Shashi Tharoor has written eloquently and forcefully about the brutality of British colonial rule in India. But the question is: will he ever turn his pen toward the colonial ambitions of his own country-toward Occupied Kashmir, where India seems to be reenacting the very imperial script Tharoor so passionately condemns?
Take the Kashmir Railway Project as an example. In its nature and intent, is it not a more sinister version of the railway system the British built across India? The railways are often portrayed as a grand British gift to united India.
But Tharoor, to his credit, disagrees. He rightly points out that the railways were never intended to benefit the Indian people. They were a logistical tool for the British Empire-meant to expedite the extraction of raw materials, transport horses during world wars, shuttle soldiers across colonial fronts, and ensure swift military mobility.
Muslim heritage is being erased while Hindu nationalist myths are presented as facts.
Any incidental benefits to the natives were purely accidental-a by-product, not the purpose. Isn’t that same imperial logic now at work in Kashmir-this time, draped in tricolour?
What is the true function of the Kashmir Express? Is it to serve the people of Kashmir, or to serve Delhi’s imperial appetite? Let us be honest. It exists to ease the movement of Indian troops, to expedite the supply of arms and ammunition, to fortify India’s strategic foothold, to facilitate permanent military presence, and most of all, to pave the tracks of settler colonialism.
It is not a train-it is an iron declaration that Hindutva now seeks not just the land, but the soul of Kashmir. Will Shashi Tharoor, who so admirably dissected British imperialism, also turn his pen toward this modern-day colonialism?
The Kashmir Railway Project is not a welfare initiative. It is not about easing life for the Kashmiris. It is about giving India, which has no natural or easy access to Kashmir, a direct and controlled route into the valley-a strategic corridor to implement the Hindutva agenda with ease.
Even the colour of the train is not without meaning. Why saffron? Why is this shade so closely tied to Hindu nationalism? The answer is chilling in its clarity: it is a symbolic siege. Painting the train in saffron is not a transportation policy-it is ideological theatre.
It announces, quite brazenly, that the Hindu civilizational project is now on the move, inching into the valleys and history of Kashmir. It is a cultural invasion by a locomotive. This is not mere speculation.
In Palestine, Israel executed a similar strategy. It began with the erasure of names-Hebron replaced Al-Khalil, Jerusalem stood where once was Al-Quds, Zippori smothered Saffuriyya, Giv’at Shaul was laid atop Deir Yassin. The policy had a name: Hebraization.
The method: remove the name, rewrite the memory.
India is doing no less in Kashmir. Sher-e-Kashmir Stadium is now Sardar Patel Stadium. Schools are being remade into temples of Hindutva-teaching the Gita instead of local histories, promoting Vedantic ideals in place of Sufi traditions. Muslim festivals are curtailed; Eid holidays are trimmed. Friday prayers, once a communal anchor, now face obstacles and surveillance. Yet, Amarnath Yatra enjoys the pomp of a state pilgrimage.
This isn’t development-it’s domination. The new domicile laws are changing the demographics. History books are being rewritten. Muslim heritage is being erased while Hindu nationalist myths are presented as facts.
This is not development. This is not democracy. This is settler colonialism-and in its quiet violence, perhaps even more insidious than the British colonialism.
So again the question is: will Tharoor continue to speak about dead empires in air-conditioned halls, or will he write about the living one, marching through Kashmir with slogans, trains, and saffron paint?
Kashmir waits for his answer. So does history.
The writer is a lawyer and author based in Islamabad. He tweets @m_asifmahmood.