Kashmiri Students
In India Face Discrimination
By Rama Lakshmi
The Washington Post
18 June,2003
MUZAFFARNAGAR, India -- Three
months ago, Ejaz Husain Jaan was just another Kashmiri student living
away from home, nervously studying for his finals and taking short breaks
to catch the World Cup cricket scores on television.
Now, he is in jail, facing
terrorism charges for allegedly aiding a
plan to blow up important government buildings, an accusation he
vehemently denies.
"I came out of Kashmir
to study, not to be a terrorist," said Jaan,
23, looking tired and bewildered as he stepped out of a crowded
courtroom in Uttar Pradesh state recently. "In Kashmir, there is
always a threat of the gun -- the army's or the militants'. I wanted
to escape the climate of fear and violence.
"But now all my career
hopes are destroyed. I could not even finish my tests," he said,
starting to cry.
According to human rights
groups in New Delhi, scores of Muslim
students, traders and professionals who quit violence-wracked Kashmir
for other parts of India in search of education and job opportunities
have faced increased harassment and discrimination in the past three
years.
A report by the People's
Union for Democratic Rights said Kashmiri Muslims in New Delhi suffer
from "a deep sense of insecurity and vulnerability" and are
victims of police harassment, humiliating searches, intimidation, arbitrary
detentions and demands for bribes by local policemen under the pretext
of fighting terrorism.
The climate of suspicion,
many said, has sharpened since December 2001, when gunmen suspected
of being Islamic rebels fighting for Kashmir's secession from India
attacked the Parliament complex in New Delhi. Kashmir, India's only
Muslim-majority state, has been ravaged since 1989 by a separatist revolt
that has claimed more than 35,000 lives, according to official estimates.
"The last 14 years have
been a dark period for the people of Kashmir. Many people have tried
to escape the violence and come out to study and work, but they face
suspicion wherever they go," said Mehbooba Mufti, the chief of
Kashmir's ruling People's Democratic Party. "The stereotype is
that every Kashmiri holds a gun. Do Kashmiris have to rip open their
hearts each time to prove they are not militants?"
Indian officials said there
is no campaign to harass Kashmiris
because of their religion or their roots.
"We have to be vigilant,"
said a senior police officer who asked not to be named. "We don't
pick up Kashmiris at random, we follow our intelligence inputs and phone
tapping. We cannot always wait for the attack to take place; we have
to prevent it also."
But human rights activists
argued that the police often act on the
basis of flimsy evidence and that the process lacks accountability.
"We are not saying India
should be soft on terrorism, but the state's coercive powers must act
like a surgeon's scalpel rather than come down like a hammer,"
said Ravi Nair, who heads the South Asia Human Rights Documentation
Center. "With every case of harassment of an innocent, the gulf
between Kashmiris and the rest of India widens."
Discrimination and harassment
are a simple fact of daily life for
many Kashmiris living outside their home state, said Afshan Gul, 23,
a film student in New Delhi, who complained of innumerable searches
and questioning by police.
"The searches and questions
do not stop when you show your identity card," she said. "For
a Kashmiri Muslim, it usually begins after you show it. They don't just
search you, they rip off your dignity, too."
More than a decade of violence
by Islamic militants has hardened
perceptions about Kashmiri Muslims among some Indians as well as the
police. The bias, Kashmiris said, permeates everyday activities from
finding an apartment to finding a job.
"The moment the landlords
got to know I was a Kashmiri Muslim, they would make excuses to say
no," said Khursheed Ahmed Qazi, 38, a businessman who spent several
months looking for an apartment in the capital last year. "The
bias against us was clear."
Abrar Ahmad Dewani, 24, a
computer student from Kashmir, said that when he interviewed two years
ago for a job as a Web site designer for a New Delhi company that makes
bathroom fixtures, the questions had nothing to do with his skills.
"The man looked at my
[résumé] and said, 'Are you a Kashmiri?
Kashmiris are terrorists,' " recalled Dewani. "I said . .
. 'I don't
want to work for you.' I felt humiliated."
At another job interview,
a prospective employer told him he was
"very scared of Kashmiris."
The circumstances surrounding
the arrest of Jaan and three other
students in March shook the small group of Kashmiri undergraduates studying
in Uttar Pradesh, who said they came under increased surveillance from
the police and became the target of public suspicion and scorn.
"The police searched
all the rooms of the students. My professor told me not to call him
or visit him. Everybody in college looked at us with suspicion,"
said Abdul Rashid, 26, a graduate student who lived in the room next
to Jaan's. "The neighbors would look at us and say, 'Look, the
terrorists are coming' or 'What are you bombing next?' "
Jaan said he was interrogated
in dark rooms for nine days without a lawyer. He said the police forced
him to sign several blank pages that he feared could be used as confessions.
Police said they found maps
of India's "vital installations" in
Jaan's possession and that phone records show he received calls from
a leader of the banned militant group Jaish-i-Muhammad.
Despite the perils, young
Kashmiris say they will continue to leave
home because of the lack of jobs in their state.
"I have no choice but
to leave Kashmir," said Tanweer Sadiq, 25, a recent computer science
graduate who is applying for jobs in New Delhi. "There are no jobs
in Kashmir. I knew I would have to battle a stereotype when I [went]
there, but it is still worth taking a
chance. It's a question of my career."
© 2003 The Washington
Post Company