Swarajya decided to speak to some victims of the rioting on the campus of the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, since the night of 31 March, as the business-as-usual media reports do not match the sense of outrage shared by WhatsApp users. The following is their version of the series of incidents.



Following the India-West Indies cricket match in the ICC T20 World Cup tournament on 31 March, Kashmiri Muslim students of NIT Srinagar took out processions to celebrate the Indian team’s defeat. We are using the term “Muslim” because the media’s coinage “members of a certain community” is both comical and hypocritical.

Apparently motivated by the 9 February incident at Jawaharlal Nehru University, they added the slogan “Bharat tere tukde honge, insha’Allah, insha’Allah” (India, you will be broken to pieces, God willing) to the usual list of slogans of Kashmiri separatists:

Jiye, jiye Pakistan

Pakistan zindabad (both mean “Long live Pakistan”)

Hindustan murdabad (To hell with India)

That led to some heated verbal exchanges with non-Kashmiri Hindu students—a minority in the institution as well as in the state of Jammu & Kashmir.

Within hours of the verbal duels, some outsiders started pelting stones at the Indus Hostel on the campus that houses non-Kashmiri students exclusively. The stones left several students of the first year (of the NIT course) grievously injured. It was obvious that the Kashmiri students had tipped off these miscreants.

The next day, 1 April, students at the receiving end of the attacks organized a demonstration to protest the night’s happenings. Shortly after they assembled, a huge crowd from outside barged into the campus and launched a violent attack on the demonstrators. The size of this mob kept swelling as more and more locals joined it to “teach Indians a lesson” (words heard from the crowd).

The mob thrashed the “Indian” students, leaving many of them (all Hindu) bleeding or badly bruised. Several of them were rushed to doctors.

Undaunted by the physical hurt, the victims next decided to hoist the National Flag inside the campus. “Iss men ghalat kya hai? Yeh hamara desh hai, hum apna jhanda phehra sakte hain (What was wrong in this? This is our country and we have a right to hoist our flag here),” a student told me.

After hoisting the Tricolour, these students went to the Director’s office to lodge a formal complaint against the incidents of assault. They found personnel of the Jammu & Kashmir Police in front of the office—with a group of adversarial students accompanied by local residents with Pakistan’s flag in hand, raising pro-Pakistan slogans.

The non-Kashmiri students approached the spot carrying the Indian Flag and chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. The Director and several professors came out of the office. The non-Kashmiri students demanded that the Director take action against the students who, along with outsiders, had assaulted them.

The police then launched a lathi charge on the demonstrating non-Kashmiri students. “Hamaare bandon ko dauda-dauda ke Jammu-Kashmir ki police ne maara (The Jammu & Kashmir policemen chased and beat us),” a student said.