Recently, a video of a mosque in Kashmir went viral in which slogans of independence were being raised. When author Anand Ranganathan tweeted about this, the Mayor of Srinagar tried to respond by referring to the controversial statement of the Mahant in Sitapur. To this, filmmaker Ashok Pandit replied that he is a follower of Farooq Abdullah.
Anand Ranganathan, sharing a video of azaadi slogan raised in a mosque in Srinagar, wrote on Twitter, “Srinagar Masjid. Not on January 19, 1990 but today.” In response, Junaid Azim Mattoo, the Mayor of Srinagar, wrote that “The Mahant – outside a mosque in Khairabad, Sitapur – was threatening Muslim women with rape in the fervor of the mob. This is the incident of 2nd April 2022.
In response, Anand Ranganathan wrote that “the mayor of Srinagar is rationalizing seditious, supremacist, Islamist slogans inside a Muslim place of worship, uncivilized or worse, through retaliatory, reactionary anger. Who knows, he may also have been secretly supporting the ethnic cleansing of 1990. Filmmaker Ashok Pandit has responded to this.
Ashok Pandit replied, “Why are you surprised by the Mayor’s reaction? He is a follower of Farooq Abdullah. Even now people are giving their reactions on social media. A user named Vikram wrote that ‘Mattu is in front of his name, this sahib was also a Pandit once and today?’
A user named Nishat wrote that ‘Mr. Mayor if you are so grown up then shouldn’t you condemn both the incidents equally?’ A user named Piyush Raj wrote that ‘It is the politics of Srinagar vs Kashmir which is the root cause of Kashmiri anarchy for decades and is still alive.’
A user named Chandan Das wrote that ‘I remember that I was very happy when he won and became the mayor. The PM congratulated him on the live TV program but it turned out differently. A user named Arun Pradhan wrote that ‘all these people are the same. All of them supported secretly and for them religion comes before nation.’