Summary Indian authorities allow Muslim procession in Kashmir’s main city for the first time in 3 decades
SRINAGAR (AP) — Thousands of Shiite Muslims were allowed to hold a religious procession marking the Muslim month of Muharram in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s main city on Thursday for the first time since an anti-India rebellion broke out in the disputed region more than three decades ago.
The participants, mostly wearing black clothes, beat their chests and recited elegies in the commercial heart of Srinagar. Some carried copies of the Quran to protest recent public desecrations of the Islamic holy book in Sweden and Denmark.
Muharram is among the holiest months for Shiite Muslims and marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussain, and his 72 companions in the battle of Karbala in the seventh century in present-day Iraq. The mourning over their deaths reaches to its peak on Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram. Thursday’s procession marked the eighth day on the calendar.
The main Muharram gatherings on the eighth and 10th days that used to pass through the city center were banned a year after an armed insurgency broke out in 1989 demanding the region’s independence from India or its merger with neighboring Pakistan, which also controls part of Kashmir. However, Muharram processions continued to be allowed elsewhere in the Indian-controlled portion.
