Early the following morning, a curfew was imposed in Aligarh and other cities in Uttar Pradesh, and in Delhi and Mumbai. In the ensuing Hindu–Muslim riots more than 2,500 people were reportedly killed. Soon after the riots, an indefinite curfew was imposed in Aligarh city and the Civil Lines area adjacent to the university campus.
In the evening, one of my Kashmiri friends, Farhat, knocked frantically on my door to tell me that the curfew was likely to continue for many days and that the authorities were trying to close the campus indefinitely. They were arranging special buses for the students; these would be escorted out by security staff and would drop the students at the railway station, where they could take trains home. Farhat told me that if I wanted to go I would have to be at the proctor’s office tomorrow morning before the bus left for the railway station. He then rushed on to tell Assif Bodha, another Kashmiri student at Minto Circle.
The riots had prevented the school’s food suppliers from making their usual delivery. That night, I slept with my stomach half full and felt the pain of not having eaten enough. I could not resist indulging in a powerful nostalgia for delicious, homemade wazwan, a multi-course, meat-based Kashmiri feast.
The next morning, after a breakfast of tea and stale bread in the dining hall, I went straight to Farhat’s room and told him that I was also going. I hurried to my room and started packing my belongings into a suitcase. The year before, I had taken my ninth-grade books home after finishing the annual exam. My mother, who is a teacher and fond of Islamic literature, had been thrilled to read my ninth-grade theology textbook – an Urdu book of Islamic anecdotes. She had told me to bring her my tenth-grade theology textbook when I came home for the winter vacation.
I threw the book into my suitcase along with a few T-shirts and my jeans and ran to Farhat’s room. Farhat – a short, stout boy who spent most of his time in the reading room – was brimming with excitement at the thought of going home. We headed to the proctor’s office to catch the bus and were glad to see all of our Kashmiri friends waiting.
About fifty metres from the school, the bus left the narrow university road to join the main Aligarh–Anoopshahra road. We were overwhelmed by the massive devastation and desolation on both sides of it: buses, set on fire by the rioters, had been reduced to iron skeletons; debris from destroyed dhabas, roadside restaurants, was scattered all over. Police trucks full of soldiers in riot gear were lined up near Tasveer Mahal, a cheap cinema hall where students from AMU and rickshaw-pullers went to watch movies.
We got to the railway station around two o’clock. There was a long queue. Aligarh’s railway station had recently been computerized, and the operator was struggling with the keyboard of his brand-new computer; the monitor was still wrapped in a transparent polythene cover. As people talked and jeered at the ticket operator, there was an announcement: ‘Attention, passengers! Fayazabad Special 31223 from Fayazabad to New Delhi is arriving on Platform 3. All passengers travelling to Delhi are requested to come to Platform Number 3. Indian Railway wishes you a happy and comfortable journey.’
We were so immersed in the joy of homecoming that none of us noted that this was not a routine train, but a special coming from Fayazabad, where the Kar Sevaks had wreaked havoc just a day before.
We hurried to Platform 3. After waiting a minute, we heard the discordant horn of the train. There were not many passengers on the platform. The riots had created a sense of panic that had affected life at railway stations as well. The porter with his red apron was missing; so, too, were the tea stall and the magazine and newspaper sellers.
Amid the engine’s roar, I boarded the train, with Farhat and Javid Indrabi following me. Javid was an undergraduate student at Aligarh Muslim University and was travelling home to Ratnipora village in South Kashmir.
The rest of my fellow Kashmiri students entered the same coach from the rear door. Once I was inside, I started walking toward them, past the half-asleep passengers. The coach was jam-packed, and after passing four or five full berths, I gave up hope of getting a seat, lowered my suitcase and placed it between my legs. I stood still for a while in the aisle and noticed Farhat and Javid a few berths behind me. Farhat, chewing on bubble-gum, beamed at me. Javid was just behind him. He wore a blue pullover with white stripes running from collar to cuffs, and was listening to his Walkman.
My eyes moved to the berths on the other side of the corridor. There were about ten people facing one another in the lower berths of the compartment. Some of them were playing cards, others keenly watching, and almost half of them were smoking biris. A man wearing a white vest and a dhoti and holding a few cards in his left hand and a biri in his right, looked at me and said, ‘Baya agay challo agay!’ (Brother, move ahead!)
