Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir<\/strong> \u2013 Ayaz Ahmad stares at his screen, fingers moving rapidly as he types in a group chat on his mobile phone.<\/p>\n Ahmad, 28, goes around houses in Hisar, a city in northern India\u2019s Haryana state, selling shawls and other handicraft items \u2013 like thousands of other itinerant traders from Indian-administered Kashmir, who crisscross the country on foot or bicycles.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But a spate of hate attacks faced by the shawl sellers in recent weeks has forced them to rethink and strategise what was once a common, winter-time sight across Indian cities: Kashmiris lugging large wraps holding shawls and other wares.<\/p>\n Ahmad now runs a WhatsApp group in which nearly two dozen members share information as they guide each other on areas to avoid.<\/p>\n \u201cI guide them on where to go and where to avoid because some areas are fine, but others have seen harassment against our members,\u201d Ahmad told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, our priority is safety rather than business, as harassment incidents continue to happen to our members almost every day.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmad formed the WhatsApp group late last month after a Hindu shopkeeper in northern India\u2019s Uttarakhand state hit Tabish Ahmad Ganie, an 18-year-old Kashmiri shawl seller, with an iron rod.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a Hindu village. Kashmiri Muslims won\u2019t work here at all,\u201d the shopkeeper was heard shouting in a viral video of the attack, which left Ganie unconscious, while his elder brother Danish, who was also attacked, suffered minor injuries.<\/p>\n Ganie, a class 10 dropout, received 12 stitches on his head and his left arm. He is unable to walk due to fractures in his leg.<\/p>\n Bloodied, bandaged and wearing a sling, he told Al Jazeera the Hindu shopkeeper was accompanied by two others as they thrashed him brutally.<\/p>\n \u201cNot for anything I had done, but simply because of my identity as a Kashmiri Muslim,\u201d he said at his home in Kashmir\u2019s Kupwara district, more than 800km (about 500 miles) from Uttarakhand\u2019s Vikas Nagar area where he was attacked.<\/p>\n Ganie\u2019s was not an isolated case, but part of a growing trend of attacks across India on Kashmiri traders and migrant workers, accompanied by a drumbeat of rhetoric against the region\u2019s people on social media and at times, in public speeches from influential individuals linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That rhetoric often depicts Kashmiris as \u201csecurity threats\u201d to India, and as \u201cantinational\u201d and \u201cPakistani agents\u201d.<\/p>\n Since Modi came to power in 2014, anti-Muslim hate in India has soared \u2014 often patronised and fomented by leaders of the Hindu majoritarian BJP, and at times legitimised through dog whistles by the prime minister himself.<\/p>\n But Kashmiri Muslims carry a double burden \u2014 their faith and their homeland are both subjects of suspicion and widespread hatred in today\u2019s India.<\/p>\n On Christmas Day, shawl vendor Bilal Ahmad was attacked by a Hindu group in Uttarakhand\u2019s Kashipur district after he refused to chant \u201cBharat Mata Ki Jai\u201d (Hail Mother India), a nationalist slogan that imagines India as a mother goddess. The slogan has been weaponised by the BJP and Hindu right-wing groups, who have often used it as a war cry in their campaign against Muslims and other minorities.<\/p>\n Bilal said his family grew concerned after seeing a video of the attack online.<\/p>\n \u201cThey called me and urged me to return to Kashmir because of the increasing attacks on Kashmiris. After facing harassment, I decided to close my business and came back to Kashmir,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n But returning to Kashmir is not an easy choice for many.<\/p>\n Rampant unemployment due to limited job opportunities in Kashmir often pushes young Kashmiris out of the region to look for livelihoods elsewhere, mainly the northern Indian states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, and the national capital territory of Delhi.<\/p>\n Since 2019, when Modi\u2019s government scrapped the region\u2019s decades-old partial autonomy guaranteed by the constitution and brought it under New Delhi\u2019s direct control, a fledgling economy still recovering from the aftershocks of the move has compounded the job crisis.<\/p>\n However, anti-Kashmiri sentiments \u2013 and resultant attacks on them \u2013 spiked last year after a group of armed men attacked Indian tourists in Kashmir\u2019s scenic Pahalgam area, killing 26 people. India accused Pakistan of backing the attackers, a charge Islamabad rejected. The attack triggered a four-day air war between India and Pakistan \u2014 the neighbours that control parts of Kashmir but claim it in full \u2014 while diplomatic tensions and sporting boycotts continue.<\/p>\n In recent months, about 200 cases of attacks on Kashmiri students, shawl sellers or migrant workers have been reported across India. Many were beaten, threatened, harassed, and forced to leave the areas where they were living or doing business.