How residents of a remote Kashmiri village felt they were experiencing the wider conflict for the first time in their lives
— The residents of this remote hamlet, ringed by mighty Himalayan mountains in Kashmir, had hardly begun restarting their unique way of living this April when blood-soaked bodies started to arrive from distant places.
On the evening of 22 April, the villagers learnt that the bodies of four Kashmiri insurgents, who hail from southern Kashmir, about 150 km away, were being buried in a nearby graveyard. One of the new graveyards created by the Indian government in a remote hill station Sonmarg in disputed Kashmir. There is another similar graveyard where ethnic Kashmiri rebels have been interred since the middle of April. Located in the northern Baramulla district, it was somewhere, before April, where only Pakistani militants or Pakistan-administered Kashmir militants were buried.
The Sonmarg graveyard is therefore the second “martyrs’” graveyard “created” by the Indian government. Of all places, why did they pick this spot? The villagers have some opinions on the matter. Their relatives, if they happened to pass by, offered prayers. But it often became somewhere the villagers, who are ethnic Kashmiris and whose ancestors had gifted this piece of land to nomads, would come and see to grave care and restoration themselves. They would clear grass, restore a sunken grave, among other things.
They say the soil, which remains damp for the better part of the year, would have required the hollow containing the body to be sealed with stone slabs rather than easily-decaying wooden planks that might have the tendency to collapse the graves. Another worry is that the graveyard is not fenced. A few villagers have marked the graves, which are pyramidal mounds of earth. Big boulders at both ends serve as gravestones, one of which has the name of the slain man and the date of death. Smaller boulders stuck along the length of the graves distinguish them from those of the nomads.
This year, more than 65 armed rebels, about 27 Indian forces and 10 civilians have been killed in the region that was stripped of its autonomy last year, and where new domicile rules announced by India have deepened the fears that Hindus would overwhelm the majority Muslims. Parents of Adil Ahmad Wani, a 26-year-old Kashmiri rebel, who was killed by Indian forces in early May this year. Adil Ahmad Wani, a 26-year-old rebel was killed in the Shaar area of Pulwama district, some 25km from his home in Padgampora village. His father, Manzoor Ahmad, and mother Shakeela, rushed to the site of the gunfight for one last glimpse of his body. The government forces, however, stopped them at a checkpoint when they were making their way to him.
After navigating several “Covid-19 lockdown security checkpoints”, they were stopped by police at Gund, about 20km outside of Sonmarg. Five of Adil’s uncles and brother-in-law were asked to go back, Wani said. Wani had wanted to bring something home belonging to his son, too, but couldn’t find anything. They returned at about 3 am.
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