Not Just Autonomy — India Clamps Down on Kashmir Mosques

It was a dark Eid for 11-year-old Saeed Mutaiba this August. When she returned home from a brief vacation at her grandfather’s house, she discovered police taking away her father Mohammed Ameen, a prayer leader at Jamia Masjid in Awantipora, an hour’s drive from Srinagar, the capital of the strife-torn region of Jammu and Kashmir. She, her mother and her six-year-old brother have repeatedly visited the police station to appeal for his release — in vain. “He looked tired. I felt helpless that I couldn’t do anything for him,” says the young girl.

A secular democracy, India has long tried to avoid emphasizing the religious undertones to the conflict in Kashmir, blaming it instead solely on Pakistan-backed militancy there. But in recent months, police have stepped up arrests of Islamic clerics and prayer leaders and clamped down on mosques in what was the country’s only Muslim-majority state. That has coincided with the Indian government’s move on August 5 to strip off the constitutional provisions of autonomy Kashmir enjoyed while placing the region under lockdown. Though there is no official number of arrests, the government’s approach — which it argues is necessary for the region’s security — threatens India’s credibility, say analysts.

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