Kashmiris in India is confronted with violence after a deadly attack

Shabir Ahmad Dar, a resident of India, Kashmir, has been selling Pashmina scarves for over 20 years.

Complex embroidered lightweight scarves are a favorite with its customers in Mussori, a city on the hill in the northern state of Uktarakhand, where it works.

For his buyers, scarves are a sign of luxury. For the gift they are a metaphor for the home; His traditional models, laid with the history and a mark of his Kashmiri identity.

But lately, the same identity has felt like a curse.

On Sunday Dar, along with another seller, was publicly harassed and attacked by members of the Hindu Right Group for which they were reported Killing 26 people in a popular tourist site in Kashmir last week. India has accused Pakistan of the attack, ”he denies the Islamabad charge.

A video of the attack shows that men tremble and throw abuse of a gift and his friend as they offend their stall, located on a lively boulevard.

“They accused us of the attack, told us to leave the city and never again show our faces,” Dar said.

He says his goods worth thousands of dollars are still lying there. “But we’re too scared to get back.”

As the outrage of the attack spread, police arrested the three men on Wednesday, but released them a few hours later after accusing a fine and asking them to “apologize” to Dar and his colleague.

But Dar had already left, along with dozens of other sales of Kashmiri scarf, who, after living in Mussori for decades, say they no longer feel safe.

Many survivors of the attack of Pahalgham – the most deadly civilian aimed in recent years – said the fighters are specifically directed to Hindu men, causing the pouring of anger and sorrow in India, with politicians through party lines requires strict actions.

Since then, there have been more than a dozen reports of suppliers and students from cashmere in Indian cities facing harassment, violation and threats of right groups – but also by their own classmates, clients and neighbors. Videos showing that students are expelled from campus and beaten on the streets, cascading online.

On Thursday, one of the survivors whose husband of a naval officer was killed in a warlike attack, appealed people Let’s not go after Muslims and Kashmiris. “We want peace and only peace,” she said.

But safety concerns have forced many cashmere as a gift to return home.

Urmmat Shabir, a nursing student at a University of Punjab, said some women in her neighborhood accused her of being a “terrorist who should be thrown out” last week.

“On the same day, my classmate was forced by a taxi by her driver after finding out she was cashmere,” she said. “It took us three days to travel back to Kashmir, but we didn’t have the opportunity. We had to go.”

D -Ja Shabir returned to his hometown, but for many others, even the home no longer feels safe.

While the search for the perpetrators of the attack last week continues, the Kashmir security forces have detained thousands of people, excluding more than 50 tourist destinations sent to an additional army and paramilitary troops and blown up a few homes belonging to families of suspect fighters who accuse they have “terrorist accessories”.

The disclosure caused fear and anxiety among civilians, many of which called actions in the form of “collective punishment” against them.

Without mentioning the demolitions, the chief minister of Jamu and Kashmir Omar Abdulla stated that the guilty should be punished without mercy, “but do not let the innocent people become secured.” Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also criticizes the demolitions, warning the government to distinguish “terrorists and civilians.”

“Every time the tension escalates, we are the first to carry its main weight. But we are still being treated as suspects and is expected to put our lives in detention,” another student who wanted to remain anonymous told the BBC.

Still, this time, the reaction feels much more, says Shaphi Subhan, a scarf salesman from the area of ​​the Blevara area, who also worked in Mussori.

In his 20 years of business there, Subhan said he had never encountered any public threat – even after the terrorist attack in 2019 in the Pulutila region, in which they killed 40 paramilitary police soldiers.

For him, Mussori felt at home, a place where he found peace – even though he was hundreds of miles. He said he had shared an emotional connection with his clients who came from all parts of the country

“People were always nice to us, wearing their clothes with so much joy,” Subhan recalls. “But that day, when our colleagues were attacked, no one came to help. The public just stood and watched. It hurt them physically – but emotionally, much more.”

At home in Kashmir, peace has long been fragile. Both India and Pakistan claim that the territory is entirely but administering individual parts, and the armed uprising has been in the region, administered by India for more than three decades, taking thousands of lives.

Cattered between them are civilians who say they feel stuck in an endless limb that feels particularly suffocating whenever the ties between India and Pakistan get under pressure.

Many claim that in the past, military confrontations between nations were followed by waves of harassment and violence against Kashmiris, along with significant security and communication in the region.

In recent years, violence has declined and employees have indicated an improvement in infrastructure, tourism and investment as signs of more stability, especially since 2019, when the special constitutional status of the region was canceled under Article 370.

But the arrests and security operations continue, and critics claim that peace has come with the price of civil freedoms and political freedoms.

“The needle of suspicion is always for the locals, even when militancy has declined in recent decades and a half,” says Anuradha Bhasin, managing editor of Kashmir Times newspapers. “They must always prove their innocence.”

As the news of the killings spread last week, Kashmiris poured out into the streets, holding alerting candles and protesting marches. Full exclusion is observed the day after the attack and the newspapers print black front pages. Omar Abdullah publicly apologizedSaying he “ruined his guests.”

Bhasin says that Kashmiri’s reverse response against such attacks is not new; In the past, there was a similar condemnation, albeit on a smaller scale. “No one there transmits civil murder – they know the pain of losing loved ones too well.”

But she adds that it is unfair to put the burden of proving the innocence of Kashmiris when they become a target of hatred and violence themselves. “This will simply inspire more fear and further alienation to people, many of whom already feel isolated from the rest of the country.”

Mirza Wahid, a Kashmiri novelist, thinks Kashmiris is “particularly vulnerable, as can be seen through a different lens,” being part of the Muslim population of India.

“The most sad part is that many of them will withstand inviolability and humiliation, lie low for a while and wait for it to be attached because they have life to live.”

Nobody knows this better Mohammed Shafi Dar, a worker for a daily salary at Shopian’s Shopian, whose house was blown up by security forces last week.

Five days on, he still takes the pieces.

“We lost everything,” said Dar, who now lives in the open heaven with his wife, three daughters and a son. “We don’t even have food cooking utensils.”

He says his family has no idea where their other 20-year-old son is, whether he has joined for militancy or is even dead or alive. His parents tell him that the college student left home last October and never returned. They haven’t spoken since.

“Still, we were punished for his alleged crimes. Why?”