Days after the Jammu Kashmir administration issued an order allowing the sale of beer at departmental stores in urban areas, a protest was staged in Srinagar asking the Jammu Kashmir admin to immediately withdraw its order.
“Unemployment is growing in Kashmir like never before, the HM comes to Kashmir and picks up issues that do not good for Kashmiris. In Modi’s Kashmir, there is no space for peaceful demonstrations, they choke every voice with brute force,” an activist said moments before he was detained during a protest in Srinagar on Friday.
Eyewitnesses told The Kashmiriyat that several activists including sloganeering women hit the streets of the capital city Srinagar holding placards asking the Jammu Kashmir admin to withdraw the order that allows the sale of beer in Departmental stores in the urban areas.
“BJP does not talk of issues that will bring some respite to Kashmir, It brings orders that are to merely hurt the sentiments of Muslims,” the activists said.
Meanwhile, Jammu Kashmir Mutahida Majlis e Ulema, an umbrella organization of several religious scholars from the valley condemned the move and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the order.
The Friday sermons in several mosques of the valley reverberated with slogans demanding an immediate withdrawal of the order.
“We have fought such tactics in the past. No throne is as powerful as the mosque pulpit. We have and will fight any order against the basic fundamentals of Islam. We are not seeking a ban on the sale of alcohol in Delhi, But in a Muslim-majority state, we shall not allow such absurd orders to take a practical shape,” a cleric addressing the Friday gathering at Jamia Masjid Anantnag said.
He said that on one side the JK admin was opening D-addiction centers and arresting drug peddlers while on the other it is allowing, and promoting the sale of alcohol, which raises a question mark on the intention of the admin’s “fight against drugs.”
Similarly, in several parts of Srinagar, Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam, the clerics demanded an immediate withdrawal of the orders.