SRINAGAR, India // Dozens of Kashmiri students have been expelled from university and threatened with sedition charges because they cheered for Pakistan during a cricket match against India.
Authorities were trying to track down the 66 students enrolled at university in Uttar Pradesh for questioning to determine whether sedition charges are appropriate, police officer NKS Chauhan said yesterday.
Sedition carries a possible life sentence.
Love of cricket is one of the few things on which Pakistan and India can usually agree, despite a long history of animosity that has fuelled three wars since 1947.
But the fracas over Sunday’s match — which Pakistan won — shows how easily passions are inflamed over Kashmir, a divided Himalayan territory that both countries claim. Insurgents have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan since 1989.
Several of the students said their expulsion reeks of discrimination.
“We didn’t do anything illegal,” said Muteebul Majid, a business administration student in his 20s. “Are they slapping these charges against us for being Kashmiris or for cheering for the Pakistani team?”
Like several other students, Mr Majid had returned to his home in Srinagar, the main city in India-controlled Kashmir, after leaving school.
Gulzar Ahmed, also a business administration student, said he and his friends were never given a chance to explain themselves.
He said Indian students “attacked us with stones and abuse after the match. Instead of taking action against their hooliganism, police bused us to the railway station and directed us to go home”.
The students had been living in the dorms at the private College of Swami Vivekanand Subharti University, in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh state, which is nearly 900 kilometres from their homes in Kashmir.
The students’ cheers for Pakistan would not have raised any alarms back home. Minutes after Pakistan won the nail-biter of a match, hundreds of Kashmiris lit firecrackers and chanted “Long live Pakistan!” and “We want freedom!” There were joyful processions and celebrations in Srinagar and at least a dozen other areas in the region.
Omar Abdullah, the top elected official in the Indian portion of Kashmir, said sedition charges would ruin the students’ future and further alienate them.
“I don’t condone what they did, what they did was obviously wrong and misguided,” he said. “That having been said, they are young ... Sedition charges will further push them to the fringes.”
Pakistan’s government showed support for the students.
“If these Kashmiri students want to come and pursue their studies in Pakistan, our hearts and academic institutions are open to them,” the Pakistani foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
* Associated Press