![]() ![]() ![]() “ Humne to socha kuchh badlega, par koi farq nahin pada (we thought things will change but nothing did),” an elderly gentleman told me. The mourning processions on Ashura have been banned in Kashmir since 1990 to avoid clashes between the Shias and the Sunnis that accompanied these processions. Now, many in the Shia community say that a post-Article 370 government in Delhi has bought into this Sunni majoritarian agenda and is following the same pattern. But several CRPF troopers told me that they too had fired teargas (unhappily, they claim, but orders are orders: “ Sir, jab order milta hai to karna hi padta hai”). This narrative, whether accurate or not, serves to demonstrate how the Shias of Budgam feel: the Hindus are protective and the Sunnis are tyrants.Īlso read: Srinagar tense ahead of Muharram test as lockdown, pellets leave residents fuming The ‘Hindus’ is how the Shias refer to the CRPF troopers. However, the villain, as per the Shia narrative, is a local Sunni police officer who was teargassing them from his jeep, while “the Hindus protected us”. As expected, the Shias took out the procession and were fired upon with teargas (but not pellets). Local advice, however, clearly went unheeded and orders came (from Delhi/Srinagar) to continue with the ban on procession. “ Yeh log hamare ko tang nahin karte, to inko juloos nikalne do, rokne me kya faida (the Shias don’t bother us, so why not just let them take out their processions. While this was strategic even at the soldier level, the decision was unpopular. A high-ranked officer in the security force told me, “I don’t know what they were thinking… (Article) 370 scrapping should have been sold as liberation to the Shias, and yet all you do is double down on them by doing what the Sunnis imposed.” It turns out, almost all the security forces here were unhappy with the imposition of Section 144 on the Shias, and had advised the powers-that-be that the Muharram procession should be allowed. So what happened to the “cooperative pelting”? I had heard of rumours of major clashes in Budgam a few days prior on Ashura (the 10 th day of Muharram), which the local police officers and CRPF personnel confirmed. They tell us the time they will come out to pelt so it never gets serious.”Īlso read: I went to meet pellet gun victims in Soura, the new epicentre of Kashmir’s anger Is there stone pelting in the Shia centre, then? The question yields a remarkable response: “Yes, there is. “These people are very friendly they talk to us and treat us like humans.” In the Sunni albumen, however, these security pickets are regular. Striking up a casual conversation with the CRPF shows they are not worried about the yolk. Some animated conversations include gems like: “Nasrallah doesn’t want a theocratic state in Lebanon he wants to make the country truly secular” “Ahmadinejad was the only man the Americans feared so they got rid of him.” ![]() What you will spot, however, are hoardings of Ayatollahs (Khomeini & Khamenei), Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and, surprisingly, even former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is almost universally reviled in Tehran these days. What is remarkable is that throughout this Shia-dominated yolk, not a single CRPF/police picket was spotted that day until 5 pm, which is the time for stone pelting. The yolk (city centre) is almost 90 per cent Shia, whereas the Sunnis dominate the rural white albumen. It helps to think of Budgam as a fried egg sunny side up. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |