It is rare, if not unprecedented, for the British government to comment on the situation in Kashmir with anything other than indifferent neutrality. So when a British MP makes an impassioned plea for Kashmir at a time when India is well on course to hosting a G20 summit in Srinagar, his words ring clear and loud. Since Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status was strapped in 2019, authorities have gone to extreme lengths to prove that the revocation has brought “peace and prosperity” to the region.
Indeed, on the surface, Srinagar appears calm. Most security checkpoints have been camouflaged with cubicle-like posts made of G20 signages behind which security officials stand, determined to maintain a veneer of normalcy. But India isn’t fooling anyone, least of all the countries that have boycotted the summit, such as China and Saudi Arabia, who have categorically cited their opposition to holding G20 meetings on disputed territory. A summit intended to bring the global community together threatens to pull it apart, all because of India’s desire to assert its dominance on the international stage. By hosting the summit in Srinagar, India seeks an international seal of approval on a situation that should be condemned for its disregard of all the international treaties that have preceded it.
If the situation in Srinagar was really as stable as India claims, authorities would not have gone to the trouble of closing the main roads leading to the convention centre or shutting schools in the city in anticipation of the summit. It isn’t lost on us that Mondays’ measures contrasted sharply with the days before it, with a massive security cordon placed around the venue on the shores of Dal Lake as elite naval commandos patrolled the area in rubber boats. Meanwhile, thousands of political prisoners rot in jail and the free press remains woefully under attack in what many have called a drastic curtailment of civil liberties.
Kashmir, which once occupied an important place in international discourse, is now entirely neglected by policymakers and states across the globe, with India experiencing little if any diplomatic fallout with the West and certainly no substantive criticism for its moves in Kashmir. Modi has already expressed his desire to re-engineer Kashmir’s demographic character by encouraging people from elsewhere to purchase land in the area-this latest attempt to bolster tourism in the region is designed to do precisely that. *