Daily Times

The most recent escalation between India and Pakistan that got triggered by the incident of a Kashmiri combative freedom fighter going for a suicide attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy at Pulwama in Indian occupied Kashmir on 14th February 2019 needs to be studied from many angels being really instructive for the safety of life on earth. As per unfortunate precedence, within minutes Indian government thoughtlessly and without any evidence blamed it on Pakistan and Jaishe Muhammad (JeM) led by Pakistan based Azhar Masood, who had been tried earlier by Indian courts, found innocent and released. Indian tendency to blame Pakistan for indigenous insurgencies is practised as a ritual as had been witnessed after Mumbai, Uri, Pathankot, Parliament or attack on Samjhota express Train…..all later traced back to either stage managed by Indian intelligence agencies or launched by native freedom fighters. However, the Indian state-sponsored self-embarrassing political frenzy duly hyped by Indian media blitz actually served UN recognized Kashmiris’ cause of right to; besides bringing Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir under international spotlight as the greatest nuclear flashpoint in South Asia.

There is a need to reevaluate as to why India is so obsessed with Jammu and Kashmir’s occupation despite having fought three wars with Pakistan and in spite of her failure to suppress Kashmiri freedom struggle in the last over seven decades. India has 28 states and 7 Union Territories, though disputed Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir is also erroneously mentioned as twenty-ninth state by the Indian government. Is it for geostrategic location of occupied Kashmir, resource-rich beautiful territory, control of rivers waters to Pakistan, pursuit of doctrine of greater India through sustained expansion by gulping up all SAARC countries including Afghanistan, ultimate competition with China, CPEC/ BRI factor under greater regional role assigned by USA and finally contesting China as a main competitor in Asia-Pacific region. Let’s peep into Indian internal political, ethnic and demographic challenges to understand her predicament of seeking unity and internal cohesion by creating anti-Pakistan rhetoric and anti-minorities narratives. The Constitution of India recognizes 23 official languages, spoken in different parts of the country, and two official classical languages, Sanskrit and Tamil. According to a 1983 report, India is characterized by more ethnic and religious groups than most other countries of the world. Aside from the much-noted 2000-odd castes, there are eight “major” religions, 15-odd languages spoken in various dialects in 22 states and nine union territories, and a substantial number of tribes and sects. Three ethnic or religious conflicts have stood out of late: two occurred in the states of “Assam and Punjab; another, the more widely known Hindu-Muslim conflict continues to persist. The Assam problem is primarily ethnic; the Punjab problem is based on both religious and regional conflicts, while the Hindu-Muslim problem is predominantly religious. There are 121 languages which are spoken by 10,000 or more people in India, which has a population of over 1.3 billion. More than 19,500 dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues, according to a recent analysis of a census.

It is well established that India has had its share of insurgencies; an estimated 30 armed insurgencies sweep across the country, reflecting an acute sense of alienation of the people involved and sustained mainly by failure to attend to their grievances and human rights violations by the government. Secession in India typically refers to state secession, which is the withdrawal of one or more states from the Republic of India. Some have argued for secession as a natural right of revolution. Many independence movements exist with thousands of members, however, with moderate local support and high voter participation in the democratic elections. The Khalistan movement in Punjab was active in the 1980s and the 1990s but is now somewhat suppressed within India. The insurgency has occurred in North-East India, in the states of Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam and Nagaland.

However, Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir despite being recognized as a disputed territory that is to be granted right of self determination through a free and fair plebiscite under UN auspices remains a thorn stuck in Indian throat and consequently been subjected to a host of immoral political manipulations and extremely brutal state-sponsored terrorism by Indian military and paramilitary forces since 1948. First, Indian PM Modi and his  BJP-RSS political agenda to turn the Muslim majority of the territory into minority and to erode the disputed nature of Jammu and Kashmir and its integration with mainland India is being executed by settling non-Kashmiris to turn Muslim majority into a minority, attempting to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution of India that gives autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir ( the article is drafted in Part XXI of the Constitution: Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions) as well as article 35/A (since Article 370 was enacted on 26 November 1949 as part of the Constitution of India by the Constituent Assembly of India which was a sovereign body,  Article 35 A “flows inexorably” from it. … Article 35 A protects the demographic status of the Jammu and Kashmir state in its prescribed constitutional form), implementation of Securitization and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act-2002, creation of separate townships for Hindu Pundits in Kashmir valley, giving state subject status to West-Pakistan refugees, settling 10 thousand ex-Indian army personnel by creating Sainik (military) colonies in IOK, building shelters for the homeless on state subjects in IOK and allotment of land to Indian Industrialists outside Industrial areas under a lease agreement for 99 years to give control of economy of the State to outsiders. Second, Indian successive governments have unleashed most heinous acts of state-sponsored terrorism through its military and paramilitary forces against the Muslim population of Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Just to give a glimpse of Indian atrocities since 1990 duly verified by UN watchdogs: more than 95000 people have been killed including more than 7000 custodial killings, over 145000 persons have been arrested for torture, over 110000 structures have been destroyed, more than 23000 women have been widowed, over 11,000 women have been raped, 108000 children have been orphaned and thousands of youth have lost eyes due to use of pellet guns by Indian forces. India has introduced a number of Armed Forces Special Powers Acts (AFSPA) to subdue insurgency in certain parts of the country. The law was first enforced in Manipur and later enforced in other insurgency-ridden north-eastern states. It was extended to most parts of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1990 after the outbreak of an armed insurgency in 1989. Each Act gives soldiers immunity in specified regions against prosecution under state government unless the Indian government gives prior sanction for such prosecution. The government maintains that the AFSPA is necessary to restore order in regions like Indian territories Kashmir and Manipur.

Nevertheless, special power acts that provide immunity Indian forces to kill and suppress Kashmiri freedom fighters with impunity, in fact, has been adding fuel to the fire resulting in more and more acts of retaliation like Pulwama and no amount of blanket lies by Indian government can hide the facts from the eyes of UNO and rest of the world. Shooting down of two Indian military aircraft that intruded into Pakistan’s airspace for so-called surgical strike on February 2019 after the previous day’s botched claims, the arrest of Indian pilot and gracious release after two days by Pakistani Prime Minister gave Modi and Indian military and government sufficient embarrassment. What was orchestrated by Modi’s deep state by stage managing three so-called terrorists acts one each in Afghanistan, Iran and at Pulwama and dumping the blame on Pakistan just prior to Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to Pakistan was very aptly exposed by RT host Oksana Boyko in her famous programme” Worlds Apart”, while interviewing a former Indian ambassador P.S Raghavan. Indian attempt to undermine Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s visit, botched attempt to conflate so-called acts of terror by real or propped up non-state actors with state of Pakistan, design to build a joint common narrative against Pakistan and finally win vote bank in forthcoming state elections in India by BJP by warmongering against Pakistan has backfired and Modi and his team is licking wounds with stalemated escalation along the line of control in Kashmir.

But the most alarming phenomenon observed was the reported nexus between India, Israel and some unstated countries forcing Pakistan to expose its conventional and unconventional military capabilities; and a crop of amateur nuclear experts flooding Indian and Pakistani print and electronic media with raw ideas for a nuclear face-off between the two neighbouring countries with least regard to the extreme risk even in discussing such Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) scenarios. While Modi/ BJP might have planned a calculated madness that would serve their narrow-minded political and flawed extreme right ideological purposes, they got to comprehend that Pakistan suffering from conventional military imbalance had been forced to acquire nuclear military capability to deter an all-out war with India and not to fight a nuclear war that God forbid is bound to ring the bell for an end of the World Scenario…..lesser said better.

The earlier sane headed voters get rid of Modi’s BJP and the earlier India sits on the table with Pakistan to find an amicable solution to Jammu and Kashmir in the light of UN resolutions, the better it is for global peace. UNO got be more proactive than erstwhile League of Nations as the contemporary world is laden with extreme military destructive capabilities that can blow the globe many times over leaving no scope for someone left to the egret.

The writer is SI (M), a retired senior Army officer with rich experience in Military & Intelligence Diplomacy and is a writer and consultant

Published in Daily Times, March 19^th 2019.