The school girls are back to school, but during the past week, a gender barrier was broken in Srinagar. No one is celebrating it though. The first time, scores of schoolgirls in their school uniforms came on streets of Jammu and Kashmir to protest. Some of them picked up stones and started pelting when the police tried to disperse them.
The new violence has sparked turbulent situations in Jammu and Kashmir as people have come on roads after watching viral video clips in which it has been described that the security forces act as human rights abuse. And now the things have been changed as the young school and college students have taken the charge. Surprisingly, the girls are also taking part in the agitation in the large numbers. Even those students are throwing stones at the security forces.
The video clips that showed students being beaten some 30km away from the area, in a college in Pulwama, went viral on social media, after which security forces drew criticism, and that was the crackdown point. Almost 50 students were injured at the protest against a temporary check-post set up by security forces outside the college.
The Union home minister plans to raise an all-women unit of the India Reserve Battalion in Kashmir to tackle the new trend of street protests by school girls and hurling stones at the security forces. The decision was taken on Saturday at a meeting chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The India Reserve Battalion is a police force rose specifically for each and every state, jointly by the Centre and the state and is mandated to help the state’s police to maintain law and order when necessary.
The school and college girls say stone pelting that they participated in was a response to those police action. A class 12 student Barjees said that it is deep-rooted and dates back to the time when she wasn’t even born. She has heard many stories, one of them about the Kunan Poshpora rapes in 1991. Her sister Baasira, an HS student of Kothibagh School in Srinagar says school students cannot remain immune to what is happening outside. She said, “We (student) are the base of this society, of Kashmir, of the country. We do not want this conflict should carry on. Our protest is in solidarity with people”. The ruling party of Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance concedes it is a worrying development. BJP spokesman Mr. Arun Gupta said, “Students are leaving their studies and joining protests and throwing stones. We feel it is a very serious matter”.
The general secretary of the ruling party PDP, Nizamudin Bhat, that is in alliance with the BJP, appealed for calm. Mr. Nizamudin Bhat said, “We will appeal to their parents and the society that this will impact our social fabric. We are ripping apart and disintegrating our educational system into violent places”.
