Daily Times

The wheels of civilization and egalitarianism seem to have reversed full circle in India, as, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Indian forces use rape as a weapon of retaliation against Kashmiri civilians.

And this inhuman practice is going on in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley since Intifada of 1988. Call it by any name in English: uprising or insurgency. For Kashmiri freedom-fighters who are longing for seven plus decades to get their due right of self-determination in the light of UN Security Council resolutions, it is Intifada or a resistance movement against the forces of oppression. For Indian authorities, it is a rebellion which is ‘unacceptable’ to the ‘warlords’ of New Delhi.

It is a fact that New Delhi’s seat of power has mostly relied on a jingoistic warlord-ism to tame the ‘rebellious lot’, despite its tall claim of being one of the biggest democracies of the world and a legatee of one of the ancient most civilizations.

This incompatibility is not at all understandable on any globally applicable democratic yardstick. Seemingly, India’s superiority complex or dream of ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Great, Grand India) has overshadowed all democratic ideals and norms.

This incompatibility is not at all understandable on any globally applicable democratic yardstick. Seemingly, India’s superiority complex or dream of ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Great, Grand India) has overshadowed all democratic ideals and norms

It is, by now, a reported fact, as noted by human rights organizations, that India has barely ceased to brutalize the vulnerable categories of its own people.

Many people now opine that notwithstanding the so-called secular nature of Indian Constitution, the class hatred, rooted in supremacy of one caste over the other, still rules the roost.

The treatment meted out to the “lowly ones” like Shoodras and Dalits by those from the higher (and ‘ noble ‘) categories like Brahmins, is now a globally known fact.

People still remember a ‘false flag’ operation stage-managed by Indian forces in which they killed more than three dozens of their own men from one of the hated categories (Dalits). So, they were made scapegoats . And the mission was to malign Pakistan and throw it in bad light on the international front.

The worst hit community that has been at the receiving end since the Kashmiri freedom fighters’ ‘Intifada’, are peace-loving Muslims of Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IoJ&K) especially their womenfolk. Their ‘sin’, according to the ‘superior’ Hindu majority of India, is that they are Muslims who are also despised for their tilt towards Pakistan.

However, the government of Bhartya Janata Party (BJP), now led by Nirandera Modi, has crossed all limits in fomenting social-and-class hatred.

India is, in fact, an odd-country-out in the transformed, more civilized, more tolerant world, given its leaders’ penchant for brutal suppression of non-Hindus seeking equality in India at par with the powerful Hindu ruling lot that is ‘afflicted’ with supremacy mentality.

The freedom fighters of Kashmir Valley, belonging to Muslim majority, are the worst hit.

All the thinkable and unthinkable tools of suppression have been used to brutalize them with the backing of draconian, black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which authorizes Indian soldiers to enter any premises in IoJ&K without a search warrant and wreak havoc on the poor, harmless inmates at their mercy.

This has been happening during the incumbency of governments of different political parties. There have been other black laws in force, including Public Safety Act (PSA), that had conferred extra-judicial powers on Indian Army officials to detain innocent Kashmiris for longer periods of time without producing them in the courts of law.

Intoxicated with these ‘immense powers’, around 300 Indian Army personnel resorted to brazen bestiality and gang-raped 150 Muslim Kashmiri girls in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora during a cordon-and- search operation.

And the world has not yet forgotten other such acts of bestiality that are being comitted with impunity in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, by the cruel indian forces deployed to the extent of 0.7 million regular army and 0.4 million paramilitary personnel.

Rape and sexual violence have actually been some of the main tools of oppression and suppression, as employed again and again to subjugate and humiliate the peace-loving and unarmed Kashmiri Muslims for demanding the right of self-determination.

Sometimes, it seems as if the Indian troops are following in the footsteps of Dogra troops of Kashmir that committed mass rapes against Kasmiri Muslim women, when conflict broke out in Kashmir immediately after Independence.

A number of scholars and human rights organizations assert that “rape has been leveraged as a weapon of war by Indian security forces comprising Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)and Border Security personnel.”

The writer is a senior journalist and TV analyst