Kashmir: Minority killings increase amid violent demographic tensions

Last week, two Hindu schoolteachers and a pharmacist in Srinagar were killed by militants who claimed their victims were Hindu nationalists implementing Centre's "occupation designs" for Kashmir.

Their deaths are part of a recent spate of killings, which are being blamed on an Islamist militant insurgency challenging Centre's rule in the restive region.

Hindus, also called "Pandits" in Kashmir, are an ethnic minority in the Muslim-majority region. After Centre scrapped the region's semi-autonomous status and changed land use laws, local Muslims fear central authorities are trying to engineer demographic change by encouraging Hindu migration.

A little-known militant outfit, The Resistance Front (TRF), claimed responsibility for the killings last week, saying their victims were espousing a Hindu agenda.

The teachers were killed for allegedly threatening students who didn't participate in Independence Day functions on August 15, and for hoisting India's national flag, a TRF statement said.

Police have said the TRF is a local front for the notorious Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist militant outfit, whose objectives include merging all of Kashmir with Pakistan.

The slew of killings has instilled fears in thousands of migrants from the minority Hindu and Sikh communities. Many are refusing to leave their homes or go to work this week. Others are beginning to flee Kashmir in massive numbers for safety elsewhere in India.

What legal changes did India make in Kashmir?

Before August 2019, Kashmir had its own constitution, which provided constitutional safeguards to land, jobs, and citizenship rights.

On August 5, 2019, Centre abrogated the region's semi-autonomous status and bifurcated Kashmir into two federally governed union territories – Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Soon thereafter, India made controversial legal changes allowing Indian nationals who are not residents of Kashmir to purchase land in the disputed region.

It also granted domicile rights to over 200,000 non-state subject residents after August 2019.

Hindus fleeing Kashmir after attacks

Now, this fear of laws opening the door to non-Muslim migration seems to have triggered a violent backlash targeting members of minority communities. Local Hindus say these tactics were used in the 1990s to push out Kashmiri Pandits.

"Militants killed a few prominent Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s to trigger migration. This ploy worked then and now they are repeating it," said Kashmiri Pandit Akansha Koul (name changed).

"It is like the 1990s all over again, with the same fear and chaos among people. Then my parents took me out of Kashmir and now I am leaving with my kids," she told DW.

Scared by the recent spate of killings, Koul, along with her family, left Kashmir for the primarily Hindu region of Jammu on Saturday.

Security forces crack down

Security forces have recently detained over 700 people, mostly young boys, in a sweeping crackdown in Kashmir, following the string of militant attacks and targeted killings.

DW spoke with the families of several of these detained youth who denied their children are involved in any militancy-related activities.

Nevertheless, the killings have drawn sharp condemnation from both pro and anti-India political parties, religious, and civil society groups in Kashmir.

Manoj Sinha, lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, said security agencies have been given free hand to respond to the attacks.

"The terrorists and those aiding and abetting them will pay for their heinous crimes. Every drop of innocent civilians' blood will be avenged. We will dismantle the terror ecosystem," Sinha said.

Police officials say those detained in the crackdown include anti-India political activists and "overground workers," a term authorities use for militant sympathizers.

History of tension in Kashmir 

Kashmir observers have said the targeted killings recently portend a return to the most violent phase of a militant anti-India campaign in Kashmir during the late 1980s and early 90s.

An armed insurgency erupted after Delhi allegedly rigged 1987 assembly elections in favor of an Indian nationalist coalition of political parties. The Muslim United Front (MUF), a coalition of Islamic parties, which many predicted would perform well in the polls, lost the elections.

MUF leader Muhammad Yousuf Shah, alias Syeed Salahuddin, then became head of Hizbul Mujahideen, an Islamist militant outfit using predominantly local recruits.

Salahuddin's election manager, Yasin Malik, went on to lead the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which carried out bomb attacks in the region's largest city, Srinagar.

The Kashmir Valley would sink into a morass of violence, as thousands of local Muslim youth picked up arms against central rule, killing people for their alleged affiliation with the Indian state.

"Political violence in India is intimately tied to a demographic imagination … In Kashmir, the fear of altering demography after the abrogation of Article 370 has been palpably real," wrote political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express on October 10.

Prominent Kashmiri Pandit leader Sanjay Tickoo told DW that conspiracies are being hatched against Kashmir's Hindu community, claiming they had a role in the abrogation of Article 370.

"It is a blatant lie. Pakistan and separatists are creating the fear of demography change in Kashmir and the recent killings are its offshoot," said Tickoo.

He added that the Muslim-majority community must publicly commit to supporting an end to violence.

"Authorities have asked us not to venture out of our homes. But police security is not the remedy," he said, emphasizing that the majority of the community must first want tensions to end.

"Otherwise, it is difficult to live here," said Tickoo.