Part Two 
The highly contested nature of Kashmir since the partition of the Indian subcontinent has invariably scarred the people of the region. Caught between the political machinations of competing nations, the right of Kashmiris to self-determination has been subordinated through a relentless occupation of the land by Indian military forces. Maligned in much of the mainstream Indian press, Kashmir has been marginalised as a region of ‘problematic’ and ongoing ‘issues’ of national integrity. Behind such discourse however, Kashmiris endure denial of their most basic human rights and freedoms. 
A whole generation of young people has known nothing but occupation: curfews, extrajudicial killings, unmarked graves, torture, and the widespread rape of Kashmiri women. The people of Kashmir however, have not been silenced. Resisting the dehumanisation wrought upon them, they continue to demand their inalienable rights. 
Ali, a 22-year-old final year college student from Pampore town, regularly comes out to throw stones during anti-government protests in his neighbourhood. During the summer unrest of 2010, seven people were killed in his town. One was a teenage boy from his locality who was shot in the spine with a bullet. The left side of his body was paralysed and after struggling for a year, he passed away a few months ago at only 17.  “Their family had to spend all their money on his treatment,” Ali says. “But they refused to take any aid from the state government.” 
Stone throwing in Kashmir has become a symbolic act of resistance but Ali says now it is difficult to pelt stones at the government forces in their area, as police authorities have kept a strong network of informers in all the localities. In the warped environment of occupation, allegiances are constantly realigned; “Now even before we decide to pelt stones, the police come to know about it”. The authorities employ drug addicts to gather information about stone pelters, in return for allowing them to freely continue their trade. “No drug addict was arrested by the police last year and they were allowed to sell drugs to the stone pelters during the summer unrest. In return police asked them to gather information.” Although this has raised the profile of many of the boys who routinely protest against the occupation of Kashmir, Ali says he will not hesitate in throwing stones in the future. 
In his locality, Ali says with a chuckle, there is a little boy who is nicknamed “Chota Geelani (little Geelani)”. A fourth grader, Chota Geelani is a fierce stone pelter. “He is the youngest of the three brothers and all of them come out together during protests. The kid takes part in every protest demonstration in our area and is always at the front of the crowd. His arm is very strong and he can pelt stones with precision.” Last year the little boy was once reprimanded by a police officer while he was pelting stones. The police officer released him saying he was too little to be arrested, however, the very next day, the little boy was again on the same street, pelting stones and shouting pro-freedom slogans. The daily strife and injustices leave a tragic impression on even the youngest in society. 
The diverse range of stone throwers in the Kashmir Valley includes boys from all walks of life. Shabir Ahmad, a 27-year old from South Kashmir’s Shopian district comes from a business family and runs a small clothes store. Clean-shaven and sporting trendy jeans, Shabir is a passionate stone pelter. He talks passionately about the idea of Azadi (freedom) he grew up with in his small neighborhood, where seven people have lost their lives in the past two decades of conflict. When he is pelting stones during protests, his form of protest is equally an act of remembrance for his lost people. 
In 2010, his clothing store was closed during most of the summer months. Accompanied by other young men from his locality, on strike days, he would come out near the main street close to his store, and pelt stones at the government forces. 
“Shopian district is an economically sound area. Ninety percent of the boys who come out on the streets to pelt stones here are educated,” says Shabir. Shopian district observed strike continuously for 54 days in 2009, while protesting against the “rape and murder” of two women in the town. “No one died of food scarcity during that strike period. We are a self-sufficient people and we can even survive strikes for two years,” he remarks confidently, pointing to the close sense of communal unity even in the face of violent crackdowns. 
During the summer unrest of 2010, Shabir’s town arranged 25 trucks full of aid material for the people of Srinagar city, suffering under the imposition of harsh curfews. Carrying aid material, goods, vegetables and fruits, the trucks travelled to Srinagar and the aid was distributed to the affected areas facing severe shortages. “I myself collected items from my home. People gave funds without hesitation,” he says. “Even small kids gave their pocket money.” 
“India can’t fool the world for long now. Projecting us as an illiterate, misguided youth is a blatant lie,” says Shabir, confident that a Kashmir free from Indian troops and bunkers on the streets will one day come to pass. “Even if India makes golden roads for us and employs everyone here, we don’t want it,” he says emphatically. “We want Azadi (freedom), and nothing else.” 
Shabir is proud of the fact that his family has also taken part in pro-freedom protests from time to time. “At times even my father, my mother and sister come out to join protests on the streets,” he says. 
“Hindustan ko yahan say nikalna hai,” he says in Urdu. “We have to expel the Indian state from here.” Ask him about the government claims of “return of normalcy” and ‘‘peace’’ in the valley, and Shabir mocks the claims, in poetic Urdu: 
“Har aandhi kay baed Khamoshe ate hai, aur har khamoshe kay baed aandi” 
(Before every storm there is a lull, and every lull is followed by a storm).
*The names in this article have been changed to protect identities.
<a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/kashmir-stones-in-their-hands">Read Part One here.</a>

Kashmir: Stones in Their Hands (Part 2)

