SRINAGAR - India has warned against rising
communal tensions across the country as Kashmiris living outside
their state faced property evictions, job suspensions and
attacks on social media after a suicide bomber killed 44
policemen in the region.
The car bomb attack on a security convoy on Thursday,
claimed by Pakistan-based Islamist militant group
Jaish-e-Mohammad and carried out by a 20-year-old Kashmiri man,
was the worst in decades of insurgency in the disputed area,
which is claimed in full by both the nuclear-armed neighbours
but ruled in part.
As the bodies of the paramilitary policemen who died in the
attack were returned to families across India this weekend,
passionate crowds waving the Indian flag gathered in the streets
to honour them and shouted demands for revenge. Pakistan has
denied any role in the killings.
Kashmiri Muslims, meanwhile, are facing a backlash in
Hindu-majority India, mainly in the northern states of Haryana
and Uttarakhand, forcing the federal interior ministry to issue
an advisory to all states to "ensure their safety and security
and maintain communal harmony".
Aqib Ahmad, a Kashmiri student in Uttarakhand capital
Dehradun, said the owner of the house he was staying in had
asked him to move out fearing an attack on his property. Rates
for air tickets to Kashmir have sky-rocketed as tensions
escalate, he said.
Two other students in Dehradun said they also had been asked
to vacate their rooms immediately.
"Where are we supposed to go?" Waseem Akram told Reuters,
demanding authorities to ensure safety of all Kashmiri students.
Local media reported that some Kashmiri students were
assaulted by members of Hindu right-wing groups in Uttarakhand,
while a Kashmiri man had been booked by the police in the
southern city of Bengaluru under a colonial-era sedition law for
a post allegedly backing the militants. Reuters was not able to
independently verify the reports.
Police in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state said they were
providing temporary accommodation to people returning to
Kashmir. The police urged Kashmiris to contact their hotline for
"speedy assistance in case they face any
difficulties/harrasment".
"TRAITOR"
Fear has engulfed Kashmiri students in Haryana's Ambala
district after a video on social media showed a village headman
asking people to evict Kashmiri students in the area.
"In case it is not done, the person in whose residence such
students are living will be considered as a traitor," the man
says in the video, whose authenticity Reuters has not been able
to independently verify.
Police said they were investigating the matter.
Since the video surfaced on social media on Saturday, at
least half a dozen Kashmiri students have been shifted to the
hostel of a university campus in Ambala.
A Facebook user named Anshul Saxena, meanwhile, has claimed
credit for getting people fired or suspended for posts he calls
"anti-national".
Saxena uploaded a screengrab of a suspension letter handed
out to a Kashmiri employee of a pharmaceutical company who had
allegedly written in favour of the attack.
The attack on India's paramilitary police follows the
deadliest year in Kashmir for security personnel since Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party came to power nearly five years ago.
Government data shows 91 officers lost their lives in
Kashmir last year, about 14 percent more than 2017. Thousands of
people, including militants and civilians, have died since the
insurgency began in late 1980s.
Political leaders from Kashmir appealed to the government to
ensure security of Kashmiris across India, while many people on
Twitter said their homes were open to Kashmiris seeking shelter.
"Understand the pain and anguish," Mehbooba Mufti, former
chief minister of J&K, said in a tweet. "But we must not allow
such mischievous elements to use this as an excuse to
persecute/harass people from J&K. Why should they suffer for
somebody else's action?"