Hardened by rebellion

[BUTTERFLY: Nature Club of India]

Hardened by rebellion
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4242883

Why protesting against authority comes naturally to Kashmiris

Till a few years ago, on April 29 every year, a handful of men, some
old and stooping, some young and angry, used to gather at the Srinagar
home of veteran journalist, communist supporter and Kashmiri Pandit PN
Jalali. They would drink tea and toast the first recorded organised
demands day in Kashmir's history, the rebellion of the shawl bafs
(shawl weavers) that led to the killing of 28 weavers in 1865, well
before the Russian Revolution.

Shawl bafs were -- and are -- the creators of the wonderfully fine
silk or wool lengths that have such fine embroidery; there is not a
shawl baf above 35 who does not have something wrong with his eyes.
Justly prized, these shawls entailed a lot of labour but shawl bafs
earned very little. The regimes of successive Dogra kings used the
shawl industry, then exporting to Europe, as a means of augmenting
state revenues. The weavers were forced to weave (punished for
abandoning their looms unless a substitute was in place) -- and what
they earned, the state took away by imposing prohibitive taxes.

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4242883