New Delhi

By David Alexander
SRINAGAR, India (UPI) - When Muslim militants threw a hand grenade at a paramilitary police patrol near her home, Rafika Bhat bolted herself and several family members into a small room because they feared the wrath of the Indian security forces.

Seven members of the Central Reserve Police Force broke into the house despite the locked doors, she said later. They smashed furniture, killed her 18-year-old brother and shot her young son in the elbow, a wound doctors said would leave his right arm useless.

"This has reinforced my conviction that India must leave us alone," Bhat said recently. "Kashmir should become free. We are fed up with the reign of terror."

Six months after New Delhi set out to crush the violent secessionist movement in the scenic Kashmir valley -- a place once known to tourists as the Switzerland of Asia -- government actions have only deepened the crisis.

Indian officials charged with restoring normalcy in the northern Himalayan valley seem to be increasingly out of touch with the mood of the predominantly Muslim population.

Local politicians who once could have negotiated a settlement have lost their influence. And the heavy handed use of military and paramilitary troops has antagonized a wide cross-section of society, alienating everyone from doctors to shopkeepers and reinforcing support for Muslim rebels seeking independence from India.

"I have not seen or heard of a more barbarous people than this nation," said one Kashmiri Muslim doctor. "They fire at peaceful processions, they fire at funeral processions. They fire at children of 8 months, 2 years, 10 years, 12 years.

"And when they fire, they don't even fire into the air. They don't fire tear gas shells. They fire directly into the head, they fire directly into the chest and they fire only with the intention of killing."

The crisis in Kashmir -- a strategic area that borders on both China and the Soviet Union has its roots in the bitter 1947 partition of the subcontinent, when the region became a disputed territory between Islamic Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India.

Islamabad and New Delhi have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, leaving the region divided, with so-called "Azad," or "Free," Kashmir, under the control of Pakistan, and Jammu and Kashmir state in Indian hands.

New Delhi accuses Pakistan of inflaming the tensions in the Kashmir valley by aiding the Muslim militants, who stage almost daily grenade and automatic rifle attacks on the poorly armed Indian paramilitary police forces.

Kashmiri guerrillas are known to be training at camps inside Paki-stani Kashmir, but Islamabad claims it provides only moral support and is not responsible for the problems on the Indian side of the border. Residents of the Kashmir valley agree.

"Since January, the central government blames always Paki-stan," said Iqbal Chapri, 75, who operates a houseboat on Lake Dal for the dwindling tourist trade. "Even if a kite downed an airplane, they would say it was a Pakistani kite. They label everything (to cover) their own shortcomings. They don't hold past administra-tions responsible."

Kashmiris say despite the historical basis of the conflict, the current unrest is a direct reaction to 43 years of rule by New Delhi.

Residents charge that corruption and discrimination against Muslims have left the younger generation of Kashmiris with little hope for the future.

"We are being treated just as a colony," said one prominent businessman, "and our only sin is that we are Muslims."

Lawyers charge that New Delhi has never allowed a fair election in the sensitive border state. They claim the most recent poll, in 1987, was blatantly stolen in a conspiracy between the Congress (I) Party of then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the local National Conference organization.

Believing they were deprived of government jobs because of voter fraud, many poll watchers for candidates of the opposition Muslim United Front gave up on the political process and are today leading the fight for independence from India.

"We have tried so many times the peaceful struggle," said one area commander of the Hizb ul Mujahideen, a Muslim fundamentalist organization and one of the leading rebel groups. "We have been fighting from '47 peacefully. But there have been no solutions."

"We always got bullets," said another Hizb leader in a hideout guarded by masked youths carrying AK-47 rifles. "When we tried to do it peacefully, we always got bullets. So we had to look for arms."

Muslim residents of the Kashmir valley also claim they have been denied equal access to state government jobs and educational opportunities, which remain the domain of minority Hindus from the Kashmir region.

"After having exhausted all our channels for peaceful settlement with them, the younger generation of Kashmir, they have resorted to make their presence felt by way of waging a war of liberation, which is supported by the entire popula-tion of Jammu and Kashmir state," said a prominent lawyer.

