The classrooms are empty. So are the corridors and playgrounds. There’s not a soul in the canteen. 

Schools in Kashmir have been closed since August 5, when the Indian government announced the abrogation of Article 370. On August 18, the Jammu and Kashmir state government “threw open” the primary schools in the state after two weeks of shutdown. In Srinagar alone, it claimed that 190 such schools would resume operations.

On August 15, the state administration announced: “Schools will be opened after the weekend [August 17 and 18] area-wise so that children’s studies do not suffer.” 

However, upon Newslaundry’s inspection, while some schools in the Kashmiri capital did open, the children in primary standards (Classes 1 to 5) did not attend classes. Some government schools remained shut. Local parents, whose children attend schools in different parts of Kashmir, told Newslaundry why sending their children to school was unimaginable: the reasons ranged from the tense atmosphere in the region since the abrogation of Article 370 to the lack of communication with school authorities. There was also a reluctance to “pawn” their children’s safety for the Indian government’s “optics of normalcy”.

At Lal Chowk, officials outside Tyndale Biscoe school told this correspondent that no child had shown up for school on Monday. “And why would they?” one of them asked. “Who would show up under these circumstances?”

Similar questions were asked at Mellinson Girls School. “Some teachers did turn up early in the morning today,” said an official, peeping from inside the school entrance, “but the children did not.” Tyndale Biscoe and Mellinson are private schools.

Tyndale Biscoe School in Lal Chowk, Srinagar.

“The situation is not conducive for small children to venture out of their homes,” says 35-year-old Majid Faesal, whose daughter studies in Class 5 in a school in Baramulla. “If they believe that things are normal, then why not start with resuming railways or communications? The kids should be last in coming out of their homes, not the first.”

Mohammad Saleem, whose family lives in Sopore, sends his two small girls, aged six and eight, to a school 18 km away in Baramulla. He says he has lived through such times before, and the children have always been safer at home. “During the militancy in the 1990s, I was in Class 11. I attended only six classes in the academic year in my school in Sopore. I still managed to pass. But our children are smaller, why should we send them to school in such an atmosphere when we can teach them at home and at community schools?” Saleem asks.

In the past three decades, community schools have been a recurring feature in the Valley in dire times. In mohallas and neighbourhoods throughout the region, government teachers—who either can’t travel to school, or work there because the schools are closed—come together and teach the neighbourhood children in makeshift classrooms. In many cases, these schools are free of cost.

Saleem adds: “It takes my daughters almost an hour to travel to their schools in Baramulla from Sopore. In normal times, we get a call or an SMS from the school when there is a delay or any accident. How will they manage that now? The communications are kaput.”

According to him, the state government opened schools so that it can begin advertising that things are back to normal in the Valley. But he is not having it. “Things are not normal here by any extent of the imagination. They can peddle the lie of normalcy to the world as much as they want, but they are not going to do it by using my children as props.”

At Rajbagh, 46-year-old Ishfaq Bhat expresses similar concerns. His wife is a teacher at a government school on the outskirts of Srinagar. “She went to school today, just for the sake of not getting fired. The teachers are under pressure to teach. But it was locked, closed. How will she teach now? And who will she teach?”

Bhat did not let his younger child, who studies in Class 4, go to school. “We can’t scapegoat our children for the government of India. I’ve arranged home tuitions for her, she’ll learn whatever she has to at home.”

“Padhai toh wapas ho jayegi, lekin jaan wapas nahi ayegi (Studies can return later, but a lost life will not),” says Rifat Wani, whose child studies at a private school in Srinagar’s Gupkar road. After a pause, he adds: “India has destroyed the future of our children.”

“When schools in our neighbourhood are not open, then why would we send kids to schools far away?” asks 41-year-old Mukhtar Afzal. Afzal says conditions in the Kashmiri capital are so bad that he declined to pursue the alternative of a tuition centre that was more than a kilometre away from his home. “Even that is too far in these times.”

Afzal adds: “When the Indian government considers Srinagar safe enough to let non-locals from North India return, then I will send my child to school happily. Not now.”

The concerns about a child’s security among parents in Srinagar are borne out of memory and also from reported incidents of assaults on children by the armed forces. The most cited one is the case of a five-year-old girl named Muneefa Nazir, who dislocated an eyeball after a CRPF personnel allegedly hit her with a stone in Srinagar’s Safakadal on August 12. One of the first reported cases of death in Srinagar also involved a minor: 17-year-old Osaif Altaf jumped into the Jhelum and drowned after being allegedly chased by a CRPF personnel on August 5.

“The presence of your security forces here in the Valley is not considered a safety measure,” says Afzal, the father of a four-year-old.

At Rajbagh, the grey sliding gate of the New Era Public School on the main road is shut. When I open it and enter, the school premises are barren with no schoolchildren in sight. In the office quarters, I met two administrators and a bus driver. They said the staff of the New Era school, which teaches children from Class 1-10, showed up at the school with some difficulty. “Most of them walked to school today,” says Dilbar, an administrator at the school. “But no children.”

New Era Public School in Rajbagh, Srinagar.

Mushtaq, who drives a school bus to Downtown Srinagar, says he went around Downtown to pick up kids but there weren’t any. “Over that, the armed forces stopped me and did not allow me to pass. They didn’t stop me while I drove to Downtown, but they directed me to a different route on the way back.”

The Downtown area in Srinagar has the maximum security deployment and strictest movement restrictions compared to other parts of the city. On August 19, movement restrictions were relaxed in Srinagar. But locals told Newslaundry that they do not consider it relaxed enough. Dilbar says with the current movement restrictions in place, coupled with chances of stone-pelting, parents are in no mood to send their children to school. 

Mushtaq asks me rhetorically whether any parent would send their kids “to die”. “What if stones begin landing on the bus? Who will protect them?” However, despite the mass absence, both Dilbar and Mushtaq did register their attendance at the school. According to Dilbar, this is because he hoped that “some children will come, at least a few”. But they did not.

New Era is a private school. In Rajbagh, a government school hardly 200 metres away was closed. It probably did not even have any administrators or bus drivers on the premises, since no one answered knocks at the school gate for about 15 minutes.

On August 19, Director of Education Younis Malik stated there was “nil to thin attendance” in a majority of schools in Kashmir. He said: “Of the 196 primary schools opened, 72 schools registered a thin attendance of students.”

According to the state administration, Budgam district saw only 35 schools opening with students’ attendance between 4 and 12 per cent. Baramulla saw the opening of 322 schools out of 671 with 40 per cent staff presence and only 20 per cent students’ presence. Kupwara’s 137 schools saw the attendance of 1,000 students; while Bandipora’s 207 schools saw 10-12 per cent attendance of students.

On August 18, J&K’s Principal Secretary of Planning Rohith Kansal was asked in a press conference whether the government will be making security measures for children once the schools open. Kansal avoided the question.