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‘We are not Indian’
At around noon one Friday in April, the heart of the older part of Srinagar, called downtown Srinagar, almost completely shut down. Any vehicles approaching Nowhatta – the heart of the summer capital where tear gas shells, water cannons and pellets are the order of the day – were stopped by police barricades and asked to take a diversion.
After afternoon prayers, a dedicated group of young boys spilled on to the streets, shouting slogans. This correspondent saw about a dozen boys doing so in April. However, in 2016, eye witnesses said that hundreds of boys filled the streets.
One 28-year-old young man claimed to have been a part of a group called Tehreek-e-Sangbaaz or the Stone Pelters Movement. He has more than 20 cases against him – ranging from rioting to abetment to murder. He said that he has spent about 10 months in jail.
“My father used to tell me we are Indian,” he said. “Since 2008, when I was 19, I saw how the Indian Army dealt with Kashmiris. How can they torture and humiliate their own men? I realised my father was lying to me. We are not Indian. Do you know how difficult it is when children realise that their parents were lying to them? When you do not believe your parents you do not believe anyone,” he said.
The young man has a B Com and an MBA degree from Kashmir University. He now leads a gang of 16 young boys who were sitting near the Jama Masjid in Srinagar, discussing politics, religion and freedom. At his prompting, a few other boys spoke.
“Our religion teaches us to be responsible for our actions,” said a 21-year-old physics graduate who was born in Nowhatta. “We cannot undo what our parents did by supporting India, but we can certainly carve new paths for us.”
He added: “We do not care for India or Pakistan. We want a Caliphate.”
This gang of boys had made a flag of the Islamic State after buying a piece of black cloth, which they inscribed upon using white paint. “We hold it up on some Fridays so the media will take notice of us,” said a 14-year-old who is part of the group.
Rouf Malik, who runs a non-profit, Koshish Kashmir, which works with children and education, said that such activities are a desperate attempt by the children of Kashmir to seek attention. “Unless these young boys do something drastically different, no one cares about Kashmir,” he said.
In Kashmir, according to Malik, the narrative of poor unemployed boys taking to the streets does not hold water. He explained that most stone pelters are from well-off families. If they are poor they will work hard to make ends meet, he said. “Where will they find time to throw stones?”
It is mostly boys who resort to stone pelting. However, as some photographs have shown recently, girls are also taking to it. “In many cases, girls gather stones for us, they open doors when we are being chased by the police,” said a stone pelter.
(Photo credit: PTI).
Mansab Wadoo, 22, was with the group of boys at Nowhatta, but he is not a stone pelter. He is a law student at Kashmir University, and has no cases against him. He said that their movement wanted to look beyond a nation-state. “What good is India and Pakistan?” he asked. “We are followers of Islam and we want a land where there is sharia.”
In saying so, the law student was echoing Burhan Wani’s successor Zakir Musa, who, in a video, said that militants were fighting for the imposition of sharia or Islamic canonical law.
The other boys in Nowhatta had a slightly different argument. “We have to constantly remind India that we are occupied, therefore we throw stones,” said a 14-year-old, who studies in one of the Valley’s top schools. “Just like they remind us all the time.”
The boy was referring to incidents like the one on April 1 when 11-year-old Mir Mehran, who was walking with his friend in Srinagar, was stopped by paramilitary soldiers, asked to hold his ears and do sit-ups 10 times. He later told the Associated Press: “I was thinking they could have killed me or done something else. I was scared.”
There is palpable anger against the Indian state on the streets. Most youngsters say they would pick up arms if they had access to it. They say that they are fighting with stones since there is no easy availability of arms of the kind seen during the armed militancy of the 1990s. “I wish we had access to guns the way our Mujahideen brothers did,” said a stone pelter. “My weapon of choice is not a stone, it is a gun. The day we get guns, we shall never pelt stones again.”
https://scroll.in/article/835777/th...r-lives-despair-over-kashmirs-young-offenders
