India says itwill ease up on 2-week lockdown in Kashmir

NEW DELHI — India announced Friday that restrictions in Kashmir, which has been locked down for nearly two weeks, will be eased over the next few days, with schools and government offices to reopen Monday and phone service to be gradually restored.

The Indian government unilaterally stripped Kashmir of its semiautonomous status lastweek. Anticipating unrest, the authorities had detained scores of regional politicians and civil servants, cut mobile and landline connections, and deployed thousands of troops to guard barricaded roads.

Critics said the blackout, unprecedented in its scope, was an egregious attempt to silence voices in Kashmir, a mountainous, predominantly Muslim territory that has been a source of high tension between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors that each administer parts of the region.

B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, Kashmir’s chief secretary, announced the easing of restrictions shortly after the U.N. Security Council scheduled a rare closed-door meeting about Kashmir on Friday to discuss India’s actions.

Itwas the first time the15-member council had discussed Kashmir in decades, and the council adjourned without making any public statement, suggesting therewas no consensus among its members on what course of action, if any, to take in the protracted conflict.

But many Kashmiris said they were still seething with anger after the government removed the region’s limited autonomy, which had been in place since the 1940s, and cut the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories.

The demotion puts Kashmir more tightly under the control of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist party that has promised for decades to remove the region’s autonomy. Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi regard the decision as an attack on India’s secular identity and an affront to democracy.

In recent days, there have been sporadic street protests in Kashmir involving thousands of demonstrators. Security forces have responded in some cases by firing pellets into crowds, injuring several people.

Last weekend, the authorities sealed off main roads and deployed surveillance helicopters in Srinagar before Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar. Many Kashmiris were furious that they could not call relatives to tell them they were safe.

Tensions with Pakistan have also escalated. Last week, Pakistani officials cut all bilateral trade with India, expelled India’s top diplomat and said they would not rule out war.