From the podium of the historic Jama Masjid (grand mosque) in central Srinagar, the slogans that rose on Friday were a decisive blow to any attempt at communalising Jammu and Kashmir. Hundreds of devout Muslims lining up for prayers were holding placards condemning the massacre on Sunday of 24 Kashmiri Pandits by as yet unidentified gunmen at Nadimarg village in Pulwama district.
"Who are these unidentified gunmen?" the head priest, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, a former chairman of the separatist All-Parties Hurriyat Conference, demanded to know.
The mirwaiz referred to the fact that people with guns in Jammu and Kashmir are either militants or security force personnel. To the thunderous support of the congregation, he demanded that "the murderers of Nadimarg should be unmasked and stoned to death".
"We had not even heard that name Nadimarg before," he said. "But what we saw there pains our hearts. Who could do such a ghastly crime? Whose heart had turned to stone and could hear the cries of the innocents? Our Pandit brothers ask us: is this the price for staying on in Kashmir? Today both Hindus and Muslims of Kashmir are crying and we do not even know who these enemies of humanity are."
Farooq has written to the imams and religious leaders of Kashmir to come out strongly in protest against the Nadimarg massacre. "We are answerable for what is happening in Kashmir," he said. "We have demanded enquiries in this and all such massacres, but nothing has happened."
Farooq admitted that as a Muslim leader from Kashmir, he felt that he had failed in his duty to save the Pandits. "But I am conscious of my own helplessness. I am unsafe myself; how could I protect the Pandits?"
After offering namaaz, the devotees marched out of the mosque carrying placards saying 'Stop killings innocents' and 'We demand an impartial probe' and shouted, 'Present the killers of Nadimarg, punish the killers of Nadimarg'.
