A sense of deep betrayal by the Indian government is fuelling anger in the Muslim-majority valley.
Indian-administered Kashmir has been an under unprecedented lockdown since Monday, when India revoked a special constitutional status dating back nearly 70 years. The BBC's Geeta Pandey travelled for two days around the region, where a bitter sense of betrayal threatens to fuel fresh conflict.
The paramilitary police try to hustle us away but the man wants to be heard."You lock us up during the day. You lock us up at night," he shouts angrily, wagging his finger. The policeman says there's a curfew in place and that they must go inside immediately. But the diminutive old man stands his ground and challenges him again.
Across the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, I meet men who tell me they no longer want to live life in fear of the security forces. An insurgency has been taking place here for 30 years, but what residents call a"dictatorial order" from far-away Delhi has pushed people who never supported separatism into a corner.This is very much the dominant sentiment everywhere I go - anger mixed with fear and worry, and a fierce determination to resist the central government's move.
He said he had last spoken to his parents on Sunday night, a few hours before the government shut down all communications, including the internet. There was a total information blackout, and because he couldn't reach any of his friends or relatives either, he decided to return home. He's not someone who believes in separatism, or has ever gone out and thrown stones at soldiers in protest; he's a 25-year-old aspirational young man studying to be an accountant in Delhi. He says he has long believed in the idea of India because he is sold on the story of its economic success.
"She was saying death would be better than this," says Ms Rashid."I keep waking up with panic attacks. My grandparents who live in the city's Batmaloo area say it has turned into Afghanistan."
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