I replied, ‘Agay kanha, agay koi jaga Nahi ha.’ (There is no room ahead.)
The man paused. He stared at me and then shouted, ‘Arrey ye tou Kashmiri lagta ha!’ (Hey, he looks Kashmiri!) Before I could utter another word, he went on, ‘Maroo!’ (Beat him to death!)
Moments later, the people on the upper berths had come down and pounced on me, some of them slapping, some kicking. A huge, bulky man held me from behind and pointed a knife at my throat. Before he could cut my throat, I started shouting, ‘I am a Kashmir Pandit! Please don’t kill me! My uncle was killed by terrorists in Kashmir. Our houses have been burned by Muslims in Kashmir. We have been thrown out of the valley. I was living in a migrant camp at Jammu.’
They stopped, and one of them, who appeared to be the gang leader, kicked one of his co-passengers from his seat and ordered me to sit down.
‘What is your name?’
‘Hilal Bhatt.’ I put the stress on the end of Bhatt, attempting to give it a Hinduized pronunciation.
‘What is your father’s name?’ he said.
‘Badri Bhatt,’ I replied. I knew a few Hindu names from my Pandit friends, teachers, and neighbours in Kashmir. Badri was one whose first syllable aligned with my father’s real name, Bashir.
There were no more questions. After taking the corner seat of a berth, I noticed a dozen worn bricks beneath the opposite seat. Following my gaze, a fellow passenger told me these were bricks from the demolished Babri Masjid, proof of their victory, to be displayed proudly in their villages. I realized that these were the Kar Sevaks, returning from Ayodhya.
My memory of what happened next is a bit like a fast-moving action shot on a TV screen that suddenly goes blank in a power cut.
The Kar Sevaks attacked Farhat and Javid, who had not faked their identity as I had. What I recall is Farhat hiding his face with both hands. As soon as he did, someone forced a trident (an emblem of the god Shiva, carried by many of the Kar Sevaks) into his chest, provoking a piercing cry, ‘Hatai mojai!’ (Oh, Mother!).
A shabbily dressed man stabbed a knife into his neck and a fountain of blood arose from my friend’s throat. Then the TV power-cut moment: everything went blank.
That was the last I saw of my friend. I did not see what happened to Javid, who was attacked several berths away, out of my view. It was not until a month later that Javid’s family were able to trace his grave to a small village in Bulland Shahar town. A local imam had arranged for his burial. Farhat’s dead body reached home three days later.
After five or ten minutes, the gang leader returned, his white vest covered in blood. I overheard him saying, ‘I’ve cut them into pieces and thrown them away.’ He removed his blood-soaked vest and threw it out the window.
Turning to me, he told me he was glad I had revealed my identity in time and promised to visit me in Jammu during his next visit to Vaishnav Devi – the famous Hindu temple in the hillocks of Jammu that thousands of pilgrims visit every year.
The train continued toward Delhi. Somewhere close to Khurjah, a group of infuriated Muslims had assembled near the railway track with a supply of stones. As the ‘Fayazabad Special’ passed by, they pelted it with the stones. The Kar Sevaks pulled the iron shutters down over the windows, darkening the already suffo
cating atmosphere in the coach.
Minutes later, somebody announced that there were more Kashmiris in the coach. A few of the Kar Sevaks, bearing tridents, knives, and swords, went to see, and within seconds all the rest of my Kashmiri friends had been rounded up. The berth that I had been sitting on was cleared, and they were told to sit.
The Kar Sevaks started gathering everybody’s bags and suitcases to be searched for valuables. I trembled with fear when I recalled the Urdu theology textbook that I had brought for my mother. I rose from my seat, picked up my suitcase and tried to put it amongst the checked luggage. The gang leader grabbed the suitcase and asked me what I was doing. I nervously replied that it was mine and that I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to check it.
‘No, it’s all right if it’s yours. You are our brother. In fact, you should help us to search these bags.’
