Thousands of Shiite Muslims were allowed to hold a religious procession marking the Muslim month of Muharram in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s main city on Thursday for the first time since an anti-India rebellion broke out in the disputed region more than three decades ago.
The participants, mostly wearing black clothes, beat their chests and recited elegies in the commercial heart of Srinagar. Some carried copies of the Quran to protest recent public desecrations of the Islamic holy book in Sweden and Denmark.
The main Muharram gatherings on the eighth and 10th days that used to pass through the city center were banned a year after an armed insurgency broke out in 1989 demanding the region’s independence from India or its merger with neighboring Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir. However, Muharram processions continued to be allowed elsewhere in the Indian-controlled portion.
“It was after a long wait of almost 34 years that this procession has once again been allowed to go through its historical route,” said Shabib Ul Hassan, a young participant.Kashmiri Muslims have long complained that the Indian government restricts their religious freedom with the rationale of maintaining law and order, while promoting a massive annual Hindu pilgrimage to a holy cave, the Himalayan Amarnath Shrine in Kashmir.
Restrictions on Muslims have increased sharply since the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party scrapped the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019.
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