Football and the freedom movement has a long history in Kashmir
During a Santosh trophy match, played in 2008 at Srinagar when the home team defeated Delhi in the competition, a banner displayed “Kashmir defeats India”. In the very next match , Punjab outclassed the home team helped with some very bad umpiring decisions which triggered a outcry that brought people to the streets and gave birth to a new form of resistance, mass non-violent demonstration. But football and azadi have a long history.
"Football has always been one front of our freedom movement," says 85-year-old Agha Ashraf Ali, a noted Kashmiri educationist and an ardent football fan.
He narrates a story going back to the days of the British empire, when Kashmir was ruled by the unpopular Hindu Dogra royal family.
When a local Kashmiri team, the Friends Club, defeated the Dogra royal police team the crowd hailed the local players and jeered the royal players.
The royal players could not take the defeat. They got the Kashmiri tonga wallas (horse carriage drivers) to take them to cantonment area where the police were stationed.
Once inside they refused to pay the carriage drivers and instead beat them up. The drivers went home in rags, empty handed, beaten and bleeding.
When Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the Kashmiri leader who later led a revolt against the royals and became the first prime minister of Kashmir, heard of the incident, he and a few others armed themselves with hockey sticks and attacked a group of royal soldiers.
"That was the birth of the rebellious Kashmir," says Mr Agha. (Source: BBC)
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