Rafiq Ahmad, a postgraduate in fisheries, was the eldest of us Kashmiri students on the ‘Fayazabad Special’. He asked to go to the toilet but was not allowed. He threatened that he would have no choice but to urinate on the seat.
The gang leader asked two of his boys to escort him to the toilet. Rafiq went inside the toilet and bolted the iron door. A few minutes later when the Kar Sevaks knocked at the door, he did not reply. They started kicking the door but still Rafiq did not open it. ‘When you come out, we will cut you into pieces,’ his escort threatened, but after a while they returned to their seats.
The train slowly pulled into Khurjah railway station. When it stopped at the station, Rafiq quietly opened the toilet door and jumped out of the train.
I looked out the window and saw Rafiq running across the train track. The Kar Sevaks, armed with knives, followed him, shouting, ‘Kashmiri dahshatgarud’ (Kashmiri terrorist).
Before he could jump onto the platform, a Kar Sevak grabbed him and stabbed him in the head. The train blew the horn and started pulling out of the station. The Kar Sevaks rushed back, leaving Rafiq lying in a pool of blood on the railway track.
We were still an hour away from Delhi. There was no certainty that they wouldn’t pull down my trousers and check whether I was a Muslim that way. I had successfully managed to hide my identity, but what about physical verification? What if someone started questioning me – why, as a Hindu, had I preferred to study at a Muslim University? What if somebody opened my suitcase and found the theology textbook?
I decided I would try to get off the train at the earliest opportunity.
After their luggage had been thoroughly searched, all the remaining Kashmiri students were asked to line up. They were then were thrown out of the moving train. It was sheer luck that none of them was killed.
As the train approached the next stop, Ghaziabad station, I decided to get off. I politely told the Kar Sevaks that one of my uncles was living there and I was visiting him before going home. I gave them my fake Jammu address and started moving toward the back door of the coach. The train slowed down. I stood at the door and waited for the train to reach the platform and stop, and somebody behind me kicked me so hard that I fell out of the train.
Ignoring my injuries, I got up, looked toward the platform and spotted a person dressed in khaki about three hundred meters away. I ran toward him, crying, ‘Help me, please, they will kill me! Help me please, they will kill me!’
‘Who will kill you?’ the man asked.
I looked back and there was no one there. I had assumed that they were following me with their knives in their hands. I told the man, who I now saw was a railway sweeper, what had happened to Farhat, Javid and Rafiq.
‘You should talk to the police. There’s a police station on Platform 1,’ he said.
I walked up to the platform. By the time I got there the ‘Fayazabad Special’ had already left and there was a local train standing on the track. I noticed a signboard that said ‘Police.’ I opened the door and went inside. There was a middle-aged policeman sitting on a chair, looking at some papers, and I told him what had happened.
‘You just wait. I will call our Sahib,’ he said.
I waited, and as I looked around the room, I noticed the large, framed picture of Lord Rama hanging on a wall. It was decorated with flower garlands, and the remains of several incense holders were pinned to the bottom of the frame, their ashes scattered on an uncovered cement surface just below.
I decided, on impulse, that I should run away from the police office. I sneaked out the door and stopped at an empty coach of the local train to New Delhi. I stepped in and noticed somebody sitting in the corner. His head was covered with a cloth and his hands were holding his bag tightly. I stepped closer and was startled by a muffled yelp: ‘Hilal!’
Assif, a Minto Circle classmate, had survived after the Kar Sevaks had thrown him from the train. His right arm was broken and blood oozed from his wounded head. Assif had taken a pair of trousers from his bag and tied it around his head to stop the blood.
The local train pulled away, and Assif changed his clothes, dumping his blood-soaked shirt and trousers in his bag. For the next hour we did not speak a word. Nor did I mention Farhat, Javid or Rafiq.
At New Delhi railway station, the Shalimar Express to Jammu was waiting for its passengers. We scanned each coach, looking for people with turbans and long beards. We found one, and passed the rest of the journey safely, in the company of Sikhs.
Angana P. Chatterji
The Militarized Zone
India asks us, ‘Why do you throw stones?’ No one asks, ‘Who burned your house down?’
