CRPF men caught between azadi and higher-ups BJP must now negate Kashmir’s In Sopore, two young SPOs ‘quit’ psychological secession from India through videos on social media
Men in uniform say they take stones from protesters in Kashmir but are forced to retaliate with ‘restraint’
SRINAGAR: “Indian Dogs Go Back” reads a graffiti on the streets of Old Srinagar. Junctions are christened ‘Shaheed Burhan Chowk’ after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, whose killing last month triggered protests.
Near the Jamia Masjid, where two militants and a CRPF commandant were killed on August 15, sit a group of the force’s men — from Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala and Tamil Nadu — with their blue armoured vehicle parked nearby.
The mosque is empty, so are the streets.
But that is for now.
“Every evening, there is heavy stone pelting,” says the Andhraite jawan. “We take the stones, but are supposed to retaliate with ‘maximum restraint’... reduce using pellets and tear gas shells.”
The protests since Wani’s killing had boiled over as agitators started raining stones on security forces.
The retaliation left 67 dead and thousands injured, triggering a debate over the use of pellets and tear gas shells to quell protests.
“If we get injured, no newspaper publishes our photo,” the jawan said, explaining how they are caught between the devil and deep sea — the frenzied mob and the “orders from above”.
During Hindustan Times’s tour of restive Srinagar, witnesses said protesters shout slogans against the CRPF rather than the local police.
“You don’t know what will happen when the stone pelting starts,” says the Bengali trooper.
Pointing to the vehicle, he says, “This bunker… they can put petrol and burn it down,” leaving them without a vehicle to go back to their camps.
The wait for another one might take hours. Worse is when the phone lines go down, cutting out contact with their families, who “get worried watching news”.
“If I tell my wife back in a village in Karnataka that I face stones from protesters every day, she will say leave your job and come back home,” says a jawan.
An Assamese trooper, standing guard near Lal Chowk in Srinagar, however, said his family would be happy to know about him and asked if his picture would come in the papers.
None of the CRPF personnel wished to be named as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
But one jawan, who did not want even his native state to be reported, summed up the situation: “Kashmiris want azadi. India won’t give it. Between the two, we are caught in the line of fire.” SRINAGAR: The youth who defy curfew, pelt stones and fight pitched battles with security forces in the Valley are veritable family dropouts. Their parents have no control over them. They might follow the Hurriyat’s ‘calendar’ of protests. But they aren’t exactly at the separatists’ beck and call.
Be they teenagers, sophomores or university alumnus, the mood is defiant; the anger so palpable that one can slice it with a butterknife. “I’m unable to convince my son; this generation isn’t in our control,” bemoaned a Kashmir University professor. “What you see is a mass movement driven by boys as young as 12 to 16….They hold the trigger.” The university’s faculty comprises teachers from across the Valley.
One among them quoted students from worst-affected south Kashmir as telling him that each youth now was a militant. Some had guns, some didn’t.
On August 16, a boy was killed at Batamaloo. Next day, a group of fifty took on the forces, recalled another teacher.
“Their generation only saw violence. They don’t dream of building careers. They’re ready to die,” he said. The uprising is the result of anger compounded by ‘excessive use’ of force after Burhan Wani’s killing. It has to it an unmistakable religious dimension feeding on the shenanigans of Hindu supremacists elsewhere in India.
One heard slogans in support of Pakistan and against India at the SMHS hospital where several youths are under treatment. But to entirely attribute the agitation — that has unprecedented mobilisation in the countryside — to an external conspiracy would be a costly folly.
A PDP insider offered on it an interesting construct: protests grew into a kind of civil disobedience movement that had Pakistan navigating it from behind the Hurriyat veneer. Its overt diplomatic offensive on rights violations drew sustenance from on-the-ground covert action, including co-option of armed militants who addressed azaadi-seekers in Anantnag and Pulwama.
Ascendant pro-Pakistan sentiments are confirmed by local journalists. The contributory factors are many: incidence of intolerance in India; lack of trust in the PDP-BJP coalition; absence of political dialogue on Kashmir and crackdown on protests after Wani’s killing.
But how serious is the demand for azaadi? On the face of it, pretty much! The voices one heard on streets, at hospitals and in assemblies of traders, teachers and lawyers could be paraphrased to read: You’re mistaken if you think you can tire us out; we’ve enough rations for six months; we’d fight till the end; won’t let the cause for which so many of our brothers died go waste.
“Muslim Kashmir is reluctant to continue its relations with an India perceived as Hindu India. That’s a harsh reality,” admitted a local legislator. So the problem that needs prompt negation is the Valley people’s psychological secession from mainland India! A militant-turned-politico had for it an antidote that’ll require a BJP leap of faith — from seeking to scrap Article 370 to granting autonomy to Kashmir. It won’t be Pakistan’s extension in Kashmir, as was once argued by Arun Jaitley. “It will be its defeat. We ask for azaadi when we are denied autonomy or self rule.” SRINAGAR: Videos of policemen — deployed in Kashmir — announcing their resignations and people cheering them on are doing the rounds on social media.
A video from the Valley’s volatile Sopore district shows two young cops, Firdous Ahmed and Waseem Ahmed Shiekh, being cheered by the crowds as they announce their resignation. The incident, sources said, took place on Monday in Behrampora village where nearly 80 people were injured during raids two days ago.
Both the men were special police officers (SPOs), who — according to locals — resigned under public pressure after the alleged excesses by the police. Shiekh was posted at the sub-divisional police officer’s office in Rafiabad Sopore as a driver for past three years. He publicly resigned while another cop Ahmed has been working as an SPO on an ad hoc basis at local police stations.
In the video, villagers are seen garlanding the two men when they announced their decisions. Reports suggest that after the killing of a local Hurriyat member, Fayaz Ahmed Rather, on July 29, people had asked local policemen to resign from the departments.