Martyrs day: Kashmir leaders say they are under house arrest, Omar calls it ‘undemocratic move'
Srinagar, Jul 13 (PTI) Prominent political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday claimed they have been placed under house arrest to prevent them from paying homage to the 22 persons killed by the Dogra army on this day in 1931, with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah terming the move as 'blatantly undemocratic'.
'13th July massacre is our Jallianwala Bagh. The people who laid down their lives did so against the British. Kashmir was being ruled under the British Paramountcy. What a shame that true heroes who fought against British rule in all its forms are today projected as villains only because they were Muslims,' the chief minister said on X.
In 1919, hundreds of people protesting peacefully against the Rowlatt Acts, which granted the colonial administration repressive powers, were gunned down by British forces without any provocation at the Jallianwala Bagh in Punjab's Amritsar.
Abdullah said, 'We may be denied the opportunity to visit their graves today but we will not forget their sacrifices'.
In an earlier post, Abdullah criticised the house detention of the leaders as a 'blatantly undemocratic move'.
'In a blatantly undemocratic move homes have been locked from the outside, police & central forces deployed as jailers & major bridges in Srinagar blocked. All to stop people from visiting a historically important grave yard containing the graves of people who laid down their lives to give Kashmiris a voice & to empower them. I will never understand what the Law & Order government is so afraid of,' he said.
Opposition PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said the mistrust between Delhi and Kashmiris will truly end only when India accepted Kashmiri 'martyrs' as their own.
'The day you accept our heroes as your own just as Kashmiris have embraced yours, from Mahatma Gandhi to Bhagat Singh that day, as Prime Minister Modi once said, the 'dil ki doori' (distance of hearts) will truly end,' she said in a post on X.
The former chief minister posted pictures of a locked gate to her residence.
'When you lay siege to the Martyrs' Graveyard, lock people in their homes to prevent them from visiting Mazar-e-Shuhada, it speaks volumes. July 13th commemorates our martyrs those who rose against tyranny, much like countless others across the country. They will always be our heroes,' she said.
The former chief minister claimed several leaders of her party who managed to sneak out of their homes have been detained at various police stations.
'Continuing with its regressive policies many of our party leaders like Khurshid Allam, Zohaib Mir, Hamid Kohsheen, Arif Liagroo, Sara Nayeema, Tabassum, Basharat Naseem and others who managed to sneak out of their homes have been detained in police stations. They were on their way to Mazar e shuda. It seems we are getting back into the oppressive times that our 13 July Martyrs fought against,' she claimed.
Peoples Conference president Sajad Gani Lone also claimed that he has been stopped from leaving his residence.
'Not allowed to move out of home. Detained. I don't know why the union government is so keen to redefine what is sacred for the people of Kashmir.The sacrifices rendered on July 13 are sacred for all of us,' he said.
Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who has been under house arrest since Friday, said Kashmir bears witness to the painful saga of the sacrifices made by its sons and daughters.
'The Martyrs of July 13, 1931 led this quest by standing up to the tyranny of the rulers of the day, laying down their lives. Today, Kashmir remembers and honours them. We may be put in jails or under house arrests and threatened with dire consequences, and the martyrs' graveyards may be sealed and blocked, but they live in our hearts and in our memory and will continue to, generation after generation,' he posted on X.
The leaders claimed they were placed under house arrest to prevent them from visiting the Naqshband Sahib Martyrs graveyard near Nowhatta in the old city.
The Srinagar district magistrate on Saturday rejected the ruling National Conference's plea seeking permission to pay homage to the 22 people.
The party, in an application sent to the district magistrate, stated that NC president Farooq Abdullah and other senior functionaries intend to visit the graveyard of 'martyrs' at Naqshband Sahib near Nowhatta on Sunday.
'The District Administration Srinagar has denied permission to all applicants intending to proceed towards Khawaja Bazar, Nowhatta on 13th July 2025 (Sunday),' Srinagar Police said in a public advisory posted on its handle on X on Saturday.
July 13 used to be a public holiday in Jammu and Kashmir before the reorganisation of the erstwhile state into two Union territories in August 2019. However, the administration dropped the day from the list of gazetted holidays in 2020.
