Moral jihad in Kashmir. This is a taste of what a state will experience whenever jihadists gain the upper hand. From the Times of India, with thanks to Twostellas:
SRINAGAR: Activists of a separatist political party went on a rampage in this summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir Saturday, smashing furniture and property of restaurants accusing them of spreading vulgarity.
The activists said these restaurants had become centres of “obscenity and vulgarity” in Kashmir because they provided separate cabins for their clients.
Dozens of activists of the Democratic Liberation Party formed by Hashim Qureshi stormed some hotels and restaurants in the posh Regal Chowk, Gogjibagh and Rajbagh areas of Srinagar.
They smashed glass, destroyed furniture and even dragged out some restaurant owners and waiters, beating them severely. All this was done ostensibly in the name of checking obscenity and vulgarity.
Qureshi hit the headlines in 1971 when he hijacked an Indian airlines plane to Lahore.
Interestingly, the activists included many females who carried banners denouncing vulgarity.
“These cabin restaurants have become the centres for vulgarity in public life. We had been requesting their owners to shut down the cabins but they did not heed our warnings,” said a masked activist of the outfit as he dragged a waiter out of a restaurant in the Regal Chowk area.
The police later arrested the activists to prevent them from continuing with their destruction. But some police personnel ended up beating two photographers shooting the event.
Hmm. I wonder why they wouldn’t want pictures of this sort of thing getting out.
When the separatist campaign broke out 15 years ago, the separatist Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith) group and Allah Tigers forced a shutdown on bars, wine shops, cinema halls and fashion and video parlours in the Kashmir Valley to check what they said were obscenity and promiscuity. The campaign also targeted women who ventured out of their homes without wearing the veil.
As the separatist grip on society loosened with the passage of time, some cinema halls re-opened in Srinagar, and video and beauty parlours re-started their businesses.