SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Thousands of Shiite Muslims had been allowed to carry a spiritual procession marking the Muslim month of Muharram in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s fundamental metropolis on Thursday for the primary time since an anti-India insurrection broke out within the disputed area greater than three many years in the past.

The contributors, largely sporting black garments, beat their chests and recited elegies within the industrial coronary heart of Srinagar. Some carried copies of the Quran to protest latest public desecrations of the Islamic holy book in Sweden and Denmark.

Muharram is among the many holiest months for Shiite Muslims and marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, and his 72 companions within the battle of Karbala within the seventh century in present-day Iraq. The mourning over their deaths reaches to its peak on Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram. Thursday’s procession marked the eighth day on the calendar.

The fundamental Muharram gatherings on the eighth and tenth days that used to cross by means of the town heart had been banned a 12 months after an armed insurgency broke out in 1989 demanding the area’s independence from India or its merger with neighboring Pakistan, which additionally controls a part of Kashmir. However, Muharram processions continued to be allowed elsewhere within the Indian-controlled portion.

Tens of hundreds of civilians, rebels and authorities forces have been killed within the insurgency.

Scores of mourners tried to defy the ban in earlier years, usually resulting in scuffles with police and the firing of tear gasoline.

Authorities mentioned the lifting of the ban comes as the general safety scenario has improved within the area lately.

Mohammad Aijaz, Srinagar’s civil administrator, mentioned the procession was “a dividend of peace.”

The lifting of the ban got here after a sequence of talks between Shiite leaders and authorities officers. Authorities imposed a sequence of circumstances, together with that contributors shouldn’t use “anti-national slogans or propaganda” or “disrespect any national symbol.”

“It was after a long wait of almost 34 years that this procession has once again been allowed to go through its historical route,” mentioned Shabib Ul Hassan, a younger participant.

It was unclear whether or not the authorities would carry the ban on the tenth day procession as properly.

Kashmiri Muslims have lengthy complained that the Indian authorities restricts their non secular freedom with the rationale of sustaining regulation and order, whereas selling an enormous annual Hindu pilgrimage to a holy cave, the Himalayan Amarnath Shrine in Kashmir.

The two-month Hindu pilgrimage, at present underway, attracts a whole bunch of hundreds of Hindu pilgrims from throughout India. The routes resulting in the cave shrine are guarded by tens of hundreds of troopers.

Restrictions on Muslims have elevated sharply because the Indian authorities led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist celebration scrapped the area’s semi-autonomy in 2019.

Since then, critics say the Indian authorities has tried to create what it calls “naya Kashmir,” or “new Kashmir,” by curbing dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms.

Authorities have additionally confined the area’s chief cleric and prime separatist chief, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, to his dwelling and restricted giant congregational prayers on the area’s fundamental mosque.