Stone pelting a Kashmiri trait

Angry Kashmiris master the art of stone-pelting

By Sarwar Kashani

Srinagar, Oct 14 - It happens here almost every Friday after the midday prayers. The area around Jamia Masjid, the main mosque in this summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, transforms into a sea of stone-pelting protestors, angry over just about anything.

The city's downtown area comes to a standstill amid pitched battles between demonstrating youth and police. It has virtually become a weekly affair in this violence-ravaged city since 1989 when the separatist war erupted in this north Indian border state that is at the heart of a territorial dispute with Pakistan.

Anything can provoke anger - blasphemous cartoons, America's invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, Pakistan's Lal Masjid, Kashmir's infamous sex scandal, murder, rape, or for that matter the death of a militant in a gun battle with the Indian Army or police.

Roadblocks follow the demonstrations and any vehicle that passes by becomes a target of stone pelting. Police personnel swing in and the action starts.

The area around the mosque every Friday afternoon smells of burning rubber tyres and tear gas, and one can also intermittently hear the sound of cracking windshields.

'Kani jung', in vernacular stone pelting, has been the Kashmiris' unique way of venting anger on issues ranging from religious, social, political and administrative matters to power shutdowns. Sometimes a mere rumour floated from a corner of the world is enough to trigger it.

Though written Kashmir history finds no mention of this trait, orally it is said that while fighting autocratic rule in the 1930s, disenchanted Kashmiris had no other way of expressing their fury except by hurling stones at the oppressors.

This mode of fighting carried on and gained popularity from 1960 onwards when supporters of two rival political groups - of the National Conference called 'sher' (lions) and of the Awami Action Committee called 'bakra' (goats) - would indulge in clashes called 'shera-bakra' battles.

'The supporters of each group were paid by their respective masters to orchestrate stone pelting on busy Srinagar roads,' remembers Ghulam Rasool Mir, a resident of Jamia Masjid area who was once a 'paid-stone thrower'.

Says Ghulam Nabi, a schoolteacher: 'People in downtown Srinagar have always been exploited by the politicians who prefer to pull the strings instead. A slight prick makes these innocent mobsters come out on the roads to fight for something they know very little about.

'And on Fridays, getting together gets easier under the pretext of offering joint prayers.'

People are fed up with this weekly menace, sarcastically also referred to as the one-day cricket match, that paralyses life here.

--IANS

Inpiring kashmir women with the Indian women's movement

Bringing the Indian women's movement to Kashmir

By Sarwar Kashani

Srinagar, Nov 8 - Kashmiri women, whose voice has remained feeble, particularly in the wake of the 18-year-old insurgency in their state, will get to peek into the visual history of the women's movement in India through a poster exhibition being launched here.

Titled 'Poster Women', the exhibition highlighting the Indian woman's fight against a patriarchal society opened Thursday at Tagore Hall in the Jammu and Kashmir summer capital and will be on till Nov 15.
Organised by New Delhi-based feminist group Zubaan, it has put together a selection of posters created for various campaigns.

'This is a travelling exhibition, conceptualised with the vision of making the posters available to as many people as possible,' Manisha Sobhrajani of Zubaan told IANS.

'In Kashmir - or for that matter anywhere the exhibition travels - all we want is for people, men and women, to be aware of the different issues faced by women in general,' she said.

The plight of women in India is a sad reflection of its society and Jammu and Kashmir, which has over five million women as per the 2001 census, is no exception. The violent secessionist movement has only left them doubly scarred.

Caught between the guns of terrorists and troops, the Kashmiri woman has had no platform to emerge out of the four walls of the house and demand her political, economic and social rights.

The exhibition is aimed at inspiring them by introducing the history of the Indian women's struggle for equal rights, family planning, reproductive rights, the banning of invasive contraceptives, access to health facilities, literacy, environment, political participation and also the tirade against domestic violence, communalism and marginalisation, according to Zubaan.

'Since the early 1970s, the period that gave rise to the contemporary women's movement in India, the poster has played a crucial part in highlighting their issues,' Sobhrajani said.

Interestingly, the organisers have 'consciously chosen to stay away from celebrities or politicians' for inaugurating the exhibition.

'Since this exhibition is about the women's movement and women's activism, Neeraja Mattoo and Parveena Ahangar are inaugurating it,' added Sobhrajani.

Mattoo, a former teacher, is a noted English scholar while Ahangar is a chairperson of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) of Kashmir.