Mohammad Ashraf (right) with the delegation. (PTI)

Srinagar, Dec. 3: Big heartedness can sometimes hit harder than stones. A team of MPs and civil society members had a taste of it today when they met the parents of the first victim of the nearly six-month-old unrest in Kashmir.

“You came all the way from Delhi to Srinagar but nobody troubled you,” Mohammad Ashraf told an 11-member team including MPs Ram Vilas Paswan, D. Raja, Nageshwar Rao and Shahid Siddiqui, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, journalist Seema Mustafa and academic Kamal Mitra Chenoy.

“But why do you trouble our elders who go outside to educate people about human rights violations here?” he asked, alluding to the attacks on separatists Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq in Delhi, Chandigarh and Calcutta.

Ashraf is the father of Tufail Ahmad Mattoo, a Class XI student whose death in security forces firing on June 11 triggered the unrest that has left another 111 dead and thousands injured.

“We did not throw stones at you, nor did we throw eggs or shoes at you. You are our revered guests but you should know that our secularism is more deep-rooted than yours,” Ashraf said as the visitors looked embarrassed.

Geelani and the Mirwaiz had faced hostile crowds who heckled them, roughed them up or threw shoes at them during seminars, or aimed eggs at their cars as happened in Calcutta. The attacks have prompted many here to question India’s claims of having a tolerant and democratic civil society.

“I had a bigger reason to throw stones at Indian politicians because my son was killed in unprovoked firing. But I told them (the delegation) that you are welcome here,” Ashraf later said.

Ashraf’s family played a CD before the visitors showing the aftermath of Tufail’s death, his funeral and the protests that followed.

The visitors told the family they did not represent the government of India and were genuinely moved by the pain of Kashmiris. “The people of India care for you and embrace you,” Mahesh Bhatt said.

The interface, an initiative by the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Analysis, was a follow-up to a visit by an all-party delegation in September, who met the separatists. Today’s delegation, though, did not include anyone from the Congress and the BJP.

“We are on a fact-finding mission and want to listen to the grief and grievances of the people and convey it to the government,” the CPI’s D. Raja said.

The delegation met Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front leader Yasin Malik and is scheduled to hold talks with other separatists in the next couple of days.

Many Kashmiris share Ashraf’s views. Kashmir University professor Hameeda Nayeem regretted the “intolerance towards dissent” and feared that it might prove damaging for democracy in the country.

Poet Zarief Ahmad Zarief said such attitudes ran counter to the very “tall claims” made about how tolerant Indian civil society was.

He added: “We did not throw a single stone at the Amarnath pilgrims this year when more than 110 youths lost their lives to the security forces’ bullets.”