Congress barb at Lal Chowk, and the square at crossroads of Valley history, ideologies

It was Rahul’s great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, who first unfurled the Tricolour at Lal Chowk in 1948 when the National Conference’s founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah declared his alliance with Nehru.

It was then at a rally at Lal Chowk that Nehru promised the “right of self-determination” to the J&K people. Abdullah’s famous words “Tu mann shudam, mann tu shudi, taqas na goyed, mann degram, tu degari” (a Persian couplet meaning ‘I became you and you became I, no one can say we are separate’) also reverberated at Lal Chowk at the same rally.

For many years, Lal Chowk would be a key venue for rallies of various political parties in the Valley. And when militancy erupted in 1990, this drew militants’ attention, turning into a battleground between them and paramilitary forces. To make headlines, militants often targeted the police and paramilitary force personnel there.

Two years later, then BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi announced his plan to hoist the Tricolour at Lal Chowk on the Republic Day. On January 26, 1992, Joshi along with party colleagues including Narendra Modi was in Srinagar, where curfew was clamped, and in the midst of massive security deployment, he hoisted the national flag at Lal Chowk as militants rained rockets at the city centre.

The paramilitary forces stationed at Lal Chowk have since hoisted the Tricolour on the Republic Day and the Independence Day.

When people took to streets in large numbers in 2008 following the Amarnath land agitation, and in 2010 over civilian killings, many protesters took over Lal Chowk and unfurled the Pakistani flags on its clock tower.

On August 24, 2010, Lal Chowk was barricaded with concertina wire and tin sheets after the separatists called for a march towards the city centre.

The Congress headquarters in Srinagar is located on Maulana Azad Road, the lifeline of Srinagar, which is barely a few hundred metres away from Lal Chowk.