In Dhangri in Kashmir, Sanjeet Kumar, a municipal employee, is still in shock after the recent death of seven Hindus during a separatist attack in this village. But he is determined to defend himself since the Indian soldiers gave him a rifle and ammunition.
Government troops have thus armed more than 150 inhabitants of this locality who have also undergone training in the use of these weapons.
Wearing a tilak, a saffron-colored mark on his forehead to signify his membership in the Hindu community and brandishing his gun, Sanjeet Kumar says he is ready to defend his family and his house.
“We were totally terrified by the attack,” the 32-year-old, who works in the local electricity department, told AFP.
“But I am now ready and able to fight. Anyone who becomes a traitor to our nation becomes my target.”
The town in which he lives is located near the Line of Control which divides predominantly Muslim Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
This Himalayan region, claimed by the two nuclear-armed neighbors, was the scene of several wars for its control following the partition of the British Indian Empire in 1947.
For more than three decades, separatist groups, demanding the independence of Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan, have been fighting Indian soldiers.
Tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels perished in these battles.
Several municipalities with large Hindu populations now have their “Village Defense Guards”, civil militias set up last year on the initiative of the Indian Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, after a series of murders of police and Hindus in Cashmere.
More than 5,000 Hindus in two border districts have been armed and trained by Indian paramilitaries, according to security force officials.
Residents of Dhangri traumatized by the attack – attributed by the police to separatists located in Pakistan – fear a new attack.
“With or without weapons, we are terrified,” said 55-year-old farmer Murari Lal Sharma, holding his 303 caliber rifle, “but now I will fight.”
According to an officer of the Indian paramilitary troops, the newly armed villagers are on such constant alert that his unit warns them of every night patrol so that it is not mistakenly targeted.
“The goal is to create a line of defense, not a line of attack,” Kanchan Gupta of India’s information ministry told AFP.
India created a civilian militia in the mid-1990s as the first line of defense when the armed rebellion against Indian rule in Kashmir was at its height.
Around 25,000 men and women have been armed and organized into village defense committees in the predominantly Hindu Jammu region.
Human rights organizations have accused members of these committees of committing atrocities.
At least 210 cases of murder, rape and extortion attributed to militias have been prosecuted, according to official records. Less than two percent of the accused have been convicted.
For Mr. Gupta, these were individual acts and not organized crimes within the militias.
“There is always the risk that a few individuals will become thugs”, he argues, “it is not possible to control everyone”.
In Dhangri, the militias were warned by trainers from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) – a paramilitary police organization – that the misuse of weapons would result in prosecution.
“In addition to training them in shooting, maintenance and cleaning of weapons, we also warned them of the legal measures in case of misuse” of these weapons, told AFP Shivanandan Singh, the door-keeper. word of the CRPF.
Three people have died accidentally since the creation of the Village Defense Guards.
Muslims in the region are concerned about the sudden size and expansion of these militias.
For an elderly Hindu villager who requested anonymity, the distribution of weapons is motivated by “politics”. He claims that most of the members of the militias belong to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.
But the initiative is making people envious in the villages around Dhangri, who are also demanding arms.
“Now there are (are) in all the houses around mine,” Ajay Kumar, a miller and former soldier, told AFP, “if necessary, I will use my gun.”
30/04/2023 09:49:57 – Dhangri (Inde) (AFP) © 2023 AFP