Mohammad Raafi
SRINAGAR
Claiming that the unrest in the National Institute of Technology (NIT) campus was pre-planned, the Kashmir civil society comprising Tuesday said that few New Delhi based news channels are “carrying propaganda against Kashmiris”.
The Kashmir civil society members included Kashmir Bar Association, KCSDS and other civil society groups whose members addressed media in a Srinagar hotel while Kashmir is observing a complete shutdown against the harassment to its students studying in mainland Indian colleges.
“After conducting an internal inquiry, we came to know that the row was started by non-local students on 25th March after defeat of Pakistani cricket team before Australian cricket at Mohali,” said Mian Abdul Qayoom, the Kashmir Bar association president.
While the non-local students celebrated the Pakistani loss with great fanfare, Qayoom said it was done to “apparently” provoke local students and “laugh, revel at their discomfiture”. “It is needless to say that the people of Kashmir support Pakistani cricket team and mourn their defeat for reasons known to everyone.”
“It was for this reason,” said Hameedah Nayeem, “that Kashmiri students celebrated Indian defeat comparatively for a brief period of time while not so much for the love of West Indies cricket team as to wreak vengeance on the non-local students for what they had done on 25th March.” Hameedah Nayeem heads KCSDS.
While the non-local students, next day, had unfurled “Indian Flag”, Nayeema said, “everyone in Kashmir is intrigued from where it (flag) came as it is not available in the market.”
“How come people like Anupam Kher Tweet about the incident even before the staffers in the college came to know about it?” she questioned.
“It seems that BJP-RSS combine has outsourced fomenting trouble in the universities and the colleges to Anupam Kher who is a spend force as an actor,” she alleged.
“A look at the videos and photographs, which went viral on social networking sites, tells us that it was pre-planned which is corroborated by the students and the objective analysis points finger towards one (non-local) teacher as the mastermind behind the unrest in the college,” the Kashmir civil society members claimed.
After the vandalism by the non-local students, J&K police swung into action and lathi-charged the mob, the civil society members said that the police action was “blown out of proportion” as if such thing has happened for the first time in Kashmir. “The Indian government,” the members claimed, “displayed a majoritarian policy by issuing series of statements threatening the local students by descending on Kashmir like vultures for prey.”
“Kashmir hosts five Lakh labourers and domestic help, who are treated as family members and have stayed here in worst circumstances. Lakhs of tourists visit Kashmir every year and have all the praise for local hospitality. We rescued hundreds of non-locals in September 2014 floods before our boys rescued their relatives,” the members said.
The Kashmir civil society members demanded that the Government of India should fulfil its responsibility of ensuring safety and security to Kashmiri students in different parts of India and curb the “ultra-national and communal channels from hate campaign against Kashmiris and poisonous stuff from telecasting which is more than enough to balkanize the society along communal lines which will have disastrous consequences”.
Appealing international organizations to take note of “growing attacks on Kashmiris in India”, the civil society members said, “if the hate campaign against Kashmiri students continues, Government of India will be squarely responsible for the consequences.”
“Kashmiris have displayed exemplary human behaviour towards Indians in spite of what the Indian state has done to them and this has been acknowledged by all those who have visited Kashmir in recent past despite our commitment to our inalienable Right to Self Determination,” they added.
