During Eid al-Adha, the biggest Muslim holiday of year, the streets in Srinagar, Kashmir are usually thronging with people making last-minute preparations for the festivities. This year, the state’s largest city was a ghost town. Shops were shuttered, and the markets, which should have been bustling with people buying meat for the feast, were deserted.
Most mosques were inaccessible to residents and the two largest in the city, Jamia Masjid and Alia Mosque, where tens of thousands gather to pray, were locked and chained.
“It was upsetting,” said Sajid, a student. “We were deprived of even our religious rights. It was my little sister’s first Eid and I was glad she was too young to understand what was going on.”
