The RSS-BJP government in India is facing serious problems. Its economy is likely to contract by 9 percent of its GDP due to mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic. It has faced a humiliating military defeat from China in the form of an unconditional abdication of its politico-military objectives and surrender of over 1000 square kilometers of its area in Ladakh that was under Indian border security guards’ control until as late as April 2020. And in Indian Illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K), even pro-Indian elements are now opposing Prime Minster Narendra Modi government’s action of August 05, 2019. Amnesty International has closed down its operations in India after New Delhi froze its bank assets. This isn’t the first time the human rights watchdog has faced pressure from India, nor is Amnesty the only high-profile group targeted by New Delhi. The Ford Foundation was put on a national security watch list in 2015.
Interestingly, Modi has a simple panacea for all this China-Pakistan bashing. He and his ministers run a mechanical routine of anti-China, and anti-Pakistan statements. While doing this as a national duty the Indian Defence Minister Rajanth Singh said on Oct 12 that Pakistan and China are deliberately creating border disputes with India. It is yet another manifestation of the Indian government’s incurable obsession with Pakistan and China.
On August 06, 2019 while discussing the two bills the J&K Reorganization Bill 2019 and the J&K Reservation (second amendment) Bill 2019, and the resolution for revocation of Articles 370 and 35 A in the lower house of parliament, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that when he speaks in the House of Jammu and Kashmir state, he means Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin both as part of India, and that he was ready to die [for achieving this]. “I want to put this on record that whenever I have said J&K, it means with PoK and Aksai Chin,” Shah said. “J&K is an integral part of the Union of India. Kashmir kisee ma main PoK bhi aata hai. Jaan de denge iske liye (PoK is also a part of Kashmir. Ready to die for this).” He added that the decision to remove special status for J&K and bifurcate the state should have been taken much earlier.
The Indian government is hostage to its electoral rhetoric whereby it contested elections on an anti-China and anti-Pakistan rhetoric to attract hard-line votes. And now it is under unrelenting pressure from these extremist RSS-BJP cadres to deliver on its undeliverable promises.
India has resorted to malicious propaganda against the longstanding, close Pakistan-China partnership and friendship. This is outrageous as India itself is a country that is compulsively expansionist and a brazen practitioner of state-terrorism. Over and above, it resorts to blatant lies to level charges against others. The world community is aware that the political opportunism of the RSS-BJP regime is imperiling peace, stability and security of the region. It is India that not only creates disputes with neighbours but also runs away from peacefully resolving them.
Rather than jeopardizing peace and stability of the region, including by perpetrating state-terrorism as a tool to advance its extremist (Hindutva) ideology and expansionist (Akhand Bharat) designs, India should seriously consider course correction by giving up its aggressive agenda and peacefully resolving disputes with neighbours.
India is following a two-pronged strategy to squeeze the people of IIOJ&K. Firstly, changing the democratic composition of IIOJ&K by granting domicile of Kashmir to people from outside Jammu and Kashmir, which is a clear violation of Article 49 of Geneva Convention IV which prohibits forcible or voluntary transfer of population from, to and within occupied territory. Drawing comparisons with Israel’s “settler” tactics in the Palestinian Territories, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government aims to change the demographic makeup and identity of the Muslim-majority region. Between April and August, over 430000 such certificates were issued and no breather is in sight. Moreover, under the Hindutva doctrine, India has already settled 1.8 million Indian Hindus in the occupied Kashmir during the last few months.
Secondly, administrative power is being transferred to non-Muslims despite the fact that IIOJ&K is an over vehemently Muslim State. According to Professor Ashok Swain of Uppsala University, Sweden, “Of the 66 top bureaucrats in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir, at this time, 38 are from other states. Of the 12 sitting Judges at the high court, only two are Muslim. And there is not a single Muslim officer in the Lieutenant Governor’s secretariat.”
This change of demographic composition and usurpation of authority is being done despite the fact that India does not have sovereign rights over Jammu and Kashmir; it is just an occupying country of an area that is an United Nations (UN) recognized disputed territory. The UN has already ruled to hold a plebiscite to ascertain the will of Kashmiris for joining India or Pakistan.
