Modi’s blame game won’t disarm Kashmir crisis
After nearly a fortnight spent in whipping frenzy for ‘punishing Pakistan’, things have not gone all according to plan for Narendra Modi and his government. Following the March 22 attack on tourists in Pahalgam that left 26 dead, New Delhi wasted no moment in pinning the blame on Pakistan.
Some punitive measures it took immediately, most alarming of which is the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, which has endured even in times of war between the two nations. The decision to hold this decades-old pact ‘in abeyance’ is a stark signal that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is willing to undermine regional stability – not to mention the rights of 250 million people next door – in pursuit of its ideological agenda. That move also reflects a government eager to externalise blame for populist point-scoring at home rather than confronting the deeper failures of its Kashmir policy.
But while missiles haven’t flown across borders — yet — the Modi government has launched a war of a different kind: one aimed at the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). In the nearly two weeks since the Pahalgam killings, Indian forces have raided hundreds of homes, detained over 1,500 Kashmiris and blown up several homes New Delhi claims belong to the suspected militants’ families.
In doing so, they’ve reminded the world of a bitter truth that Modi’s PR machine has spent years trying to bury: IIOJK remains an occupied land where the Indian state rules through surveillance, intimidation and force.
Far from bringing peace to the region, the BJP’s self-proclaimed project of integrating IIOJK into the ‘mainstream’ of India has produced a brittle façade that now lies in ruins. The latest attack, the deadliest targeting tourists in a generation, did not just puncture Modi’s image of a ‘terror-free, tourist-friendly’ Kashmir. It also recast an international spotlight that had dimmed in recent years, thanks in large part to Western governments’ eagerness to pursue trade and security ties with New Delhi at the expense of human rights.
With the world’s most significant flashpoint reigniting, the contradictions at the heart of India's Kashmir policy and the Hindu supremacist agenda of its ruling party are back in full view.
Cover for settler colonialism
In the absence of any tangible evidence linking Pakistan to the attack in Pahalgam, New Delhi has instead tried win favour for punitive ‘kinetic’ measures by citing Islamabad’s supposed 'pattern of behaviour' before world governments. Ironically, the past decade, reveals another pattern of behaviour — that of India under Modi. From Uri in 2016 to Pulwama three years later, the Modi government has upped the ante with Pakistan — first with the purported ‘surgical strikes’ across the Line of Control and then with the Balakot airstrike that drew Pakistan's 'Swift Retort'.
However, while these kinetic exchanges and the looming threat of all-out war grabbed most of the world’s attention, the Modi government used the cover of these tensions to aggressively pursue its agenda in IIOJK.
In August 2019, six months after Pulwama, Modi’s government unilaterally revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution — which enshrined IIOJK’s semi-autonomous status — and Article 35A — which barred non-Kashmiris from buying land or settling in the region. This was not simply an administrative move. It was the formalisation of what many scholars and activists have described as a settler-colonial project. The removal of Article 35A in particular opened the door for demographic reengineering. Since then, India has issued hundreds of thousands of domicile certificates to outsiders, particularly Hindus, paving the way for settlements aimed at diluting the Muslim-majority character of the region.
Such policies echo the logic of Israel’s occupation of Palestine: disempower the native population, suppress dissent and settle outsiders to change the facts on the ground. That New Delhi has studied Israel’s strategies carefully is no secret — India is one of Israel’s largest arms buyers, and the ideological affinities between the BJP and Zionist hardliners are well documented.
Hate politics and assassination plots
The treatment of religious minorities in India under Narendra Modi has further complicated New Delhi’s standing on the global stage. More troubling, however, are recent revelations about the Indian government’s actions beyond its own borders — actions that have severely eroded its credibility in the international arena.
Investigations underway in Canada and the United States have exposed alleged plots by India’s premier intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), to assassinate Sikh separatists on foreign soil. These incidents point to a disturbing willingness by New Delhi to violate international norms and the sovereignty of other nations, raising serious questions about India’s reliability as a partner within the liberal international order.
The latest report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) casts a particularly long shadow over the Modi government, particularly with its recommendation for targeted sanctions against the R&AW.
The Commission’s findings are unequivocal in their condemnation of the Indian government’s treatment of religious minorities. Modi and BJP, according to the report, have fuelled a climate of hate through inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims and other minorities, particularly during election campaigns.
In 2024, Modi’s reference to Muslims as "infiltrators" who have “more children” exemplified the deepening ideological rift within Indian society. Such rhetoric, far from being an isolated incident, has become a tool to stoke division and consolidate the BJP's base, further embedding religious polarisation in the political discourse.
This institutionalised discrimination goes beyond mere rhetoric.
The USCIRF highlighted the tangible consequences of the BJP’s policies, including rising hate crimes, attacks on religious minorities and the implementation of laws that marginalise Muslims and other vulnerable groups
Repression can’t bring peace
For years, India has framed Kashmir as a purely internal issue — one of ‘development’, ‘integration’ and ‘security’. Western powers, eager to court India as a counterweight to China, largely accepted this narrative, turning a blind eye to the communications blackouts, the mass arrests and the reported torture that followed the abrogation of Article 370.
But the Pahalgam attack has forced the world to once again reckon with the volatility of the region and the failures of BJP’s muscular nationalism. By targeting tourists, the attackers struck at the core of Modi’s post-2019 narrative: that Kashmir is open, safe and ready for investment. In response, India has doubled down on repression. But brute force, as history repeatedly shows, cannot produce peace.
In the wake of the Pahalgam killings, BJP leaders have launched familiar tirades about terrorism, Pakistan, and “anti-national elements.” But what they have not done is ask why, after nearly six years of massive militarisation and constant surveillance, the Indian state remains so incapable of preventing such attacks. Nor have they reflected on how their own policies may have further radicalised segments of an already deeply wounded population.
The answer lies not in Islamabad, but within New Delhi itself. A policy built on coercion, dispossession and denial of agency is never going to foster lasting peace. Instead, it has bred resentment, isolated Kashmiris from the Indian mainstream and deepened the sense of siege. Far from bringing normalcy, Modi’s Kashmir policy has normalised repression.
If the global community wishes to prevent the next crisis — and to ensure that Kashmiris are not endlessly sacrificed at the altar of regional rivalry — it must stop treating the Kashmir dispute as a footnote.
The Pahalgam attack has drawn renewed attention to a region that India has tried to silence. It presents an opportunity to confront the realities on the ground and recognise that the problem in Kashmir is not the people, but the policies imposed upon them.
Until India reverses its course, restores political rights and ends its colonial ambitions in IIOJK, there will be no peace — only the illusion of it, shattered time and again by tragedy.