Daily Times

India illegally occupied Kashmir on 27 October 1947. Since then, it has maintained a tight grip through its armed forces and draconian laws. In 1989, Kashmiris rose enmasse to secure their freedom but were brutally crushed. On 8 July 2016, Popular youth Kashmiri leader Burhan Wani was slain and the whole of Illegally Indian Occupied Kashmir (IIOK) came out in streets to protest. Indian forces used pellet guns on the unarmed Kashmiri youth, as a result of which nearly 500 Kashmiris were martyred while 3,600 have been permanently blinded.

On 5 August 2019, Narendra Modi’s fascist regime took the unprecedented step of abrogating Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution, which had provided autonomy to Kashmir and annexed it as part of Indian Union. Kashmiri leaders were placed under house arrest while the Valley remains in a state of lockdown.

On occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations, in his address to the UN General Assembly, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan, in a hard hitting exposé disclosed India’s machinations against the Kashmiris and accentuated the perils the world faces through the flashpoint of Kashmir. Even a spark resulting in an armed conflict between the nuclear weapons equipped protagonists, Pakistan and India can annihilate the entire world. Imran Khan pointed out that India was the only “one country” that “state sponsors Islamophobia”, rooted in “RSS ideology”.

India must understand the lesson of the history that despite its 800,000-strong armed force, it will not be able to crush the nine million Kashmiri Muslims who are facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the form of curfews

Citing the examples of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the burning of the Samjhauta Express train, the RSS, Khan said that India is “exclusive for Hindus and others are not equal citizens” and had engaged in the “cleansing” of “200 million Muslims and other minorities”.

Khan also mentioned the NRC and CAA, particularly its impact in Assam, where “two million Muslims” were being stripped of their citizenship. “There are reports of large concentration camps being filled with by Muslim Indian citizens,” Khan said.

In its rejoinder, the Indian delegate to the UN refuted Imran’s allegations and claimed that Kashmir was an internal matter of India. The fact is that even BJP stalwarts like Yashwant Sinha and renowned human rights activist Arundhati Roy are chastising India for its ruthless treatment of the Kashmiris.

Pakistani analyst MoonisAhmar has warned that India is hell bent upon “ethnic cleansing” in Kashmir. He warned that the Indian state has failed to learn lessons from the policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing which was pursued in the past by militaries in different parts of the world. India must understand the lesson of the history that despite its 800,000-strong armed force, it will not be able to crush the nine million Kashmiri Muslims who are facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the form of curfews, communication lockdown and shortage of essential commodities, including medicines.

Kashmiri leaders, bitter from their incarceration, have criticized the BJP government. Farooq Abdullah, who was erstwhile perceived as a pro-Indian Kashmiri, has lashed out at the Indian government for scrapping the special status of the occupied territory and said that Kashmiris would rather accept Chinese rule than Indian. The veteran Kashmiri leader acknowledged that Kashmiris felt like “slaves” and would rise up in protest once the draconian curfew was lifted. He was very clear that the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status as a semi-autonomous region was unacceptable to every Kashmiri and he would struggle to have the status restored.

Farooq Abdullah also said that the differences between his family and that of Mehbooba Mufti – another pro-India former chief minister of occupied Kashmir currently under house arrest – had been settled and that they would work in unison.

India’s move last August to scrap Articles 370 and 35A of its constitution and deprive IHK of its special status has had disastrous results. The step by the BJP government has confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt what the people of Kashmir had feared all along, i.e. New Delhi wants to forcefully take control of their land by changing its demography and diluting its Muslim and Kashmiri identity. In the year since then, the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has legislated a controversial law that authorizes Hindus to settle and buy property in IIHK.

Narendra Modi’s malicious intent is aimed at converting IIHK into a Hindu-majority area and deprive Kashmiris of the political and administrative strength that comes with being a majority in their own land. In the process, however, India has alienated every Kashmiri including its handmaidens.

On 15 September, India’s National Security Advisor, AjitDoval, walked out of the SCO virtual conference with his counterparts after lodging protest over display of the map behind Moeed Yusuf, the representative of Pakistan. The map was issued by Imran Khan’s Government in Islamabad early last month, incorporating in Pakistan, not only India’s two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh, but also Junagadh in its western state of Gujarat. Yusuf, the Special Advisor on National Security to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, had the map as a background display behind him when he joined the video conference. Doval conveyed India’s “strong objection” to the use of the map by Pakistan.

India needs to be cognizant that it cannot hold the Kashmiris at bayonet point. The only solution is abiding by the UN resolutions that recognize the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory and the dispute’s final resolution lies in the implementation of these Resolutions.

The writer is a retired Group Captain of PAF. He is a columnist, analyst and TV talk show host, who has authored six books on current affairs, including three on China