Daily Times

The people of Jammu and Kashmir have been facing the juggernaut of Indian tyranny for the past 76 years. They have gone through a hell of oppressive times but never relented in their struggle for freedom. Narendra Modi will be remembered for torture and bloodletting in the Valley and the custodial killings, and demographical genocide of Kashmiri people after 5 August 2019. He revoked articles 370 and 35-A abolishing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and unabashedly amalgamated it into the Indian Union.

To recapitulate, the Indian Congress leaders agreed to insert Article 370 in the Constitution of India in November 1949 to pacify the concerns of veteran Kashmiri leader, Shaikh Abdullah to secure his support for Maharaja Hari Singh’s farce accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. Later, article 35A was also incorporated into the Constitution by a Presidential order in 1956.

The articles accorded a special status to Jammu and Kashmir recognizing its right to autonomous self-rule with a separate Constituent Assembly, constitution, political dispensation, flag, and right to legislate on all matters concerning the territory except for Finance, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communication.

The over-pampering of India as a countervail to China has emboldened it to trample upon its secular polity.

The articles also recognized the distinct cultural and ideological identity and political and economic interests of the territory. Non-Kashmiri Indians were denied the right to migrate and settle in the territory, claim citizenship, buy immovable property including land, seek gainful business or employment, education scholarships etc. with a view to protecting the demographical majority of the Kashmiris in their land.

The articles were duly approved by the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly giving them a permanent status in the Indian Constitution. This made it legally and constitutionally binding for the Indian Government to have the mandatory approval of the Legislative Assembly of the territory for any subsequent change or amendment in the articles. These constitutional guarantees lured Shaikh Abdullah and his colleagues of the All Jammu and Kashmir National Conference to accept the Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Sindh with India under duress.

The principle underlining the scheme of partition had given the leeway to autonomous princely states to join either of the emerging dominions of Pakistan or India in accordance with the wishes of their subjects. It was generally believed that the contiguous Muslim majority states including Jammu and Kashmir and others in North-Western provinces would accede to Pakistan while the non-Muslim majority states to India.

Notwithstanding the clear Muslim majority in Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh was reluctant to accede to Pakistan. The people of the state revolted against his atrocious rule beginning from the Northern Areas of Gilgit-Baltistan where the scout volunteers freed their region. The revolt swiftly spread to Muzaffarabad and surrounding districts ending Hari Singh’s administration by tribal and scout volunteers.

The Maharaja fled to Delhi and hurriedly signed an Instrument of Accession with India calling on the Indian government to send troops into the territory. This is how the Jammu and Kashmir got divided into two parts to the agony of the people of this beautiful land. With the Indian military forces on the ground in the Indian-occupied territory, Jawaharlal Nehru himself took the issue to the UN. The rest, as we say, is history.

The revocation of the special status of the territory to the peril of legal and constitutional norms, international law, bilateral agreements and UN Resolutions has further complicated the Jammu and Kashmir issue with far-reaching political, ideological, cultural and strategic implications for all the stakeholders including the people of Jammu and Kashmir, India, Pakistan, China and the US-led Western world causing grievous damage to the rules-based international order. The territory has been transformed into a volcano.

For over seven decades, Kashmir has been brutally ruled by New Delhi contrary to what was pledged to its people under Article 370. In 2009, the discovery of some 2900 unmarked graves in three of the region’s twenty-two districts alone confirmed what had long been suspected: a decade-long history of disappearances and extra-judicial killings since the 1990s with detailed reports of torture and rape of both women and men (Tariq Ali).

The annexation of Kashmir was purely the practical manifestation of the Indian belief in “might is right” and the murderous ideology of Hindutva which helped the BJP have a landslide victory in the last elections at the peril of Indian secularism. The Hindu society is divided along the caste system and other sectarian and ethnic fault lines; there is social and economic inequality between urban and rural India, as well as north and south India. The communal violence involving Muslim lynching, and prejudice against Dalits and other low-caste Hindus, Jains, Christians and Buddhists have become a way of life in 21st-century India.

India grapples with all the afflictions of a third-world country including poverty, corruption, inequality, unemployment, criminal-politician nexus, unfriendly atmosphere for business, tax evasion and smuggling, long power outages, overpopulation; hazardous climate change and bleak social indicators as put by Ambassador Inam ul Haq in one of his articles.

The UN has rightly rejected the annexation of Jammu and Kashmir. The major powers of the world particularly the US-led Western bloc and Russia have the responsibility to intervene for a just settlement of the Kashmir and Palestine issues being perennial threats to the international peace. The over-pampering of India as a countervail to China has emboldened it to trample upon its secular polity and promote Hindu majoritarianism with RSS ideologues indulging in all crimes against minorities.

South Asia is sitting on a nuclear tinderbox with three nuclear countries – Pakistan, China and India – having disputes. These disputes have already caused four wars making the entire region a flashpoint dangerously poised to threaten the International order. The Kashmiri people would not lie low and accept the Indian slavery as proved by their brave struggle of the past 75 years. Nor would Pakistan let India get away with any misadventure.

The Western world should rein in India before it is too late.

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.