Mohamad Junaid: Stone wars test human endurance, and their long history in Kashmir also says something about the collective endurance of Kashmiris. No one remembers anymore when the stone wars began in Kashmir. There is a legend that it was a practice invented in the older neighborhoods of Kashmir’s capital city, Srinagar, more than a century back, and deployed first against oppressive moneylenders and then against the region’s autocratic rulers. Older Kashmiris remember throwing stones at the cavalcade of Indian Prime Minister Nehru on one of his visits to Kashmir. They hold him responsible for occupying Kashmir against the wishes of Kashmir’s inhabitants. As India became the hungriest and poorest nuclear weapons state in the world, Kashmiris persisted with throwing stones at symbols of its presence in their country. […] Mostly, the stones hit no one. They don’t hurt the soldiers, who are always in full body armor, nor are they intended to injure. Stones are thrown from a distance where the stone throwers can outpace soldiers if chased, but this necessary distance also ensures that the stones don’t reach the soldiers. They are hurled, as a young man told me, at the “idea of domination.” They are defiance flying out of hands. Each stone follows its own line of flight out of the hegemonic code. More here.