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MURDER IN SENDBAL |
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How sectarian differences poisoned a small Kashmiri village
By Riyaz Wani
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Local administration has sealed the mosque after the clash that led to the murder of Jamaat activist Shabir Ahmad Bhat
Photos: Faisal Khan |
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It was a fight over a madrassa that split Sendbal down the middle. A local madrassa run by the religious group Jamaat-i-Islami was opposed tooth and nail by the sarpanch Muhammad Subhan Wani, a National Conference activist. He mobilised his workers to close it down but was resisted by Jamaat’s supporters in the village. The tug of war that followed led to the murder of Shabir Ahmad Bhat, 20, a Jamaat activist.
The divide began five months ago. Wani, recoiling at the orthodoxy sweeping across the village, sacked the imam of the mosque, Farooq Ahmad, the brain behind madrassa. Ahmad was the prayer leader at the mosque for the past five years and was instrumental in setting madrassa as the place for instruction in Quran and Hadith.
Over the years, Ahmad turned out a number of youth well-versed in religion, most of them from the lower social class – cooks, labourers, subsistence level farmers. He taught from 4-year-old boys and girls to the college-going youth like the deceased Bhat. Armed with scriptural knowledge and a sense of piety, they started questioning the prevailing social and religious practices in the village with a Jamaat ideology to boot.
“Our youth know religion. They also go to school and college,” says Riyaz Ahmad, 35, a resident. “We are not like the supporters of the sarpanch who are illiterate. So, they feel threatened by us, by our educated, religious youth”.
After removing the imam, sarpanch moved to shut down the madrassa. The madarassa was now run by the students of the ousted imam, among them the deceased Bhat and his friend Muhammad Ayub Shah. They held regular classes “to take the mission of Ahmad forward”.
“We decided that come what may madrassa will go on,” says Ayub. “It was Allah’s work. We had to carry it on”.
On 2 April, Wani locked the mosque’s top floor and declared the madrassa closed. This led to a scuffle between the two groups. Several villagers on both sides were injured. Sarpanch later filed an FIR against seven Jamaat workers.
From then on, Sendbal was not the same village. Madrassa was shifted from the mosque to a Jamaat supporter’s house, where it still runs. Bhat and Ayub took over as the regular tutors. Mosque, a large three storey brick building by the roadside, was also split. Jamaat supporters refused to offer prayers under the new imam, Abdur Rasheed, a sarpanch appointee. They prayed separately in the same mosque where Bhat would lead the prayers. They would enter the mosque after sarpanch’s supporters had left.
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The family of Shabir Bhat; (Right) Bhat's friend Muhammad Shah holding a photograph of Bhat
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Tension kept simmering. And the complaints reached the district magistrate. In one letter, Jamaat group called on the magistrate Showkat Ahmad to intervene and resolve the dispute over mosque. “We call upon your goodself that the sarpanch Muhammad Subhan Wani has deprived us of our mosque. We request you to please take steps to recall him,” read the letter.
But there was no official effort to pull the village back from the brink. The discontent was dismissed as a routine sectarian rivalry between the groups to be resolved by the village elders. By now, the division became absolute. The mosque located in the middle of the village cut the population into two distinct identities: Supporters of Jamaat, an Islamic party which discourages shrine worship, and followers of the ruling National Conference which traditionally holds the Valley’s shrines in trust.
On 6 August, Shabir Ahmad Bhat and his father went to offer afternoon prayers at the mosque. On their way, the fellow villagers joined them. But as they opened the door of mosque, they found the sarpanch and his group waiting there. Seeing them coming, an enraged Sarpanch ran to bar their entry. A scuffle ensued and Bhat and his father were beaten with wooden rods.
Bhat was rushed to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. An estimated twenty thousand people attended his funeral. This angry mass swore revenge. A small village teetered on the brink of disorder. Government swung into action. A police contingent was deployed to the village to prevent reprisal attacks. And mosque, the bone of contention between the two groups, was sealed.
Now, more than a week after the incident, police continues to be stationed at the village. And government is no hurry to open the mosque.
Riyaz Wani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
riyaz@tehelka.com
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