Angry Kashmiris master the art of stone-pelting

By Sarwar Kashani Oct 14, 2007, 14:57 GMT

Srinagar, Oct 14 (IANS) 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.

'Roadside demonstrations may be justified, but not such idiotic stone throwing,' says Aftab Ahmed, a shopkeeper near Jamia Masjid who says he loses half a business day every Friday.

Police once tried pre-empting these errant youths by taking into preventive custody a group of known stone-throwers every Thursday evening. But it didn't help, as the youths started evading by running away from their homes and re-emerging right on time for the stone pelting.

'Police action won't help,' says Syed Musaib, a sociologist. 'Youth are troubled by joblessness. Poverty pains them and a boisterous temperament forces them to be violent.

'Provide them with jobs and then see the results.'

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service