Kashmiris Victims of Indian State Terrorism

Despite Indian nationalist claims, Kashmir has never been part of India
Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Ibrahim Vawda

Shawwal 27, 1440 2019-07-01

Special Reports

by Ibrahim Vawda (Special Reports, Crescent International Vol. 48, No. 5, Shawwal, 1440)

Palestinians are being killed in the hundreds by the militarized terrorists of the Zionist Israeli regime and the illegal Egyptian regime that has ensconced itself in power in Cairo. Palestinian properties and land worth billions of dollars are confiscated for future illegal Zionist settlement construction.

On the other hand, India kills Kashmiris as part of its sadistic strategy to silence them for seeking independence from Indian colonization. India invaded and annexed Kashmir in October 1947. The Indian Colonial forces have killed more than one million Kashmiris since. The occupation army’s thirst for Kashmiri blood remains unquenched.

China is the third nuclear power that controls a part of Kashmir. Having veto power in the UN Security Council and having done very little to secure peace in the region, makes China complicit in the human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, having given partial sovereignty to Azad (free) Kashmir, insists on a plebiscite (referendum), as promised by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to determine the future of Jammu and Kashmir. There are at least 18 UN Security Council resolutions calling for a referendum that India had agreed to in the beginning but has since reneged on its pledge.

Indian rulers insist that Kashmir is part of India although in its constitution, Kashmir is accorded special status (Articles 135 and 370). The current Hindu fascist regime led by Narendra Modi has vowed to remove these articles from the constitution to prepare the way for total annexation of Kashmir into India. Kashmir was never a part of India. It was an independent state for 5,000 years.

India uses “terrorism” as a pretext to terrorize the Kashmiris. In fact much of the firing across the Line of Control (LoC) is used solely for this purpose.

India refuses to admit that Kashmir was invaded and annexed with the help of the then Hindu ruler of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh. He had already fled the state capital Srinagar because of a popular mass uprising against his oppressive rule and dithering over not joining Pakistan as the people demanded. India touts the “Instrument of Accession” that the fleeing ruler allegedly signed with India as justification for its troops to invade and colonize Kashmir. India has never produced that “Instrument of Accession’.” Instead, Indian rulers in the past admitted that it was a provisional arrangement and once calm was restored, India would respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Nehru made this pledge publicly on several occasions starting in October 1947 and repeated in telegrams to Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan as well as broadcast on Indian radio. The same pledge was made to the United Nations Security Council. In fact, when war broke out between India and Pakistan, it was India that took the matter to the UN Security Council in January 1948 to secure a ceasefire. It again pledged that once calm was restored, India would hold a referendum under international supervision such as the UN to determine the wishes of the people.

Nehru and his cohorts were clearly playing for time. They got that once both countries — India and Pakistan — agreed to a ceasefire. The Security Council resolution also called for the withdrawal of the bulk of both countries’ forces to be followed by a referendum. While the ceasefire went into effect and that is where the current Line of Control in Kashmir is, India deliberately ignored and sabotaged the other two provisions of the resolution.

Acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it. Even many Indians would agree.

In its efforts to change the demographic composition of Kashmir, India continues on its genocidal path of simply killing the indigenous population of Kashmir, calling them “terrorists” and “insurgents.”

Several secret mass-graves have been uncovered in Kashmir. Obviously these contain the remains of Kashmiris who protested India’s human rights violations. They were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by the Indian colonial army.

Like Israel on the Palestine freedom issue, Delhi has taken it for granted that Kashmir should not be resolved so as to keep it an unsettled problem. In fact, India would like to project the notion that Kashmiris are happy under India’s murderous occupation and there is no need for any settlement beyond maintaining the status quo.

India refuses to discuss the Kashmir question with a third party or intermediary. It demands it will only talk to Pakistan if the latter admits to harboring “terrorists” and “facilitating the infiltration of insurgents” into Kashmir from Pakistan.

India remains in perpetual denial and claims the status of “terror victim,” like the apartheid regime of Israel. India has joined the US and Israel as part of the new axis of evil. It hopes to ride out any criticism, like the Zionist regime, of its murderous policy against the Kashmiris.

Virtuous talk of unity in diversity and secularism have been replaced by bareknuckled Hindu nationalism. The state, colonized by a fascist ideological movement, is emerging triumphant over the civilian population. It has assumed vast powers of control — telling people what they should eat at home and how they should behave in public, and whom to lynch.

There is no doubt that the Kashmiris have suffered immensely for more than seven decades. They are being tortured not merely to obtain false confessions but to break their self-esteem, dignity and self-image. The Indian military and intelligence services continue to indulge in terror to create mayhem in Kashmiri communities. India has turned on the civilians with a vengeance and harsh malevolent behavior. Rape is used as an instrument of war. More than 11,000 Kashmiri women and girls have been raped since 1989. These are well documented and were even reported in the UN Human Rights Commission of June 14, 2018. To India’s lasting shame, not one person has been arrested much less prosecuted for such heinous crimes.

This hardline approach embraced by Hindu religious fanatics confirms that the world as we have known it, molded by the heirs of both Western imperialism and anti-imperialist nationalism, is crumbling. Countries and people that genuinely believe in human dignity and honor should take the lead in helping the colonised nations to gain freedom from the clutches of foreign occupation.

Ibrahim Vawda works for the Johannesburg-based Media Review Network.

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