<\/p>\n When Bashir Ahmad visited a Hindu-majority locality in early January to sell shawls in Punjab state\u2019s Moga district, he was stopped and asked to show permission to conduct his business. He knew it was a mere pretext. Failing to show any permit, he was abused, and his bag of shawls was thrown on the ground.<\/p>\n The 50-year-old man returned to Kashmir after the incident and advised fellow shawl sellers to operate only in areas that other Kashmiris had found safe.<\/p>\n In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh\u2019s Kangra district, a retired Indian army soldier, Surjeet Rajput Guleria, abused and publicly interrogated an unidentified Kashmiri hawker on January 17, livestreaming the incident on Facebook.<\/p>\n The video shows him making anti-Muslim and sexually charged remarks, accusing Kashmiris of supporting Pakistan and engaging in pelting stones at Indian soldiers deployed in Kashmir.\u00a0\u201cYour sisters and daughters go to Pakistan and return pregnant,\u201d he is heard saying in the video.<\/p>\n Local media reports said the Kangra police filed a report against Guleria, but no further action was taken.<\/p>\n On February 1, Guleria was back again \u2013 livestreaming his harassment of another Kashmiri hawker, Mohammad Ramzan, on Facebook.<\/p>\n \u201cHe threatened me and demanded that I leave the state. He went through my shawl bundles and mockingly accused me of carrying an AK-47 rifle instead of Kashmiri shawls,\u201d Ramzan told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n He said such targeting of migrants \u201cnot only jeopardises livelihoods but also reinforces a climate of fear that affects families\u201d dependent on seasonal trade for survival.<\/p>\n It is not just shawl sellers who have suffered.<\/p>\n Abdul Hakeem, a resident of Kashmir\u2019s Kulgam district, ran a fruit-selling business in Punjab\u2019s Jalandhar city. He said he faced constant harassment from fellow Hindu vendors, and finally left the area on February 6, after he was given an ultimatum to either leave the state or face consequences.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to leave fruits worth about 100,000 rupees [$1,100] behind and return to the valley because my family was afraid due to the rising attacks on Kashmiris outside the valley,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n His 50-year-old mother, Misra Begum, said they did not want him to continue his business if he did not feel safe. \u201cWe would rather go without food than see our son get into trouble,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Kashmir\u2019s main political parties \u2014 the governing National Conference and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) \u2014 have urged the federal government, which effectively governs the region, to intervene and stop the attacks on Kashmiris across the country.<\/p>\n Calling the attacks \u201cunacceptable\u201d, Kashmir\u2019s Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said earlier this month he had raised the issue at a meeting of the chief ministers of the northern Indian states and appealed to them to prevent such incidents.<\/p>\n Abdullah\u2019s predecessor, Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP, alleged that the attackers operated with the backing of respective state authorities.<\/p>\n \u201c[The] state governments appear to be granting silent patronage to mob violence, treating hatred as a shortcut to political success. The rule of law has been replaced by politics of fear,\u201d she wrote on X on February 3, as she shared a video about an elderly Kashmiri man harassed in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh state.<\/p>\n BJP spokesman in Kashmir, Altaf Thakur, condemned the attacks on Kashmiri shawl sellers as \u201cwrong and unacceptable\u201d. He said the Kashmiris are an \u201cinseparable part of the nation\u201d and asserted the government would not tolerate such actions.<\/p>\n But Kashmiri lawmaker, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, told Al Jazeera the attacks on Kashmiris are a \u201ctroubling pattern\u201d that could not be ignored as they send \u201can alarming signal\u201d to the people of Kashmir.<\/p>\n \u201cKashmiris, particularly small traders and shawl sellers, travel to different parts of the country to earn a livelihood, but repeated assaults and intimidation were causing fear and insecurity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir \u2013 Ayaz Ahmad stares at his screen, fingers moving rapidly as he types in a group chat on his mobile phone. Ahmad, 28, goes around houses in Hisar, a city in northern India\u2019s Haryana state, selling shawls and other handicraft items \u2013 like thousands of other itinerant traders from Indian-administered Kashmir, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Simply because of my identity\u2019<\/h2>\n
No easy choices<\/h2>\n
![\"Kashmiri](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1000963785-1771238057.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C514&quality=80\")
\u2018Troubling pattern\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"