Ahmad, 28, goes around houses in Hisar, a city in northern India’s Haryana state, selling shawls and other handicraft items – like thousands of other itinerant traders from Indian-administered Kashmir, who crisscross the country on foot or bicycles. But a spate of hate attacks faced by the shawl sellers in recent weeks has forced them to rethink and strategise what was once a common, winter-time sight across Indian cities: Kashmiris lugging large wraps holding shawls and other wares. Ahmad now runs a WhatsApp group in which nearly two dozen members share information as they guide each other on areas to avoid. “I guide them on where to go and where to avoid because some areas are fine, but others have seen harassment against our members,” Ahmad told Al Jazeera. “Now, our priority is safety rather than business, as harassment incidents continue to happen to our members almost every day.”

Ahmad formed the WhatsApp group late last month after a Hindu shopkeeper in northern India’s Uttarakhand state hit Tabish Ahmad Ganie, an 18-year-old Kashmiri shawl seller, with an iron rod. “This is a Hindu village. Kashmiri Muslims won’t work here at all,” the shopkeeper was heard shouting in a viral video of the attack, which left Ganie unconscious, while his elder brother Danish, who was also attacked, suffered minor injuries. Ganie, a class 10 dropout, received 12 stitches on his head and his left arm. He is unable to walk due to fractures in his leg. Bloodied, bandaged and wearing a sling, he told Al Jazeera the Hindu shopkeeper was accompanied by two others as they thrashed him brutally.

“Not for anything I had done, but simply because of my identity as a Kashmiri Muslim,” he said at his home in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, more than 800km (about 500 miles) from Uttarakhand’s Vikas Nagar area where he was attacked. Ganie’s was not an isolated case, but part of a growing trend of attacks across India on Kashmiri traders and migrant workers, accompanied by a drumbeat of rhetoric against the region’s people on social media and at times, in public speeches from influential individuals linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That rhetoric often depicts Kashmiris as “security threats” to India, and as “antinational” and “Pakistani agents”. (Al Jazeera/Tabish Ahmad Ganie's family)