Part One 
Stone pelting is not new to Kashmir. When the current Chief Minister’s grandfather Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah led a popular resistance against the Dogra rulers in the 1930s, stone pelting was part of the protest. It has always been a powerful, symbolic gesture in Kashmir &#8211; an act of resistance in the face of a brutal Indian military occupation &#8211; and is no longer confined to the lanes around Srinagar’s Jamia mosque and Maisuma. It has spread to other towns and villages of the Kashmir valley. 
The young boys highlighted in this piece, living in towns far from Srinagar city, are often dismissed as ‘uneducated, unemployed youth’ by the Indian media. Their voices are suppressed. Educated, however, they certainly are. Aware of the consequences of their actions on the streets, they come out and protest against the government forces regardless, in the fight for freedom. 
The struggle for Kashmiri self-determination has been ongoing since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and continues to be the subject of intense political manoeuvring by India, Pakistan and China. The war on Kashmiri identity has invariably scarred the people of the region, and as the Kashmiri writer Nitasha Kaul has pointed out, ‘wherever in Kashmir they are, their options boil down to bullets or ballots – bullets if they protest being co-opted into the big country [India] which is not their homeland, and ballots if they agree to being co-opted into the big country which is not their homeland’. 
Since 1989, the atrocities committed in India-occupied Kashmir defy belief; over 60,000 people in Kashmir have been killed, thousands have ‘disappeared’, and several hundred thousand live with the physical and mental signs of trauma that occupation brings. Thousands of Kashmiri women have been raped, and the tens of thousands of orphaned children and widows speak of the untold crimes committed by the Indian military forces. The scale of the human rights abuses, including scores of unmarked graves across the region, are routinely ignored by the Indian government. 
Zubair Ahmad*, a second year BA student in a Srinagar City College, is thin but endowed with an imposing height. He speaks in a polite tone, often pausing before explaining his thoughts. Beneath his mild physique, there is an anger he often taps into. On the receiving end of his stones are the government forces &#8211; the Kashmir police and the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) &#8211; personnel that are deployed to quell protests in his locality. “I can hurl stones accurately at long distances,” he tells with a faint smile on his face, “smashing the windows of police vehicles.” 
At his home in south Kashmir’s Pampore town, Zubair, 22, remained awake most nights during the peak of the summer uprisings in 2010. During the day he would come out on to the main street near his home and join other boys from the surrounding localities, directing their stones towards government forces. Fearing police arrest at night, he would place his boots beneath his bed and throw open a window in his room. If he heard a police vehicle in the dead of the night, he would jump out of the window and run. Most of his friends, Zubair says, did the same to evade night arrests by the police. 
Throughout strike days during the 2010 summer unrest, Zubair and his friends joined demonstrations on the main streets with stones in hand and would often be met with bullets and tear gas. He has seen friends beaten up and arrested, sometimes simply for coming out of their homes and walking on to the street.   “They would not even allow people to pray in mosques in our locality,” he says angrily. “When a muezzin [one who delivers the call to prayer] was not allowed to enter the mosque and was beaten up for coming out of his home, we thought that was enough now. We came out to protest and started pelting stones.” Since then he has regularly joined anti-government protests in his locality. 
Zubair remembers a boy who was injured during the clashes. While carrying him to the nearby hospital in an ambulance, Zubair and his group were stopped by the authorities. The windowpanes of the ambulance were smashed and the boys carrying the injured civilian were beaten up. Somehow they managed to reach the hospital, only to find that a police party had arrived before them. “They opened fire inside the hospital premises,” he says, as if still surprised by their action. “They did not even spare us in the hospital.” 
Days after the stone pelting had subsided, police would come looking for those involved and raid their homes. If the boys were not found, the authorities would cynically detain their parents or siblings, often taking the parents for as long as it took for the accused to surrender. Some of the boys were sent to prisons outside the state and kept in detention for a minimum of six months. “Many [criminal] reports were registered against the boys and some were re-arrested again soon after they were released.” 
Zubair recalls one day in the summer of 2010 when a CRPF and police party came to arrest a neighbouring teenager. When his mother resisted, they fired teargas into their garden. “Police had a network of informers to track the boys. They had also recorded video clips of their actions,” Zubair points out. Fearing arrests, many left their homes in Zubair’s town, with some leaving the state for Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai for months. In Pampore town, Zubair counts seven boys who were killed last year in the anti-government clashes. 
Like Zubair, Shabir Ali, a 22-year-old final year college student from the same town, regularly comes out to throw stones during anti-government protests in his neighbourhood. He is well built with streaks of blond hair, and talks in short bursts. “Police and CRPF would beat up people, saying there is a curfew in place. They even beat up shopkeepers,” he says. He and other boys formed large groups that resisted the restrictions and frequent harassment of people at the hands of the government forces. Kashmiris are not only forbidden the right to protest by the supposed democratic government, but are also forbidden any freedom of assembly. 
Last year, on the second day of the Muslim celebration of Eid, one of Ali’s recently-married neighbours left his home to buy bread in the morning. The CRPF troopers, seeing him on the street during curfew, opened fire. “He received a bullet in his head. He died in front of my eyes,” Ali says and looks away, trying to gather his thoughts. “I myself saw his brain matter lying on the street,” he adds after a brief pause. Then he falls silent. 
When police came looking for Ali at his home, he spotted them from his window. Before they could enter his home, he ran out and disappeared. “I went to my uncle’s home in another town to evade arrest. I did not even tell my parents,” says Ali, whose name figured prominently in the most-wanted list of stone pelters. 
Ali is disillusioned with the pro-freedom leadership for ending strikes at the peak of the 2010 summer uprising. He says they have given blood for ‘Azadi’ &#8211;freedom &#8211; and the boys were determined last year to take the fight to its end. Ali has seen his friends killed, but he feels they didn’t achieve anything during the 2010 protests. 

*The names in this article have been changed to protect identities. 
<a href="https://platformonline.uk/posts/kashmir-stones-in-their-hands-part-two">Read Part Two here.</a>

Majid Maqbool