Indian Kashmir protests called off for 3 days

Kashmiri children walk to school in Srinagar, India, Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008. Schools reopened Tuesday after a week, owing to massive protests in Indian Kashmir. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

SRINAGAR, India—After weeks of massive separatist protests in Indian Kashmir that virtually shut down the region, Muslim leaders called Tuesday for three days of calm, allowing schools and businesses to reopen.

Huge crowds thronged to markets to buy food and cooking gas after two months of sustained protests in Srinagar, the biggest city in India's only Muslim-majority state.

Masarat Aalam, a prominent separatist leader, said the public needed a break to sustain the intensity of the protests, and the leaders needed time to map out future action. The unrest had crippled life in the city, with most schools and businesses complying with protest leaders' call for them to close.

Aalam said another strike and a large protest were planned for Friday.

The recent unrest, which has left at least 34 people dead, has reinvigorated the region's decades-long separatist struggle. The protests represent the biggest challenge to Indian rule over its only Muslim-majority state since the start of a violent insurgency in 1989 that has killed an estimated 68,000 people.

The crisis began in June with a dispute over land near a Hindu shrine. Muslims held protests complaining that a state government plan to transfer 99 acres to a Hindu trust to build facilities for pilgrims near the shrine was actually a settlement plan meant to alter the religious balance in the region.

A subsequent decision by the state government to scrap the plan angered the region's Hindus, sparking tit-for-tat demonstrations. At least two Hindus have killed themselves in protest.

In Jammu, the region's main Hindu-majority city, thousands of women defied a ban on public gatherings and assembled in large groups. The women marched to police stations Tuesday, but police took no action.

Tuesday was the second day of the planned three-day Hindu campaign demanding the land be restored to the shrine.

Organizers have said they wanted 100,000 people to take part and the protesters would try to court arrest -- a tactic pioneered by Indian independence leader and pacifist Mohandas K. Gandhi.

Tuesday's marches show that women "are fighting for the cause, standing shoulder to shoulder with men," said Ruchi, a protester who only goes by one name like many in the region.

Kashmir is split between India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan region. The separatists seek Indian Kashmir's independence or its union with Muslim Pakistan.