Kashmiris are the most valiant nation in the world, despite suffering repression they have been fighting the Indian occupation forces for the last 72 years. They are pitched against one million regular Indian troops Around 600,000 people of 18,000 families of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) living along the Line of Control (LOC) are offering sacrifices on the daily basis while the AJK people who are part of the armed forces of Pakistan are sacrificing their lives for the defence of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir.
AJK President Sardar Masood Khan said on October 05 that the brunt of the political blunder committed by Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah and Maharaja Hari Singh shouting the slogan of sovereign Kashmir in 1947 was still being borne by the people in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the shape of cruel Indian subjugation.
Farooq Abdullah says they [the people of Jammu & Kashmir] are fighting for “the honour, dignity, the respect that the people lost on the 5th of August last year”. They want the Government of India to “start trusting Muslims instead of denigrating them They (Centre) still hold the land, with force, but they have lost the people”. And that is why “the sentiment for Kashmiri independence has grown sizably”.
According to Mani Shankar Aiyar‘s Oct 07 article for The Wire: “This is the extent to which Modi and Shah have driven seven million Kashmiris up the wall. And with the new domicile laws endangering the demographic composition of both Union Territories, fear and apprehension have overtaken all three regions of the erstwhile state Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, including both Muslim-majority Kargil and Buddhist-majority Leh”. He added: “If the situation is not rectified, intifada and worse can overtake the trijunction of India, China and Pakistan. This was not the situation on August 4, 2019. It is the position today. That is the measure of what the Modi-Shah regime has wrought in Jammu and Kashmir. The nation’s unity and integrity are under threat as never before”.
A massive wedge has been driven between the IIOJ&K electorate and the traditional pro-India “three families” to the extent that a typical Kashmiri-in-the street mocks them with the cry, “Ab bolo, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’”.
Farooq Abdullah recently stated in an interview to Karan Thapar that his father had repulsed Pakistan to join India. He said, although “religion (was on) that side, the roads on that side, the rivers go that side, we went against the current”. Why? “We joined Gandhi’s India, not Modi’s India”. So, what had Modi’s India done? They had broken the trust that underlay “the unity of the Muslim-majority state with the rest of the nation”, leaving the people “sick of having to put up with a soldier with an AK-47 on every street, every village”, “their dreams gone” awry, their children deprived “of a future”, “completely disillusioned…If I speak of India anywhere, they don’t want to listen”.
Farooq asked: Then why are they so quiescent, so accepting of their fate, so reconciled to their deprivation as to not take to the streets? “Would you be able to protest here in Delhi if every street was filled with armed gunmen?” “Perhaps not”. But “the minute you remove those soldiers, lakhs will be on the street”. And if the soldiers are not removed? “One day this volcano will blow”. India’s current grip over IIOJK is the weakest, comparing it with time frame August 14, 1947 to August 05, 2019.
Strangely, Pakistan’s efforts towards the Kashmir cause have since been patchy. Prime Minister Imran Khan needs to be assured that for whatever else his stint may be remembered for, he will certainly be scrutinized for what he does and what he lets slip by with regard to opportunities thrown up by Narendra Modi’s August 05, 2019 goof-up. Many viable opportunities have been allowed to slip by. Voices of a “sell-out” are now well beyond the threshold of “loud thinking”.
At times, it appears as if as a part of some international understanding, the Pakistan government is not keen to keep the Kashmir issue alive and relevant beyond some periodic noises. The objective of the Foreign Office appears to make the Prime Minster deliver a speech to the General Assembly each year in September and then go to sleep till next speech is due. Everyone knows that a speech in UNGA is not worth a dime.
There is no way that India will reverse its policy on J&K unless Pakistan takes a firm stand on the Kashmiris’ struggle for right of self-determination. Unfortunately, the issue of J&K has lost momentum in Pakistan’s foreign policy, and it has almost become a forgotten case. This is due to the policy gap between the government’s rhetoric and actions; and the country’s inherent political and economic weakness. No wonder India has made Pakistan ineffective with regard to its once “Jugular Vein”. Pakistan should not expect India to end its military occupation of IIOJ&K unless Pakistan adopts a courageous stance. Muslims of IOK cannot be liberated through mere dilly-dallying.
