OWAIS GULAB has not left home for seven weeks. The college where he studies computing is closed, as are all but a few local shops. His phone, like others across the Kashmir Valley that use a pre-paid SIM card, cannot make calls. The hostel his family runs stands empty. It overlooks Dal Lake, whose hundreds of pleasure craft, normally packed with summer tourists, sit idle.
It is not just curfews, strikes and clashes between police and protesters that make Mr Gulab feel trapped. He fears leaving the valley, he says, because in other parts of India police routinely harass young Kashmiris. Musing over tea on the 46th afternoon of his confinement, what perturbs Mr Gulab is that he too now thinks in terms of “us” and “them”. “Someone my age with a 21st-century outlook should not be saying ‘those Indians’ and ‘their army’, but then you look at the headlines,” he says, pointing to a local newspaper that lists those killed in the latest round of violence.
There are now 68 names on that list. The number of injured approaches 10,000, some 460 of them wounded in the eyes by pellets from the shotguns the police use to quell riots. Most...Continue reading
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