Savagery in Srinagar

IT was an act of savagery. The lynching of a police officer outside Jamia Masjid in Nowhatta in Srinagar by a mob on “Shab-e-Qadr” (night of prayers) in the holy month of Ramadan has pushed further the boundaries of brutalisation in Kashmir. The victim was Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Yusuf Pandith from the security wing of the state police supervising security arrangements  at the grand mosque from where the chief cleric, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, delivers his sermons. The officers and men from this wing do not wear uniform. Soon after he was lynched, the officer was given a tag of being from an intelligence agency — and that too, a non-Muslim — as if such barbarism against the non-Muslim intelligence men  should be an acceptable norm. 

The lynching is a blot on the fair name of Kashmir that prides itself on the human values following the path of peace and love as obligated by the Islamic scriptures. That policemen should be targets of terrorists is a well-known strategy, but the people joining the lynching of someone on one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar is self-speaking evidence how far the dehumanisation of Kashmir has proceeded.  This is the time for all the conscience-keepers of Kashmir, particularly the separatist leaders and clerics among them, to stem this rot that threatens to tear apart an already overstrained social culture of tolerance. 

The hand of agents provocateur in inciting the mob on Thursday night is all too evident. The unholy puppeteers could care less for the Ramadan’s religious pieties; their objective is to keep the streets boiling and the LoC/borders sizzling till Prime Minister Modi finishes his US visit. And, if the Indian armed forces over-react, the terror-strategists would have reason to feel sadistically rewarded, irrespective of the brutalisation of the Kashmiri society. The Shab-e-Qadr mob attack is as much a challenge to the Indian security establishment as to all those who value deeply Kashmiri sensitivity and sensibility.