Modi’s Kashmir agenda

In 1947, India illegally occupied a large part of Jammu and Kashmir, including its capital Srinagar, apparently on the call of the area’s ruler, who was on the run towards Jammu, having been threatened by a state-wide insurrection against his unjust rule.

The right to statehood through conquest was the Dogra legacy that India emulated. Dogra rulers had forcibly captured Skardu in 1839 and annexed Gilgit, Nagar and Hunza in 1860. The British consecrated Dogra frontiers through administrative order and political manipulation, lending legitimacy to Dogra conquests.

The Indian troops of the Sikh regiment began landing on the Srinagar airfield on October 26 even before a harried Maharaja Hari Singh could sign a contested instrument of accession, a sad fact confirmed by independent scholars like Stanley Wolpert and Andrew Roberts in their respective books ‘Shameful Flight’ and ‘Eminent Churchillians’.

India has known from the start of its illegal occupation of the state that its actions are in blatant violation of international law and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions that call for the evacuation of troops and holding of a plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of Kashmiris about their future status.

Since occupation is a crime according to international law, the Indian occupation army in Jammu and Kashmir is guilty of committing war crimes against the hapless population, and this fact has not been lost on Indian revanchists who wish to keep up with that occupation through any artifice. Having deliberately ignored the UN resolutions, Indian leaders crafted Article 370 in their constitution as a sop to appease pro-Indian Kashmiri leaders like Sheikh Abdullah.

The semblance of autonomy under Article 370 was apparently not enough even for pro-Indian leaders who had initially thought of this concession as a stepping stone towards greater autonomy for the state.

Sheikh Abdullah was arrested on August 9, 1953 when he protested the denial of self-rule powers, and India’s slow assault on the state began anew. The highest point came on August 5, 2019 when the Hindutva-driven BJP government tore open the fig leaf of the state’s autonomy by annexing it through a presidential order that revoked Article 370 and declared Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as two Union territories, directly ruled by the centre through the infamous Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019.

Kashmiris rose against the annexation, leaving their political differences aside. Even India-sympathetic Gopkar Alliance leaders like Mehbooba Mufti and Farooq Abdullah denounced this sacrilege against Kashmir’s identity.

Since August 2019, the illegally occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK – Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir) has been facing a demographic assault and identity theft by Delhi in open defiance of the UN Security Council Resolutions and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Taking a leaf off the currently famous playbook of settler colonialism, the Indian government has resorted to multiple plans to rob Kashmiris of their political power, economic rights and cultural identity.

It has been a sorry saga of killings, incarceration, rapes and dispossession since 2019. Some 857 Kashmiris have been killed and 5,000 arrested, including the incarceration of the entire Kashmiri political leadership, including Mirwaiz Farooq, Masarat Bhatt, Asiya Andrabi, Yasin Malik, and Shabbir Shah.

To change the demographics, 6.15 million domicile certificates have been issued to non-subject Kashmiris in the two union territories. The delimitation of constituencies in IIOJK has also been done to ensure that BJP-affiliated Hindu candidates win future elections.

The latest example of unfair additions to the J&K state assembly seats is of the Kashmir Valley with a population of 6.8 million which has been given one additional seat only, whereas Jammu with a population of 5.3 million has been given six seats.

Over two million non-Kashmiris have already been included in voter lists to rig the elections. In addition, state land has been allotted to 199,550 people on the pretext of helping the homeless, when according to official figures, there are only 19,047 homeless in the entire state.

The Indian Supreme Court has also surprisingly validated the presidential order of 2019 through which Article 370 was revoked and called for elections in IIOJK by 30 September 2024. Since according to Article 370 only the constituent assembly of IIOJK was supposed to decide which article of the Indian constitution could be extended to the state, it was legally not possible to alter the status of the article after the dissolution of the constituent assembly.

Indians, in addition to using their Supreme Court for an illegal act, amended Article 367 to equate Sadr-e-Riyasat (prime minister) and members of constituent assembly with the office of governor. Even Indian lawyers concede that this cannot be used to amend or revoke Article 370.

The game plan of the Modi administration is to get a BJP chief minister elected in the state after the gerrymandering of constituencies and alteration of demographics there.

It is another matter that despite all these measures, the prospects of the BJP’s victory appear slim. The mood of people can be gauged by their reaction in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where perceived pro-Indian leaders like Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah were shown the door by the likes of Engineer Rasheed, who won despite being in jail. Confronted with the possibility of internal revolt, the Indian government has started resorting to propaganda.

The Potemkin reality of IIOJK as a prosperous union territory is being projected through false propaganda giving doctored figures about tourism and economic indices. The reality is that as per the Jammu and Kashmir administration’s records, one million tourists visited the Kashmir Valley annually from 2011 to 2014, and the number declined precipitously in 2019-20 as confirmed by statistics given by media outlet IndiaSpend.

Inflated figures of tourists, including religious pilgrims, in 2023-24 are being given to mislead the world to project a false picture. According to a report by ‘Kashmir Reader’, the unemployment rate in the region is at an all-time high of 24.6 per cent.

A frustrated and disenfranchised population has risen in revolt against the Indian assault on their culture and identity, and an annoyed BJP government is busy accusing Pakistan of intervention. This time, however, there are no takers for India’s lies.

The writer is a security and

defence analyst. He can be reached at: rwjanj@hotmail.com