Pain in Paradise: A trip to martyrs’ graveyard in Kashmir offers a poignant picture of the Valley

On July 13, I left home to visit the martyrs’ graveyard, some three kilometres away, where Kashmir’s first generation that revolted against the Maharaja rule is buried. In 1931, that day 23 Kashmiris were shot dead by the repressive regime when they attempted to storm central jail, where a trail of Abdul Qadeer, was being held.

The neatly cleared cemetery is situated in old Srinagar’s Naqashband sahib shrine complex. And to reach there, one has to meander through curfewed old Srinagar. In this historic city, where half of the population has been caged inside their houses for several days, three things are omnipresent. Troopers wearing riot gears with automatic rifles, razor wires and bunker vehicles on every intersection amid scars of protests on roads.

Just few furlongs away from Kashmir’s tertiary care Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, Nawab Bazar area is sealed with levers held by troopers.

From a distance, they signalled us (I was along with my Editor on a motorcycle) to return back. But we moved ahead facing a loop of concertina wire laid across the road with a group of troopers on the edge. We proved our credentials yet it did not help. Instead of removing the wire, the CRPF personnel directed us to meander through a narrow alley to skirt the barricaded zone.

A few metres ahead, a CRPF trooper in his 40s standing by an armoured vehicle with a stern look signalled us to stop. We duly stopped and showed our identity cards. Not a single civilian is seen on the emptied roads. We are as good as strangers in our own city among a pack of Khakis standing in front of closed shops. They carefully scrutinise our movement but we moved ahead unmindful of their constant gaze.

In the entrails of the old city, people are gossiping in narrow unpaved lanes on shop fronts and open drainages.

No honking was required as commuters don’t have to nudge to make way for themselves at Srinagar’s historic market Zaina Kadal. Amid stains of black ash of burnt tyres spread on roads, we continued to move ahead.

When we hit Bohri Kadal road, a stronghold of resistance politics, CRPF personnel stopped our two-wheeler. Not only is this the bastion of resistance politics, the JKLF boys including Yasin Malik displayed AK-47 first time in this area in 1989.

Again, we showed our ID cards and moved ahead. Across the road, another CRPF party saw us being allowed by their colleagues yet they stopped us. Again, we displayed our ID-cards. Not satisfied, they sought curfew passes. No pass has been issued to media persons by the government. In a frantic tone, he ordered us to get curfew pass. Amid a row of houses on both sides of the lane, which leads to Srinagar’s central Jamia Masjid, the CRPF men sitting on shop fronts stopped us. I lost the count. Amid this, a frantic CRPF man jumped in front of the bike putting it to halt. Aiming a slingshot on us, we stopped. Again, the same question, who we are?

Outside the Jamia Masjid, a horde of troopers were scattered around their vehicles. Few CRPF men were aiming stones at an electricity pole with slingshots. A huge thud amid a laugh followed on my back while we moved ahead. In a corner of the road, three CRPF officers surrounded by bulletproof gypsies were unmindful of their men’s action. They were engrossed in conversation.

Inside the compound of the shrine where martyrs are buried, a deafening silence and fear were apparent. The scent of rosewater or incense was missing. No hymns were read and no devotees swarmed the sanctum sanctorum. A raised concrete platform under a gigantic chinar tree where pigeons are fed with corn was clean.

As if for years, the shrine was shut. The spirituality and the ambience, which one feels on visiting the shrine, were missing. Only two men, an old chowkidar and a caretaker, were sipping tea alone amid the silence. The old man complained the forces attempted to prevent him coming to the shrine while the caretaker had left his home in the wee hours to reach here.

Three hours ago, the chief minister along with her colleagues and opposition leader Omar Abdullah who had visited this place to offer homage to the martyrs insisted that the martyrs laid down their lives for Kashmir’s freedom from “suppression and autocracy”. Yet 85-years later, isn’t freedom too far when visiting the cemetery is arduous for people? 

As of now, the Valley has been thrown into chaos because of unabated civilian killings. A verbal press emergency is in place. The Mehbooba Mufti-led government, whose rallying cry as an Opposition leader, was to serve justice to 120 youths killed by CRPF and police in 2010, has crushed the protesters with more lethal force. Not only live ammunition was used against people, nearly 100 youngsters are blinded and maimed by deadly pellets, iron ball bearings. On the day Kashmir reverberated in the Parliament House three more civilians, including two women, were served with bullets by army.

Following the ban on mobile telephony and internet services, the ban on publication of newspapers after a verbal diktat from a minister has created an information blockade. This has left the state in an undeclared emergency where even journalists are not free to work amid a strict curfew. I was told no curfew passes are issued to journalists but the district magistrate has been issuing them easily to milkmen. This reflects how the government is curbing the freedom of press, if at all it exists in the region.

The author is a journalist based in Kashmir