For the rest of India, the Kashmir secessionist movement is a deeply emotional issue that strikes at the founding principle of their modern state: the religiously held belief that the diverse subcontinent can be united only by secular governments.

The Islamic tone of the rebellion worries Indians. Women in the Kashmir valley have begun wearing the heavy black shroud of deeply religious Muslim women. Fundamentalist rebels have declared "jihad," a war in the name of Islam, and have forced the closure of bars, video shops and movie theaters.

"When a nation, a people, are fighting their freedom struggle, they ought not to witness video films and cinema halls," said a Hizb ul Mujahideen commander. "They have to fight. That is the only aim."

Such intolerance threatens the Indian principle of secularism and is viewed as a loose thread that, if pulled, would unravel the fabric of the religiously diverse society.

"We have an absolutely secular base of our constitution and our society and we subscribe to it very strongly and we will not let that change," said Gov. Girish Saxena, the New Delhi-appointed administrator charged with controlling the rebellion in Kashmir.

Saxena, in his office on a serene hillside overlooking Lake Dal and the snow-capped Himalayan mountains, charged that Muslim radicals influenced by religious extremists from outside the country were responsible for the violent revolt.

"The tradition here has been one of tolerance ... and the Muslims here have been very good Muslims," he said. "We have no fight with the people. We are only tackling a section of the people who have taken to arms and violent means."

Saxena, a former Indian intelligence chief, said the government was trying to win the confidence of Kashmiris by "applying the healing touch" and reaching out to a majority "who are too scared to speak out their minds openly."

"We have an understanding of the Kashmiri ethos, what ... are their real urges, real aspirations, real thinking processes, what makes them tick generally," he said as gunfire echoed across the valley from a nearby firing range. "We feel that we can restore an empathy with them and build on that."

Saxena's appointment in May initially appeared to herald a change in the government's tack toward the Kashmir conflict, but the governor said "there has been no change in policy as far as action against the terrorists and subver-sives is concerned."

He flatly denied India would negotiate on the issue of Kashmiri secession.

"It is not going to happen," he said. "Kashmir is part of India."

Despite widespread popular support for the independence movement, Saxena said residents of the valley would eventually tire of the battle and come to terms with the Indian government.

"If they feel that the administration is fair and sincere in its desire not to hurt the ordinary people and if they see that they are getting nothing but suffering and disloca-tion and disruption of normal life, then things will change," he said.

The governor's plan to administer a healing touch has made little progress since he took office. He recently declared the Kashmir valley a "disturbed area," a measure that gives the Indian troops even greater latitude to use force to put down the uprising.

Residents said that is exactly the wrong approach. They said the routine curfews, house-to-house searches, violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations and killings by the security forces only serve to deepen the crisis.

"The presence of the military," said one westerner in the valley, "has completely politicized Kash-mir."

Muslim residents of the valley are most deeply disturbed by the government's apparent lack of concern about reports of torture, gang rape and mass killings by the security forces.

Despite several prominent cases of brutal excesses by security forces, authorities have yet to establish a clear policy on the use of force against civilians.

"You cannot imagine the torture, the inhumanity," one doctor said. "We have seen a man ... a thing was pushed into his mouth. His palate was jammed with his nose. He had a terrible disfigurement of the face. His upper lip, his teeth, were gone."

"Another patient I have seen ... on him a hot press was put at many places. His skin was burned in many places," the doctor said. "There are several children in whom there are marks of ... hot rods having been applied to their thighs and buttocks."

It is difficult to document such allegations of torture, but one thing is clear. Almost every household in the Kashmir valley has been touched by the conflict in some way, whether through violent contact with the security forces or the irritating restrictions of a curfew. And such incidents only fan the flames of defiance.

"We would prefer death rather than to live this existence," said Chapri, the houseboat owner. "We were born here ... not the Indian military. It is me. It is my land. It is the land of Kashmiris."

Above: A man carrying a girl on the back of his bicycle near the shores of Lake Dal; Below: A boat motors across the lake.

Above and below: Kashmiri men paddle across Lake Dal in a funeral procession carrying the wrapped body of a man they said was slain by security forces.