New Delhi, India – Walking in the narrow and crowded lanes of Jalandhar, a city in northern Punjab, *Aasif Dar suddenly realizes that “every eye is on me.”
And they were not friendly gazes.
“It felt like every single person in the crowd was blessed with his eyes,” recalls Dah.
When Dar and his friend stopped by the ATM, two unknown people approached them and asked about their ethnicity. They panicked and ran away. The next morning, on April 23rd, Dah left the house and bought some milk. “Three men looked at me and threw slanderous Islamophobia,” Dar said. “One of them cried out, ‘He is a Kashmiri, everything happens for them.’ ”
On Tuesday, April 22nd, gunmen fired fire at tourists in Kashmir’s resort town Pahargam, killing 26 tourists and injuring others.
However, even if New Delhi denounced Pakistan for the attacks claimed by armed groups seeking to leave India, the killings opened the country’s religious and ethnic fault lines.
As Indian government forces continue to hunt attackers in the dense jungles and mountains of Kashmir, Kashmiris, a student in India, particularly in students, reported heckling, harassment and threats by far-right Hindu groups or classmates.
From Uttarakhand, Punjab, to Uttar Pradesh, landlords are driving out Kashmir tenants. And the shopkeeper refuses to do business with them. Several Kashmiri students are sleeping at the airport as they try to get home.
Someone else carried out a fatal attack. “And we’re now left to here to pay the price,” Dah said.
“Distrust everywhere I see”
Kashmir’s conflict zone is fully claimed, but is partially controlled by both India and Pakistan.
New Delhi has accused Islamabad of “cross-border terrorism” and indirect involvement in the attacks of Pahargam. Pakistan rebuts the allegations, saying it only provides moral and diplomatic support for Kashmir nationalism. India has said it does not provide evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahargam attack, which locked its nuclear-armed neighbors in tense standoffs. Both countries are expelling each other’s citizens, reducing the diplomatic strength of their mission in each of their capitals.
Within India, however, Kasimiris is bearing the brunt of rage over Tuesday’s attack.
On condition of anonymity, almost 12 Kasimiris, who spoke to Al Jazeera, said she was trapped in rooms in at least seven cities in India and avoided external contacts, including online ordering and booking taxis.
Dar is a second semester student in Jalandhar’s Anesthesia and Operations Theater Technology. This is the first time that DAR has left his parents and Kashmir has pursued higher education.
“There are no opportunities in Kashmir. I want to study hard for my future,” he said in a phone interview. “If you do well here, you’ll be able to support your family.”
However, the reality is calm for him. His term exams breathed into his neck and he said he grew up with anxiety and depression. “I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned over the last few months,” he said. “There’s constant uncertainty. I might not be an astenant [at class];Back to my house, I don’t know, my mind just doesn’t work. ”
“There’s disbelief everywhere I see,” he said. “We are cursed because our faces and characteristics give us our ethnicity.”
Shortly after the attack, multiple survivor accounts appeared, suggesting that the gunmen had isolated tourists attacked by the religion. Of the 26 people killed, 25 were Hindu men.
But what has been largely overlooked in the tornado of anti-Kashmir and anti-Muslim hatred that has been taking over India’s social media since Tuesday was the identity of a Kashmiri Muslim man who tried to stop attackers from killing tourists.
“India today runs high with xenophobic propaganda, which has been unleashed for several years, most of which are against Muslims,” says Kashmir-based political analyst and academic Sheikh Shokat.
“Kasimiris is double weight. He is a Kashmiri and Muslim,” he said. “They are always easy targets.”
“Give this treatment to Muslims in Kashmir.”
It is approximately 350 km (217 miles) away from Jalandhar in Dehradun, the capital of Uttarakhand.
“We will not wait for the government to take action… Kashmiri Muslims leave by 10am. Otherwise you will face unthinkable actions.” “Tomorrow, all workers will leave the house and give this treatment to Kashmiri Muslims.”
A similar warning soon slammed into the social media feed of Mushtaq Wani, a 29-year-old Kashmiri student in the city.
Pursuing a Masters in Library Science, Crocodile, older than most Kashimiri students in the city, began receiving panic calls from others. “We took the threat seriously,” he said.
The area has a history of violence against Kasimiris. Shortly after the fatal suicide bombing in 2019, which killed at least 40 paramilitary personnel, Kashmiri students were cornered, beaten, and returned to their homes in Dehradun. Some did not return to town.
“This is like our lives,” lamented the crocodile. “This happens again and again. Why can’t India finish extremists at once? They have so many troopers and [number of] Extreme [is] So few…someone kills someone and our lives are covered. ”
Since the threat, the crocodile has coordinated at least 15 students returning to Kashmir. As for himself, he is sitting firmly, locked up inside a friend’s house, preparing for his term exam starting next week. “We don’t feel scared and safe, but if we miss the exam, I’ll lose a lot,” he said.
However, Wani said he was a little relieved after police arrested Sharma, the far-right leader, and asserted the Kashmiri students that the authorities would ensure their safety.
“Pahargam has changed everything.”
After a scary video of Kashmiris and physical attacks in almost half a dozen Indian cities, Omar Abdullah, newly elected prime ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, urged the other Chiefs of X to ensure Kashmiris’ safety.
“I ask the people of India not to consider the people of Kashmir as enemies,” Abdullah later told reporters. “What happened didn’t happen with our consent. We are not enemies.”
In 2019, the Indian government unilaterally revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status, splitting the previous state into two union territories: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Abdullah took power last year after his first state assembly election in 10 years, but today’s Jammu and Kashmir governments have far less power than any other state government that New Delhi is primarily responsible for.
*Umer Parray, a resident of South Kashmir, has been studying pharmacies in Jammu for five years. Kashmir, the majority of Muslims and Jammu, the majority of Hinduism, are two administrative blocs of Union territory.
He said life in Jammu was going well, up to Pahargam. “But Pahargam’s attack changed everything,” he said.
Previously, Parei went to an ice cream shop with a friend. Since the attack, Pale has not left his home in the neighbourhood where many Kashmiri residents live.
The night after the attack, dozens of young men rode over the neighborhood on their bikes. He squealed the horns and shouted “Jai Shri Ram.”
A video of a man running be-hitting Kashmiri student in an adjacent lane appeared.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
Last night, when he was beaten for being a Kashmiri Muslim student, Kashmiri student, he was beaten by a mob in Janipur, Jammu.
How much criminalised is it because of your identity? This is our home too. #kashmir #jammu #stoptargetingkashmiris pic.twitter.com/ubfaggirwx– Mbasil Naik (@sule_khaak) April 24, 2025
* Amid fear of retaliatory attacks, the name of a Kashmiri student has been changed to protect his identity.
