Kashmiri Hindus demand security after revenue official's killing

By Hilal Mir

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir (AA) - Scores of ethnic Kashmiri Hindus, also known as Pandits, have been holding sit-ins and demonstrations across Indian-administered Kashmir since Thursday evening, soon after suspected militants shot dead a Hindu revenue official inside a district government office in the region.

The official, Rahul Bhat, was one of the hundreds of Hindus who returned to their ancestral homeland, the Kashmir Valley, intermittently over the past two decades. Previous Indian governments had announced jobs for the community's unemployed young people and built guarded communities to facilitate their return.

The community of 160,000-200,000 had migrated en masse to the neighboring Jammu province and other parts of India when the armed anti-India insurgency began in the region in 1990.

Since the ruling Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scrapped the disputed region's political autonomy in August 2019, as many as four Pandits have been gunned down by suspected militants, along with more than a dozen other Hindus, many of whom were seasonal migrant workers from various parts of India.

Several Indian Muslim workers have also been killed since 2019 by suspected insurgents who believe the scrapping of autonomy was aimed at reducing the majority Muslim population into a minority. Besides dismantling the autonomous constitution of the region, the Indian government also scrapped a local law that barred outsiders from buying land or taking government jobs.

The latest killing, the Pandit protesters have said, reinforced their sense of fear. During the demonstrations, they warned top civilian and police officials that unless their lives were secured, they may once again have to migrate en masse.

At one of the protests, they shouted slogans against the local administration, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Home Minister Amit Shah. Kashmir is currently ruled directly by New Delhi through a lieutenant governor.

At another protest, they were heard shouting slogans against a militant group that purportedly claimed the killing.

At yet another sit-in in the northern Kashmiri district of Kuwpara, a Pandit man lamented why Kashmiri Muslims were not out on the streets with them against the killing.

They also questioned the government's assurances and the safety guarantees in remote areas, considering that a person could be killed in an office of a busy town.

On Friday, police clashed with another group of protesters and fired tear gas as the demonstrators were trying to march toward the airport serving the capital Srinagar.

The Pandit protesters, who live in a guarded community in the Sheikhpora area of the Budgam district, where the official was killed, said they decided to march because Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha did not visit the locality and assure them of security.

"Unmask the killers!" the protesters shouted.

- Disputed region

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.

Since they were partitioned in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965, and 1971 – two of them over Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani troops have also fought intermittently in the northern Siachen region since 1984. A cease-fire took effect in 2003.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence or for unification with neighboring Pakistan. According to several human rights organizations, thousands have reportedly been killed in the conflict since 1989.