik has said that he is personally monitoring the situation of the students from Jammu and Kashmir studying in various Universities and Colleges across the country. The Governor said that the Liaison Officers appointed at major locations have taken care of the safety and security of students from the state.
However, students have trashed the Governor’s assurances.
“The students in Dehradun were so terrified of coming out last night when we reached there to take them home. Their fears were genuine,” said a PDP leader, Ajaz Mir.
“The hounding of Kashmiris in the last two days across the country vindicates what I wrote in 2007 and spoke in 2018: “It is the civil society of India that has not owned Kashmir, Kashmiri society and people. It is the civil society, more than the Indian state, that needs to introspect,” said former Finance Minister, Haseeb Drabu.
“When causative factors and prescriptive ideas for the Kashmir problem are sought, the focus is on the Indian state. This has been done without putting it in a larger societal context and the role of civil society in creating and furthering the problem in Kashmir,” Drabu added.
In a joint appeal, Jammu and People's Democratic Party Presidemt Mehbooba Mufti and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah on Monday expressed dismay over the attacks on Kashmiris across the country and urged the government of India to ensure the safety and security of Kashmiris everywhere.
The two former chief ministers underscored the need to maintain communal harmony across the country. In their appeal, the leaders asserted that by attacking, terrorizing, intimidating Kashmiris, the youngsters of Kashmir are implicitly being told that they have no future outside of the valley.
“Intimidating Kashmiris is aimed at creating a wedge between different communities in India. We should not allow terror to divide us. By using such incidents to divide us, we fall into the trap of those behind the attack on CRPF soldiers; we are wittingly or unwittingly playing to the tune of our enemies,” Omar and Mehbooba said.
The leaders asserted that attacking innocent people because of their ethnicity or religion, is no way to honour the sacrifice of the CRPF men killed in the Pulwama terror attack on February 14.
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“Kashmiri Muslims or the Muslims of Jammu didn’t attack our CRPF Jawans the other day, terrorists did. This violence is a convenient tool used by some to shift the blame. Let us unite against terror, let’s not allow terror to divide us,” they said.
The two former CMs maintained it was tragic to see educated and civilized people spearheading vicious propaganda to paint Kashmiris and terrorists with the same brush. “The thought behind such attacks is to divide us. Our pain must not fuel such diabolical plans because eventually the axe forgets and the tree remembers,” they said.
The leaders while expressing concern over the reports of violence, and arson in Jammu described the happenings as worrying. Both the leaders urged the political dispensation and civil society of Jammu to ensure that cooler heads prevail.
