Article written by Arshad Malik
The Third consecutive tenure for Prime Minister Narendar Modi has one implication for regional security and another for Kashmiri Muslims. For the region India will aggressively try to assert itself militarily in the region. Many International security experts believe that India’s Hindu extremist ruling party, BJP, would function as a natural house for military jingoism and aggressiveness. This aggressive behavior is likely to be displayed against Pakistan. For Kashmiri Muslims, the situation could not be more clearly directed towards ethnic cleansing, where Indian military and Hindu extremist thugs of India’s ruling party would engage in all sorts of acts of brutalization of Kashmir Muslims. India’s ruling party clearly has a plan for Kashmiri Muslims—first it wants to reduce the size of the ratio of Kashmiri Muslims in the population of State of Jumma and Kashmir, second it wants to humiliate Kashmiri Muslim by employing rape of Kashmiri women as a weapon of war and third it wants to settle Hindu extremists groups in Kashmir by facilitating them financially to purchase properties in the state of Kashmir. Ethnic cleansing has been going on in Kashmir for decade. Hindu terrorist organizations, such as RSS, its affiliates, and the armed Village Defense Committees, are committing ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Muslims in the Jammu region. Since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government took over, Hindu terrorists had been empowered with full support from the state machinery, more so in IOK, causing displacement of scores of Kashmiri Muslim families, by design. Genocide, state terrorism, settlement of non-Kashmiris and other tools are being employed to bring about demographic change.
In December 2022 Indian military and police started confiscating properties of Kashmiri freedom fighters in Kashmir valley. Several of the latest property seizures were conducted by a newly constituted local police force called the State Investigative Agency. Indian authorities claimed that Kashmiri freedom leaders’ properties worth 1 billion rupees [$12.1 million] were seized in several districts of the valley. The agency also said it has identified 188 properties belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami whose owners either have been “notified or are under the process of being notified for further legal action.” This resulted in helpless Kashmiri families becoming refugees in their own land.
India government is conducting a well thought out strategy to kill, harass, torture, and humiliate Kashmir Muslims. Kashmiri leaders as well as the Pakistan government has been attracting the attention of world public opinion towards the new situation where Indian military and Hindu extremist thugs were engaged in massacre of Kashmiri Muslim in the Indian held Kashmir. This has been happening in various parts of Kashmir as Kashmiri Muslim leaders are reporting killings of Kashmiris throughout the valley and in the region of Jumma.
Following the unilateral Indian act to revoke the special status of India-occupied Kashmir (IOK), there have been developing signs of the Indian government facilitating RSS and Shiv Sena Thugs to dominate the public, social and political life in Jumma and Kashmir. There is no possibility that Shiv Sena and RSS would succeed in their evil designs given the resilience shown by the Kashmiri nation over the decades. But nevertheless, the crude methods adopted by Hindu extremist thugs and the Indian military could result in thousands of deaths in Kashmir. In fact, thousands have already lost their lives in Kashmir.
The most inhuman aspect of Indian strategy is to use rape as a weapon of state policy in Kashmir to terrorize and humiliate Kashmiri people. This is a strategy devised to control the population of Kashmir by instilling fear in their hearts. A report in the international media titled “The Indian Troll Army’s Obsession with Rape” by C J Werleman stated that “The Indian military has already demonstrated its willingness to use rape, sodomy, and torture as an ‘instrument of control’ in Kashmir, as documented in a 560-page report submitted to the United Nations. Reports emanating from Kashmir suggest that after the revocation of Article 370 the Hindu thugs have joined hands with Indian military in using rape as a tool of terrorizing Kashmiri Muslims. Both the Indian military and Hindu Extremist thugs get encouragement from the Indian government and ultra-Hindu nationalists. On August 10, 2019 the then Chief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, an old diehard Hindu nationalist, openly suggested men from his state to acquire wives from Kashmir. He stated in his speech, “Now some people say, Kashmir is open, they [brides] will be brought from there. But jokes apart, if [gender] ratio is improved, then there will be a right balance in society.” This type of thinking that dreams of changing the demographic complexion of Indian Held Kashmir is generally prevalent among Hindu extremist groups which are affiliated with BJP. They are clearly following a policy of displacing Kashmiri Muslims from their abodes and pushing them into Azad Kashmir.
The worst part of the whole situation is the fact that the world public opinion has not come out of its slumber as far as the plight of Kashmiri Muslims is concerned. Kashmir doesn’t seem to prick the conscience of the world leaders who never miss an opportunity to praise Narendar Modi as a world class statesman. Narendar Modi became persona non grata for the American liberals who wanted to pursue human rights as a foreign policy objective when news about the Gujarat massacre started to break in 2002. There were reports that the US State Department, a natural habitat for American liberals, wanted to decline Modi’s American visa, who was serving as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, a state in Western India where Muslims were slaughtered like sheep by Hindu extremists.
The turnaround in American attitudes towards Modi became palpable when Modi became Prime Minister for the first time after the BJP swept the parliamentary elections in May 2014 for two reasons. The US estimated that Modi’s India could act as a market for American military and consumer products, and Modi’s India could act as a bulwark against the rising power of China. Now, Modi shares a place at the high table with Western political leaders in several multilateral forums. The economic prospects of India-US relations and India’s military and strategic potential against America’s superpower rival, China, has led to a turnaround in Modi’s fortunes from persona non grata to an Asian political leader most favored by Washington.
Two explanations could be put forward for this facet of World public opinion: Firstly, world public opinion is not familiar with what is happening with Kashmiri Muslims. The leaders of western democracies only speak on an issue of international dimension when their public opinion takes it into consideration or if it is reflected in the media. I was shocked by the result of a search I conducted on google when two words genocide and Kashmir always gave stories about Kashmiri Pandits exodus from Kashmir. Google gave out only one story about Kashmiri Muslims and their ordeal at the hands of Indian military and Hindu extremist thugs. So, there is a possibility that world public opinion is not completely familiar with Kashmir Muslim plight. Second explanation could be that world leaders are ignoring the plight of Kashmiri Muslims because they don’t want to annoy Indian which for them is a large market for their consumer goods as well as their military hardware. In this way the American military hardware will consolidate the position of Hindu nationalism in Indian society through the ruling BJP. The BJP is considered by many military experts as a natural habitat for military jingoism from the Indian state. There are experts who believe that Americans now want to enlist the Indian military as part of a collective deterrence strategy in case conflict erupts in the Taiwan Strait. Americans are providing weapons worth billions of dollars to India.
Kashmiris, however, have demonstrated that the will of the nation is always stronger than state of the art military pieces. Stories of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Algeria and many others will always remind the human race that weapons cannot defeat a nation that has taken the decision to be free.
