G20’s India moment

India’s maneuvering to present the region of Occupied Kashmir as a settled issue is nothing but a farce. Thus, its holding of G20’s Tourism Working Group meeting in Srinagar this May is a crude attempt to deface the ground realities and hoodwink world public opinion. Who never knows that Occupied Jammu & Kashmir is simmering, and human rights violations are the writing on the wall. New Delhi is apparently making use of its year-long presidency for the 2023 by signposting events that showcase its might and muscle. The holding of finance ministers’ moot in February this year, and the planned sessions at IIOJ&K and Leh (Ladakh) are, in fact, self-serving and meant to portray the one-sided picture of a shining India. Whereas the reality is that under the dogmatic BJP rule, the once secular India has become a hotbed of contention, and none of the minorities as well as the forward-looking Indians are safe, as they stand marginalised to the core.

Islamabad’s concern and protest is understandable, as Delhi is playing to the gallery by ignoring grave human rights excesses in the held Valley. In such a scenario, the youth huddle in the disputed state is no less than a joke because the same administration has not been able to host independent media persons, and observers from diplomatic missions on repeated requests from the world body. The onus is on the developed world members of the G20 too to ask some searching questions, and not to blindly walk into the Valley that has been ghettoised by India. Most of the delegates from G20 countries are privy to the theatre of barbarism in Kashmir, and had time and again expressed their reservations over it. Thus, the youth gala and romanticising of the valley of death by India must be questioned in all sincerity.

Time has come for the world community to probe India on the de jure status of occupied Jammu & Kashmir and prevail over it to hold a plebiscite as enshrined in UN resolutions. Opting to real politick for the sake of bilateralism would be tantamount to appeasement.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2023.

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