They had named their band Pragaash, meaning moving towards light. But on Monday, Kashmir’s all-girl rock band had no choice but to take a step back in the face of frenzied opposition from hardliners in the Valley.
“Noma quits”, “Farah quits also”, read their Facebook page.
It all started after school girls Noma Nazir, Farah Deeba and Aneeka Khalid performed for the first time in December last year.
Abuses and rape threats poured in, until on Sunday the grand priest Mufti Bashir-ud-Din issued a fatwa. “All bad things happening in the Indian society are because of music…They (girls) should stop...”
Chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah, however, told CNN-IBN on Monday that the decision to continue rested with the band alone. “The state will provide security,” he said.