BARAMULLA: Late last month, one man’s words brought hundreds of
young men out on the streets, battling police to avenge a woman’s
honour.
Four died, and dozens were injured, before the fighting was done.
Last week, a committee that manages old-town Baramulla’s powerful
Masjid Sharif Bait-ul-Mukarram sacked the man whose speech started
the fighting: Aijaz Ahmad Peer. Mr. Peer, the mosque’s Imam, is
key lieutenant of Islamist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Islamists in Jammu and Kashmir have profited from the summer’s
violence, which they have cast as a consequence of widespread
resentment against India. Mr. Peer’s sacking is a sign that the
tide could be turning.
Mr. Peer’s removal from clerical office casts light on the string
of battles between urban youth and police which have placed the
National Conference-Congress government under siege all summer.
Late last month, police in Baramulla began investigating the alleged
kidnapping of a teenage girl by a local resident. Ghulam Ahmed
Ganai claimed that his daughter, Rehana Ganai, had been kidnapped
by Mehraj Din Marazi and was being held prisoner in Srinagar.
Police detained several of Mr. Marazi’s relatives including his
uncle Mohammad Yusuf Bhat on charges of facilitating the kidnapping.
On June 28, Mr. Bhat’s wife, Haseena Butt, stormed out of Baramulla’s
police station, and began standing on the streets demanding justice.
Ms. Butt claimed in a television interview that the police had
asked for bribes in return for the release of her husband. In
a second interview, given an hour later, Ms. Butt alleged that
the Station House Officer had demanded sexual favours. Mr. Ganai,
for his part, went on air to say that her allegations were to
save the men who had kidnapped his daughter.
Baramulla stores and offices opened as normal on June 30, local
residents say. But in the morning, Mr. Peer used the Masjid Sharif
Bait-ul-Mukarram’s public address system to call on protesters
to march on the Baramulla police station, alleging that Ms. Bhat’s
honour had been violated.
In Baramulla, Mr. Peer’s voice counts. Born in Handwara’s Langate
village, he obtained his clerical qualifications from the famous
neoconservative Dar-ul-Uloom seminary at Deoband. In 2005, he
was engaged as an Imam by the committee that manages the Bait-ul-Mukarram
mosque, Baramulla’s most important religious institution.
His call to arms was heeded. Witnesses told The Hindu hundreds
marched out of old-town Baramulla, and clashes broke out with
police. Many were supporters of Mr. Geelani’s Tehreek-i-Hurriyat.
Early in the afternoon, a group of men threw stones at a local
temple and shouted communal abuse. Incensed, a Central Reserve
Police Force officer opened fire.
More rioting and more killing followed.
Much of the media cast the violence as an expression of anti-India
rage, linked to the unpopularity of the police and central police
forces. This explanation is, at best, partial.
Notably, the violence in Baramulla involved just a part of the
city: the 13 mohallas, or neighbourhoods, of the old-town and
neighbouring Azadganj. There was no rioting in the city’s new
quarters, home to its ever-growing class of government employees,
contractors and professionals.
Old-town Baramulla has long been a bastion of the religious right-wing.
Even as rural Jammu and Kashmir saw a record turnout in last year’s
elections to the Assembly, just 56 of the estimated 50,000 voters
in mohallas defied secessionists’ call to reject democracy.
Baramulla’s old town is one of the two pillars, along with Shopian,
on which the Jamaat-e-Islami’s political position in Jammu and
Kashmir rests.
Material conditions in areas like old-town Baramulla helped. Prior
to 1947, the old town had played a central role in trade with
Rawalpindi and Lahore, providing services and logistics to traders
and travellers. But after 1947, the trade route was closed and
the old town’s economic foundations were shattered.
Slowly, the old town became mired in backwardness. Even today,
many homes in its winding lanes have no proper sewage system.
Young people have education, the product of the dramatic reforms
introduced by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah after independence, but
little economic opportunity.
Denied access to the emerging capitalist paradise around them,
many young people have been drawn to the paradise of the Islamist
imagination. Mr. Geelani has emerged as the voice of their rage.
Why has this rage proved so abiding? For one, the National Conference
has long ignored the development of Kashmir’s inner cities, caring
little for the needs of those who were hostile to its rule.
Jammu and Kashmir’s government has also been reluctant to use
the law against the religious right. Mr. Peer was arrested for
his alleged role in fanning the communally charged Shrine Board
riots that ripped Jammu and Kashmir apart last summer. Soon after
it came to power, the National Conference-Congress government
released him, along with other Islamists, in an effort to buy
peace with Islamists.
Baramulla’s people, Mr. Peer’s removal shows, want a way out of
the violence. In the coming months, it will become clear if the
government is listening to their call.