On the day, mainstream political leaders used to visit the 'martyrs' graveyard' to pay homage to the Kashmiris who fell to the bullets of the Dogra army while protesting against the rule of the Maharaja. PTI MIJ DV DV
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
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Tavleen Singh writes: Time to get beyond history books
Let me begin with an admission. I am not averse to school history books being revisited or revised by historians from the RSS school of history. For far too long, they were written by dogmatic leftists who chose in the name of secularism to exalt the 'great Moghuls', and diminish Hindu rulers and their often-magnificent achievements. The books they wrote were mostly so boring that people like me, who now read history books with fascination, ended up asleep in history class. In the moments that I was awake, I did notice that there were three periods of history that were taught: ancient India, Moghul and British. What I learned about pre-Islamic India was so little that it was not until I was an adult that I heard of the mighty south Indian dynasties and discovered the wonders of Hindu civilisation. It was on holidays in Indonesia and Cambodia that I saw the extent to which India's civilisation had influenced language, culture and religion across the east. Angkor Wat and Borobudur left me stunned by their beauty and scale. So, if there is a bit of revisionist history being introduced into school textbooks, I have no problem at all. The Moghuls did tear down temples and impose taxes on us idol-worshippers, and the truth about these things should never have been concealed. Not from Hindu children or Muslim. My problem is that I wish some of those leading this new history movement would spare time to examine the current state of our schools and the abysmal quality of teaching. I have said before in this column that when I travel to a village, almost the first thing I try to see is the local school. And the truth is that not the best of these schools would be considered a real school by modern international standards. In the best government schools, there are at least classrooms with desks and teachers, but you need only spend 10 minutes in one of these classes to discover that teaching methods are primitive. Children are taught not to think or develop a love of learning, but to learn by rote. Just enough to pass their examinations. They usually leave school with basic literacy instead of a real education, so they cannot compete with children who go to good private schools. They are, nevertheless, the lucky ones. In the worst schools, especially those that have been built for Dalit and Adivasi children, there are no classrooms, no desks, no textbooks and often only a token teacher who teaches all the subjects they are meant to study. These teachers are very well paid by rural standards, but they usually live outside the village and are rarely available after school hours. Children who might not have fully understood what they were taught can turn to nobody for help because often, their parents are illiterate. My point is that instead of wallowing eternally in the glories of our glorious past, it is time to address the problems of today. What difference will the new history textbooks make, if most schoolchildren are unable to read them? Another problem I have with the current exercise in rewriting history books is that they seem mostly to draw attention to the evils perpetuated by the Moghuls and other Muslim rulers. Is this just another deliberate attempt to make Hindu children hate Muslims? The British Raj did many bad things that were whitewashed in school textbooks, why is this not also being reviewed? We now have a new Nalanda University to remind us of the legendary Buddhist institution that once existed here and was destroyed by a barbaric Muslim invader. But why is it that nobody has noticed the decay that infects most other universities? Anyone who has visited the great universities in the West knows that we do not have a single great university in India. This is why some of our best teachers have become academic refugees in countries that have real universities. This is why Indian students who can afford it go abroad for higher studies. Why is it that in the higher echelons of the RSS nobody has noticed yet that instead of wallowing in our 'glorious past' we should be trying to create a glorious present? When Narendra Modi put Smriti Irani in charge of education in his first term as prime minister, I was a loyal Modi Bhakt. So, although I was taken aback by this startling choice, I tried to go and talk to the minister to persuade her that one reason why higher education was in the doldrums was because of too much interference by politicians and high officials. I told her that a bold and important move would be to disband the University Grants Commission. She paid no attention, and this obsolete institution continues to micromanage the affairs of universities to their detriment. A Higher Education Commission of India is meant to replace it soon, but universities do not need more control but less. Why do we need officials poking their noses into the realms of academia at all? Speaking of political interference in education, may I say that the Home Minister is completely wrong in trying to discourage Indians from learning English. It is the lingua franca of today and Indians must continue to learn it because the advantages that they have when they venture out into the world are beyond measure.