Kashmiri youth, tortured in detention1
Srinagar, 9 January 2011.2 Amid the disquiet of winter, I listen to torture survivors recounting their life stories. ‘I am neither a stone-pelter nor a politician. I protest unfreedom,’ Bebaak tells me.3 Now nineteen years old, he participated in street protests in the summers of 2009 and 2010. ‘The police said I would be arrested unless I stopped going to rallies. Then the police filed a First Information Report against me because I protest. What are the charges? That I refused subjugation?’
In 2010, Bebaak was detained for more than ten days, in violation of habeas corpus. While in custody, he was tortured: struck repeatedly and violently and denied medical treatment. Other youths in custody at that time were water-boarded. Some were forced to remove their clothes, then threatened with sodomy. Officials attempted to coerce Bebaak into admitting that he had thrown stones and destroyed police property. Refusing to admit to crimes he had not committed, Bebaak was locked up in isolation, where he was beaten again. He recounts how, taking turns, two officers held him down while a third struck him with a baton, the butt of a rifle, and an iron chain: ‘They only stopped when they were tired.’
Bebaak and other youths I speak with testify that the physical attacks were accompanied by verbal abuse: ‘Your “race” is deranged. You are criminals. You are thieves. Your mother is a whore. Your sister will be raped by your people who are crazed. You will never see azadi.’
‘In the jail, in the dark, as I lose consciousness’, Bebaak says, ‘I think, “We Kashmiris are a people, not a race. Our struggles against India’s brutalities do not make us criminals.”’
Bebaak’s father was taken into custody when he inquired about his son. In one incident, he was injured with a rod that delivered electric shocks. In another, he was asked to bring a bribe of fifty thousand Indian rupees for Bebaak’s release. ‘When one member of the family participates in protest movements, they [Indian forces] try to break the spirit of the family,’ Bebaak says. ‘They try to destroy the economy of the neighbourhood in which we live, to turn our people against us. They say that if we want to stop the violence, we have only to stop our protest.’
State violence and abuse have left their imprint on Bebaak’s body; he lives with physical and psychological trauma. Many are fearful to speak out against their repression, but Bebaak is defiant, resilient. ‘I support azadi,’ he says. ‘How is it wrong to resist one’s bondage?’
I have travelled to Kashmir as co-co
nvener of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in India-administered Kashmir. Outside the hotel where I am staying, intelligence personnel and sometimes men with guns are stationed to keep watch over me at the behest of Indian state agencies. Visitors are monitored, and many are stopped and questioned before being allowed inside the hotel. Whether I travel within Srinagar or outside, cars follow me. Phone calls are tapped. All in order to pry, intimidate, restrict movement and thought.
Each dimension of life in India-governed Kashmir is replete with the obsessions and absurdities of militarization. Every street, neighbourhood, public building and private establishment, forest and field, and road and alleyway has been ‘securitized’. The overwhelming presence of the military, paramilitary, and police, of their guns and vehicles, of espionage cameras, interrogation and detention centres, of army cantonments and torture cells, orders civilian life. Kashmir is a landscape of internment, where resistance is deemed ‘insurgent’ by state institutions.
Later that day, after speaking with Bebaak, I meet Khurram Parvez at our office at Lal Chowk. Khurram is a human rights defender, an amputee who lives with the daily targeting that ethical dissent begets.4 ‘We make choices in living in Kashmir,’ he says. ‘To be silent when people are being brutalized is refusing to take responsibility. It is our moral obligation to take responsibility, to resist in principled ways.’ Responsibility requires we bear witness as a call to action.
The word freedom represents many things across India-ruled Kashmir. But these divergent interpretations are steadfastly united on one point: freedom always signifies an end to India’s illiberal governance.
In the administration of brutality, India, the former colony, has proven itself equal to its former colonial masters. Governing Kashmir is about India’s coming of age as a power. Kashmir is the result of a fixation with haphazard and colonially imposed borders.5 India overwrites memory – histories of violence, conflict, partition, and events that remain unresolved – to maintain the myth of its triumphant unification as a nation-state with Kashmir at its headspring. India’s control of Kashmir requires that Kashmiri demands for justice be depicted as a threat to India’s integrity.
Kashmir: The Case for Freedom Page 9