NC posts 1931 picture to recall Kashmir’s “struggle for dignity and identity”

Arun Joshi
Jammu, July 13

For the first time in several decades, National Conference, while paying tributes on ‘Martyrs Day’, put up a black and white picture of July 13, 1931, on its twitter handle, as a chilling reminder of what happened on the day 89 years ago. 

The picture shows dead bodies lying on cots and a huge crowd offering prayers according to Islamic traditions. 

The photograph was captioned: “NC President Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Vice President Mr. @OmarAbdullah pay glowing tributes to the Martyrs of 13th July, 1931 on Martyrs day today.”

Kashmiri Parties have been observing this day as the ‘Martyrs Day’, to commemorate the memory of people killed while protesting against the monarchy. However, the alternative view is that it was the intensity of the ugly incidents involving scaring minorities and looting their properties that resulted in the firing that killed those Kashmiris hail as “martyrs.”

The police have cordoned off all areas to prevent anyone from reaching the graveyard where the bodies were buried. Over the years, all Kashmir-centric parties and their leaders would make it a point to offer floral tributes and the day was listed as a state holiday. The NC and other parties have issued statements hailing the “martyrs” and their contribution in starting a “struggle for freedom from tyranny.”

The statement of former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah whose father Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was the leading light of Kashmir politics for decades in the last century, 1931 is being recalled to send a message of Kashmiri pride of the gone by century.

Farooq said the day of 13th July is the day of the assertion of Jammu & Kashmir’s identity and rights of its people. He said: “The day marks the shift from stoicism to dynamism. It was a fight of the tyrannized against a tyrant, of the oppressed against oppressors. It was on that day that a martyr who was breathing his last had told Sher-e-Kashmir that he had done his duty and that it was his duty now to proceed ahead, he said.”

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