Confusion, rage and protest grip cutoff Kashmir
SRINAGAR, Kashmir — On the streets of Srinagar, Kashmir’s biggest city, security officers tied black bandannas over their faces, grabbed their guns and took positions behind checkpoints. People glanced out the windows of their homes, afraid to step outside.
A sense of coiled menace hung over the locked-down city and the wider region Saturday, a day after a huge protest erupted into clashes between Kashmiris and Indian security forces.
Shops were shut. ATMs had run dry. Just about all lines to the outside world — internet, mobile phones, even landlines — remained severed, rendering millions of people incommunicado.
The New York Times gained one of the first inside views by a news organization of life under lockdown in Kashmir and found a population that felt besieged, confused, frightened and furious by the seismic events of this week.
India’s swift and unilateral decision Monday to wipe out Kashmir’s autonomy significantly raised tensions with its archrival, Pakistan, which also claims parts of Kashmir. The territory lying between the two nuclear armed nations was already one of Asia’s most dangerous and militarized flashpoints, smoldering for decades.
Anything dramatic or provocative that happens here — and India’s move was widely seen as both — instantly sends a jolt of anxiety across this entire region.
On Friday, witnesses said tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators were moving through the streets of Srinagar, chanting freedom slogans and waving Kashmiri flags, when Indian forces opened fire. Sustained bursts of automatic weapon fire could be heard in videos filmed during the protest, and at least seven people were wounded, hospital officials said
India has put Kashmir, home to about 8 million people, in a tightening vise, after India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, swept away the autonomy that this mountainous, Muslim-majority region had enjoyed for decades.
His decision was years in the making, the collision of India’s rising nationalist politics, frustration with Kashmir’s dogged separatists and a long-running rivalry with Pakistan.
Many Kashmiris see India as an oppressive and foreign ruler.
In the valley, Kashmiris said they expected India’s actions to increase the sense of alienation and in turn feed the rebellion.
Security personnel in Kashmir said large protests kept erupting. “People are so angry,” said Ravi Kant, a soldier in Srinagar. “They are unrelenting and not scared.”
No one disputes that Kashmir needed change. Tens of thousands of people have been killed here and the economy lies in ruins.
Modi has said the new status will make Kashmir more peaceful and prosperous. In a televised speech Thursday, which most Kashmiris could not watch because their TV service had also been cut, he insisted that turning Kashmir into a federal territory would eliminate corruption, attract investment and move it “forward with new hopes.’’