A six-year old fearless child chanting ‘azadi’ (freedom) slogan in front of armed-to-teeth army is too much for the demoralised Indian soldiers to handle. This boy is growing up in a situation where he has nothing else to do but to fight for freedom in days to come. A whole new Kashmiri generation is being trained in and forced into freedom warfare by the senseless Indian brutality.

India is in a state of constant denial despite enduring nerve-raking pain over its debacle in Kashmir. The land where India ruled by hook and by crook for 70 years is slipping out of its hands bit by bit as every petty trick used by New Delhi has backfired so far and further distanced itself from Kashmiris.

The valley has now reached a breaking point and is ready to melt India’s longstanding rock-hard stance on the issue. The defiant posture of India did not work in the past and is not working right now other than misleading its own people for political gains as Kashmir issue is still on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. The UN resolutions are still valid and the Indian government is well aware of the consequences, but its defiance has crossed all limits to keep the territory under its control against the wishes of the Kashmris.

The time is running out and there are little options left for the Indian government to find a political solution to the problem. The morale of the Indian troops has nose-dived when they saw youngsters chanting freedom slogans without the fear of guns. The leaders sitting in comfort zone in New Delhi think they will control the situation but they are wrong and their defiance could ultimately cost India its integration.

The Kashmir issue surfaced soon after Pakistan and India emerged as independent states on the world map but with genetic burden of colonial era on the shoulders of their peoples to live in agony and pain forever. Starting from the beginning, the All India Muslim League, the representative political party of Muslims in British India, had no agenda to call for a separate homeland for Muslims. But history speaks itself that a large portion of Hindu community had a hegemonic mindset on the bases of their numerical superiority in the region. They wanted to implement their agenda forcibly on the non-Hindu communities including Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists or Christians. This mindset forced Muslims to call for a separate homeland.

However, relations between Pakistan and India turned from bad to worse and experienced many ups and downs over the years in their chequered history of war and peace. The politics of India still revolves around Pakistan bashing and it could not come out of the spell of its bitter past.

Indian Prime Minister Narendara Modi has no qualifications other than his anti-Pakistan narratives on the basis of which he became chief minister of Indian Gujrat state and now has acquired the highest political office in New Delhi. Modi sneaked into the Prime Minister’s House on the slogan that Kashmir will be incorporated into the Indian union and article 370 will be abrogated. After holding the office, he managed to pass a resolution in the Indian parliament that Kashmir is ‘integral part of India’, and anyone showing Kashmir as a disputed territory in Indian map will be prosecuted against. A situation of disenchantment was already brewing in Kashmir and the Modi government only added fuel to fire.

The death of Burhan Wani, the new face of Kashmir independence struggle, just opened the floodgates of violence as the Indian occupied forces used brutal force against young protesters, killing over 90 of them, blinding over 300 and wounding more than 10,000. At least 20 Indian troops have been killed in reprisal attack of Kashmiri freedom fighters on an army camp and India is licking the wounds of its own desperation. In desperation, Modi raised the issue of Balochistan by putting aside the norms of diplomacy and against the charter of the United Nations. He forgot that Khalistan is India’s Achilles’ heel which can be turned into another boiling point.

Kashmiris suffered years of persecution on the fake promises made by New Delhi to calm them down, but now they have lost all their trust in the Indian establishment and their puppets in the Valley.

The only solution is political solution that is not possible without the involvement of Pakistan and Kashmiris themselves. The Indian government has paranoia of a large army, but history says a large army never guarantees a victory. India has deployed 700,000 army troops, 100,000 policemen and hundreds of thousands of paramilitary forces in the valley, but it could not quell the uprising. The Indian bureaucracy and army have rejected all attempts and generous offers by Pakistan for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. A good chance was missed when Gen Prevez Musharraf was in power. A draft resolution, agreed both by Gen Musharraf and Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was rejected by the Indian army, which India claims is subservient to the political leadership.

It is a good omen that sane elements in the Indian army, judiciary and media still want a political and just solution to the Kashmir issue and are urging their government to take a bold decision, but the problem is for Modi who has already stepped in the wrong direction.