While Sabzar Ahmad Ganie was fighting off Indian paramilitary forces in Shopian district of Indian-administered Kashmir, his mother Shameema Bano was busy working at their farmland a mere 21 kms away. It was a late afternoon just last April. Bano and the rest of the family would not have known of Ganie’s death had there not been social media, and they could have spent days trying to find his grave had they learned the news too late.
Nevertheless, they still ended up chasing after the police vehicle carrying his body to its final resting place: a remote graveyard some 113 kms from his ancestral village, his funeral witnessed by only his family, the police, and some members of the Indian armed forces.
The 25-year-old Ganie had been a member of one of the many armed rebel groups that have been fighting government security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir since the late 1980s. In the past, bodies of local rebels killed in battles with security forces were handed over to their kin after proper identification so that they could be buried in their native villages. But since last year, slain rebels have been buried by the state in graveyards far from their loved ones.
“My son was the 16th rebel buried in the graveyard,” says Nazir Ahmad Khan, referring to the final resting place of his son Tariq, who was killed in an encounter with Indian security forces in June last year in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Khan now has to travel nearly 130 kms each way every time he visits his son’s grave. He says, “When I last visited there, the graveyard was full.”
Located in the northwest of the Indian continent, Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan, but each country controls only part of it. Indian-controlled Kashmir has a Muslim majority. In August 2019, Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unilaterally abrogated Article 370 and Article 35A of the constitution, thereby stripping the region of Kashmir of its semi-autonomy. It was bifurcated into two federal union territories now controlled directly by Delhi.
Kashmir, however, has been a battlefield for the last few decades for Indian security forces and insurgents. There have been no clear counts of the fatalities so far, but one 2008 estimate indicates that the conflict in the picturesque region has claimed more than 100,000 lives since 1989. At the very least, no one contests that the dead has included civilians, aside from rebels and Indian soldiers.
Almost every village and town in Kashmir has a separate graveyard for armed rebels called martyrs graveyard. (Photo by Aamir Ali Bhat)
Policy to prevent COVID-19 spread?
Two months before Tariq Khan was killed, the administration in Indian-controlled Kashmir adopted a new policy to bury local rebels quietly in distant graveyards. Since it was implemented, more than 200 local rebels killed in encounters with state forces have been buried in far-off places in North Kashmir districts of Baramulla, Ganderbal, and Kupwara, in the presence of government forces and family members. According to the police and other Kashmir officials, the new policy was a necessary step to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“COVID spread is just an excuse,” an unconvinced Nazir Ahmad Khan tells Asia Democracy Chronicles. He says that “it was an intense love of people for their armed rebels that was an embarrassment for the Indian state” that prompted the policy.
Families of other fallen rebels say the same. They say that the real reason for the policy is the humiliation endured by the Indian state whenever big rebel funerals are held and the slain rebels are given public farewells where they are feted as heroes.
Indeed, in February 2018, Kashmir’s intelligence wing had told state police to stop people from holding “glamorized funerals” of militants, as these were inspiring others to join militant ranks. Last December, nine months after the policy was issued and implemented, Police Inspector General Vijay Kumar told the national daily The Hindu that it had “not only stopped the spread of COVID infections, but also stopped the glamorizing of terrorists and avoided potential law and order problem.”
Unsurprisingly, the persistent pleas of families of slain rebels to permit final rituals and proper burial of their loved ones at their ancestral graveyards have gone unheeded.
After weakening somewhat in the 1990s and 2000s, the local armed uprising in Kashmir had experienced a resurgence in 2010, and ignited further when a young guerilla commander, BurhanWani, was killed in an encounter with Indian security forces in July 2016. A tech-savvy commander who played a crucial role in recruiting youth to the insurgency, Wani became an icon of guerilla fighters in Kashmir after his funeral was held repeatedly, reaching as much as 40 timesaccording to some reports, with each attended by several hundred thousand people.
Prior to the new policy, slain rebels in Kashmir would be buried in their home villages, often in graveyards reserved for martyrs. During funeral prayers for them, the venue, the lanes, and by-lanes would usually be choked with the rush of people. Some mourners would climb trees to get a last glimpse of the fallen insurgent and bid him farewell. There would even be those who endured going through throngs of people just to kiss the slain guerilla’s forehead or to touch his feet and rub their hands on his body, as if to be blessed. Women would also throw candies and flowers during a rebel’s funeral procession.
The new policy has effectively done away with all that – and more.
Chasing after the dead
After Ganie’s mother Shameema Bano heard that he had been killed, she and the rest of the family had rushed to the local police station to confirm the news. There they were told to go to the Police Control Room (PCR) in Srinagar, where his body had been brought for medico-legal formalities and final identification.
Initially, the police at Srinagar would not even let Bano see the body of her eldest son. “It was a nightmare that I will never forget in my life,” Bano says angrily. “I grabbed my hair in distress and cried my heart out. Some of us were allowed to see the dead body of our son only after we pleaded before police officials.”
The family wanted to take Ganie’s body home, so they could bury him according to Islamic rituals at their ancestral graveyard. Instead, the police bundled up Ganie’s corpse into a government vehicle that the family chased through various checkpoints, where they were stopped each time.
“Just before Handwara where my son was buried, police stopped our vehicle,” Bano recalls. “They didn’t allow us to move forward. We went to the local police station to get the permission.”
By the time the family reached the graveyard, Ganie’s body had been shrouded and his grave dug up. “Except for his face, the whole body of Sabzar was shrouded,” Bano says. “We weren’t allowed to open his shroud and look his whole body.”
A month later, the body of 19-year-old rebel Aqib Ahmad Lone was also brought to the Handwara graveyard. A 12thStandard student, Lone had joined the insurgency movement only in October last year. Last 11 May, he called up his family.
“He told us he was trapped by Indian forces and would achieve martyrdom anytime,” recounts Lone’s father Mohammad Amin Lone. “He talked to every family member and asked us to forgive him if he had ever hurt us. I asked him to escape if there is any possibility. I even suggested to him to surrender, but his answer was no.”
The police later informed Lone’s family of his death. They were also told that his body had been taken to PCR Srinagar. Says his father: “We waited at PCR for two and a half hours before we were allowed to see his face.”
Shameema Bano, displays a photo of her deceased rebel son, Ganie, while Mohammad Amin Lone bursts into tears as he looks at a photo of his teenaged son, Aqib. (Photo by Aamir Ali Bhat)
When Lone’s family reached the Handwara graveyard, they had to turn on the flashlights of their mobile phones to see his face one last time. By then the funeral rite was over. “We were asked to leave in a hurry as the night had fallen,” his father says. “We didn’t even offer a funeral to our beloved son.”
Ganie’s family was luckier, having arrived at the graveyard in time for his funeral rite. After it was over, the police handed his personal belongings over to his mother. Bano says that she kissed her son’s broken shoe, laid her head on his blood-soaked clothes, and cried.
The next day her husband picked a shovel, went to his ancestral graveyard just 200 meters away from the family home, and dug up a grave. He put Ganie’s belongings into the grave and then covered everything up. Says Bano: “It gave me satisfaction that my son will remain close to me. A mother knows the pain of separation from her child and that pain is difficult to overcome if even the dead body of your child has been separated from you.”
She says that after every Friday prayers, people usually go to the graveyard to pray for the departed soul of their kin. But she says, “Where will we go? It feels a piece of my heart is missing and has been buried far away from me.” ●
Aamir Ali Bhat is a Kashmir-based independent journalist.
