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A Kashmir Hindu activist was listening to religious hymns on his mobile phone when he was suddenly interrupted by a tragic WhatsApp message. It brought news about the fatal shooting of a famous chemist in his community, just a few miles from the activist’s home in Srinagar, the largest city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
54-year-old Sanjay Tickoo anxiously locked the door of his house with bolts and gathered his family in the dining room. His cell phone has been buzzing, calls from frightened ethnic minority community members.
Within two hours of the death of Makhan Lal Bindroo on October 5, the assailant shot and killed another Hindu, a street vendor from Bihar in eastern India, and in another shooting. Shot and killed a local Muslim taxi driver.
Two days later, two teachers-a Hindu and a Sikh-were shot dead in a school on the outskirts of Srinagar.
this A series of killings This has caused widespread unrest, especially among the religious minority Hindus (called Pandits by locals) in Indian-controlled Kashmir, of which an estimated 200,000 fled the area after the anti-Indian rebellion broke out in 1989.
‘Never felt insecure’
Tiku, who likes chemists, and about 800 other Pandit families chose to stay with their Muslim neighbors, and other famous Hindus quickly moved to safe houses. Later, he was transferred to a fortified Hindu temple guarded by paramilitary soldiers in the center of Srinagar, the center of anti-Indian sentiment.
“I have witnessed death and destruction at close range. But I have never felt so insecure and so scared in my life,” Tickoo said. “Killing is faster than the virus spreading panic.”
The killing of chemist Bindru was the first time in 18 years that local Hindus from this small community had been killed, and their people chose not to migrate from this conflict-torn area.
Kashmir Hindu businessman Makhan Lal Bindroo at the funeral in Srinagar, relatives mourned his death [Danish Ismail/Reuters]Fearing more such attacks, the authorities provided holidays to nearly 4,000 Hindu employees who returned to the area after 2010 as part of the government’s resettlement plan, providing them with work and housing.
Tickoo chose to stay again, but nearly 1,800 Hindu employees left the Kashmir Valley after the killing. It brings back memories of the 1990s, when most of the local Hindus fled to the Jammu Plains and other parts of India where the Hindu majority is in the area. A series of killings occurred in the community.
The killing seemed to “provoke memories that resonated with Pandit’s early history and mass displacement,” said Ankurdatta, who studied the Pandit immigration camp for his doctoral studies, now at the University of South Asia in New Delhi. Teaching anthropology.
this Recent killings Widely condemned by pro-Indian and anti-Indian Kashmiri politicians. In a total crackdown, government forces questioned more than 1,000 people in an attempt to prevent more violence.
The police blamed the killings on the Resistance Front (TRF), a rebel group. Dilbag Singh, a senior police officer in the area, described the attacks as “a conspiracy to create terror and divide the community.”
In a statement on social media, TRF claimed that the organization is pursuing people who work for Indian authorities, rather than selecting people based on beliefs. The statement of the rebel group could not be independently verified.
Although the repression continued, the systematic killings continued.
The attacker shot and killed four people again Migrant Workers -Three Hindus from the eastern state of Bihar and one Muslim from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh-Three different attacks took place on Saturday and Sunday, bringing the number of targeted homicides this year to 32.
Indian migrant workers took their belongings to a train station on the outskirts of Srinagar, ready to go to their hometown [Dar Yasin/AP]According to police records, 21 local Muslims, four local Hindus and one local Sikh were shot dead, as well as five non-local Hindus and one non-local Muslim.
Siddiq Wahid, a historian and former president of Kashmir Islamic University of Science and Technology, said that the recent killings only caused concern in the context of sectarian concerns, even if people of all religions were killed, and pointed out that the ensuing debate focused on statistics rather than loss of life. .
“The first twisted, the second ignored the tragedy. Both represent a significant loss in Kashmir,” Wahid said.
Tensions again after Modi’s victory
In Kashmir, for centuries, Hindus have mostly lived in peace with Muslims, living as landlords, farmers and government officials in villages and towns throughout the Himalayas.
The 1947 war between India and Pakistan split the Himalayas after the two countries became independent from Britain. However, within 10 years, as many Muslims began to distrust the rule of India, and demanded that the territory be unified or become an independent country under Pakistani rule, there were disagreements.
When Indian-controlled Kashmir became a battlefield in the late 1980s, the attacks and threats of insurgents caused most of the Kashmiri Hindus to leave. They identified with India’s rule of the region, and many believed that the rebellion was also aimed at destroying them. It reduced the Pandit people to a very small number.
The majority of Muslims in the region have long been dissatisfied with Indian rule, denying that Hindus have been systematically attacked, and saying that India has expelled them to call Kashmir’s freedom struggle “Islamic extremism.”
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, these tensions reappeared as the Indian government implemented a plan to relocate returning Kashmir Hindus to new towns.
Muslim leaders describe such plans as a conspiracy to split the community by dividing the population of the region according to religious routes, especially when India deprived the region of semi-autonomy in 2019 and was blocked by months of blockades and communications. After the cancellation of the inheritance protection of land and work during the period.
Since then, the authorities have passed many new laws, and critics and Kashmiris fear that these laws may change the demographic structure of the region.
‘Bad omen’
These concerns became more apparent in early September, when the authorities opened an online portal for immigrant Hindus to register complaints about distress sales and embezzlement of their property, most of which have changed hands in the past 30 years. According to official data, 700 complaints were received in the first three weeks.
Thousands of Muslim families who bought properties from Hindus were angered. The authorities even asked some Muslim families to vacate their properties.
“Online portals seem to be the main cause of killing,” said activist Tiku.
Members of the Sikh community carried the body of the murdered government school teacher Supinder Kour in the funeral procession in Srinagar [Mukhtar Khan/AP]Among the ethnic minorities in the area, Sikhs are relatively comfortable with their Muslim neighbors, and became the largest ethnic group after Hindu immigration. But they also face systematic killings.
After the 46-year-old Sikh school principal Supinder Kour was killed, hundreds of angry community members carried her body in Srinagar, chanting religious slogans and demanding justice. Some Muslim residents joined them.
“We don’t know who the murderer is. Even if I know, do you think I can make sense?” Sikh leader Jagmohan Singh Rainer said.
“We are caught between two guns: guns from the state and from non-states.”
Reina said that no Sikh fled after Chur was killed, but insisted that his community was shaken. He said that although the country is passing new laws to “provoke and punish” the majority of Muslims in the region, ethnic minorities are “being manipulated for politics.”
Tickoo and Raina said the killings were “bad omen” for Kashmir. They asserted in similar comments that the changes in India two years ago “have hurt all of us who live on the ground.”
“And the wound,” Reina said, “has become cancer now.”
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