Occupation: 101

It is not without irony, perhaps, that India chose the 26^th of October 2020 as the day to “complete” what it had set out to do on the 26^th of October 1947: annex, and absorb the area of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) within the folds of its Hindutva-centric concept of Akhand Bharat. The date is significant — but I digress; more on that will follow later.

On the recent date, India amended its existing land laws that govern the sale and purchase of property in IIOJ&K, opening up the formerly-protected territory — disputed territory according to international law, one might add — to being bought by the highest bidder. Where Indian law included provisions and prohibitions that prevented any non-Kashmiris from buying property (and settling there, thus changing its basic demography), its amended laws have undone that protectionism with one stroke of the pen of Narendra Modi’s Hindutva-focused regime.

Seventy-three years ago, on this date, the ruler of Kashmir Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession in favour of India, and literally bartered away the lives of millions of Kashmiris, in a desperate (and history has proven; futile) attempt to prolong his autocratic rule. The following day, India airlifted its troops into the valley and illegally occupied the areas of Kashmir that it has now attempted to absorb. Paradoxically, while the Indian troops were rushing in to “liberate” Kashmir in 1947, India was painting a picture to the world that was very different to what it now espouses. “It is my Government’s wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invader (a reference to those sons of the soil fighting against the Maharaja’s rule) the question of the State’s accession should be settled by a reference to the people,” were the words used by the then Governor General of India, Lord Mountbatten. Mere days later, on 2^nd November 1947, the then Indian prime minister Nehru had this to say to the world, via an address on All India Radio: “We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharaja has supported it, not only to the people of Kashmir, but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it.”

On 26^th October 2020, India displayed in the starkest way possible that it can — and has — backed out of that declaration and pledge, once and for all. By opening all of the formerly-protected illegally occupied territories to anyone (read: radical Hindu migrants), India is doing nothing short of colonising and “settlerising” IIOJ&K; Zionism style. That this is part of a concerted effort by the Modi regime is obvious, substantiated by the comments of India’s Consul General to the US Sandeep Chakravorty in 2019, who advocated all-Hindu, Israel-like settlements in IIOJ&K. These all-Hindu “Sangh settlements” — an allusion to Hindutva’s mother organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS — have already started to appear all over the occupied territory. As a result, the demography of the area will be irreversibly changed. The region’s distinctive customs, traditions, and heritage will be eroded and worn down, to become more and more “Hindu”. The political landscape will be alienated and rearranged to the point where the change cannot be undone. And the most-affected — the indigenous people of Kashmir — will continue to wallow in the politico-cultural and socio-economic state of squalor and insecurity that they have been enduring for the past 73 years.

Mere days before it invaded and occupied Kashmir in 1947, one of India’s key demands from Hari Singh was that he install its lackey Sheikh Abdullah as Prime Minister of Kashmir. Seventy-three years later, the puppet’s grandson, Omar Abdullah, now excoriates the amended land laws as “unacceptable” and goes on to state that occupied Kashmir is “now up for sale, and the poorer, small land holding owners will suffer”.

All of this unilateralism on India’s part has all but disintegrated the space for a negotiated solution to this issue that has plagued Indo-Pak ties for decades. Steps such as these can, also, only further add to the isolation and deprivation of the indigenous Kashmiris to the east of the Line of Control, heightening their despondency, and leaving them with increasingly-fewer options with which to continue their blighted lives. These desperate Kashmiris may resort to violent measures which India will invariably blame Pakistan for. Left with no cards at the table, Pakistan will be forced to consider increasingly provocative, possibly non-diplomatic counter-measures to force India’s hand. Any — or all — of these are potentially catastrophic.

During all of this human tragedy unfolding, though, it’ll likely be business as usual for the powers that be. After all, it’s happened before in Palestine. And still is, to this day. Why worry about just one more obscure region on the other side of the world?

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2020.

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