Blood On Saffron

The Indian tricolour and BJP flags flutter atop the three-storey house of slain BJP leader Wasim Bari, just opposite the Bandipora police station in Muslimabad and a few metres from the district court. It is also the local office of the BJP. On June 23, Bari had organised a function to commemorate the death anniversary of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee. He made a collage of Mookerjee’s pictures and lit lights around it. The video he posted on social media had the voiceover of Union home minister Amit Shah paying tribute to Mookerjee. On the evening of July 8, Bari, his father Bashir Ahmad and brother Umer Sultan were shot dead at their shop. The policemen supposed to be guarding them were at their nearby house at the time and didn’t come out even after hearing the gunshots.

According to Altaf Thakur, BJP spokesman in the Valley, Bari’s wife, Falak Feroz, told BJP leaders Ram Madhav, MoS in PMO Jitendra Singh, BJP vice president Avinash Rai Khanna and BJP J&K president Ravinder Raina to press for an NIA probe. “She told the visiting leaders that she was the first to reach the spot when the shooting took place, while the guards were sitting inside the house,” Thakur says. All eight guards have been arrested and removed from service.“People who kill and those who get people killed need to understand that the martyrdom of Wasim Bari will bring forth a thousand workers. There will always be people who will stand for the flag of India,” Ram Madhav said after visiting the family. Inspector General of Police Vijay Kumar says the militant has been identified as a member of Lashkar-e-Toiba. “The police and army will soon neutralise him,” he adds.

Calling the assassination one of the “biggest political killings in recent times”, Thakur says Bari represented the “ethos of the BJP in Kashmir”. “We are Muslims and Indians. Bari would start his programmes with nara-e-takbeer and it is in sync with our Indianness. But many people here don’t like this,” says Thakur, pointing out that anti-BJP posters were seen at the spot a day after the killing. “There is so much security and yet there were anti-BJP posters threatening our workers. This needs an investigation,” he adds.

BJP leader Hina Bhat says their workers are being targeted for being upfront. “Though we are wedded to our Muslim and Islamic sufi identity, we don’t promise false dreams. We usually start our programmes with Quranic recitation and at the same time say what the BJP’s policy is,” she adds. Former BJP legislator Sufi Yousuf says Islam doesn’t permit violence. “Pakistan should stop these killings. The BJP is becoming popular here and we have seven lakh Kashmiri Muslim members. Some people don’t like it,” he adds.

Referring to posters calling the BJP anti-Islam, Shabir Ahmad Zargar, a BJP leader from Kupwara, says: “We are not anti-Islam. We are Indian nationalists and Muslims. The killing of BJP workers is anti-Islamic and we condemn it.” 

Naseer Ganai in Srinagar