Baqra’eid lunch

New Delhi: Over 250 Kashmiri students from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have boycotted the lunch invite for Eid-ul-Azha from the union government that was scheduled at the university guest house on Monday. Issuing a statement, the students expressed deep anger against scrapping of Article 370, stripping the special status of the state and communication blackout in the valley. The students dubbed the gesture as “rubbing salt” on their wounds. They described the invitation as an attempt to “present a humane face of the brutal state before the world”. Rejecting the invitation equivocally, the students said its acceptance would be an insult to the courage of their parents who are “surviving massive militarisation and absolute clampdown in J&K.” According to reports, Jammu and Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik has sanctioned Rs 1 lakh each to designated liaison officers to organise Eid festivities for Jammu and Kashmir students in other states who are unable to come home on the occasion of Eid amid security clampdown in the J & K. Expressing their anguish at “Delhi’s authoritarianism”, the Kashmiri students called the revocation of Kashmir’s special status in Article 370 a “robbery of their rights”. Saying that the Governor of the state has no sympathies for them, Kashmiri students studying in the AMU said the sanction of Rs 1 lakh and an Eid invite is to buy their consent for the undemocratic means adopted by the Indian Government.

‘Salt on wounds’: AMU Kashmiri students boycott Baqra’eid lunch