Ahsaan Ali

Srinagar: The Bakerwal community in Kashmir faces a major problem: they don’t have a separate graveyard. ADVERTISEMENT

“In Kashmir, every settled community has its own graveyard. But when we Bakerwals ask for land, the answer is always no. Electricity, roads, schools, hospitals — all of that is denied to us. And we don’t even have a place to rest after our deaths,” said Muhammad Haroon Phamda, who lives in Dooru, Anantnag.

Bakerwals are a nomadic Muslim ethnic group in the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, and parts of Pakistan. They are primarily goat and sheep herders who practise seasonal migration between high-altitude summer pastures and lower-altitude winter grazing areas.

In 2014, Phamda lost both his parents in a landslide near the Banihal tunnel. “It

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