Kashmir Day August 5

Spread the love

LATHEEF FAROOK

COLOMBO : August 5 marks the third anniversary of the 2019 abrogation of seventy five year old constitutional provision, Article 370, which guaranteed limited autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir – the only Muslim majority state in India and home to more than 12 million.

This illegal revocation, despite all the guarantees to United Nations and all other international forums, was done by the hawkish Hindutva government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accused of being the architect of genocide of Gujarati Muslims in February 2002, with an unrealistic program to create a Hindu only India.  

Former Chief Minister of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti described it as the darkest day in Indian democracy. Decision of J&K leadership to reject two nation theory in 1947 and align with India has backfired. Unilateral decision of Indian government to scrap Article 370 is illegal and unconstitutional which will make India an occupational force in J&K.

National Conference leader Chief Omar Abdullah said that the Government of India   “has resorted to deceit and stealth   to lay the ground for these disastrous decisions.” Indian government’s   unilateral and shocking decisions   are a total betrayal of the trust that the people of Jammu & Kashmir had reposed in India when the then ruler Raja Gulab Singh ,a Hindu warlord, acceded  it to India in 1947. The decisions will have far-reaching and dangerous consequences. This is an aggression against people of the State as had been warned by an all-parties meeting in Srinagar.

Modi who represents Rastriya Swayamasevak Sangh, RSS, Hindutva fascist ideology which has nothing to do with mainstream ancient and peaceful religion of Hinduism,   also placed all Muslim politicians in Kashmir under house arrest.  

Following stripping Kashmir’s special status and imposing a strict military and communication clampdown, Modi jailed most of the pro-freedom leaders, as well as a large number of pro-India leaders including former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and alienated   politicians who were previously loyal to New Delhi.

 United States  and Europe remain busy  waging wars against Muslims worldwide, China  brutalizing its own Muslim population in its   Uighur province,  US-Israeli stooges   Saudi  Arabia and United Arab Emirates  and  other Arab tyrants  have abandoned Kashmiri Muslims  and   aligned themselves with Modi .   

Lawless Israel has been hand glove with Modi, ever since he was elected as prime minister in 2014, in unleashing violence against Muslims in India and barbarity on Kashmiri Muslims.   

One of the main purposes of abrogating article 370 is to colonize the state with Hindus to reduce the Muslim population in the same way Zionist Jews, backed by US, Europe and Russia committed massacres and kicked out Palestinians from their lands and colonized it with imported Jews and declared a state.

Commenting in an article under the title “Bringing the Israeli model to Kashmir” Anuradha Bhasin , Executive Editor of Kashmir Times said  “for  more than 70 years, Kashmiris have lived with the dread of the Indian government changing the demography and special status of Indian-administered Kashmir, which was till recently Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state. 

With the abrogation of Article 370 and the removal of its status as a state, the region was fully integrated and its population stripped of the special privileges and entitlements it had been enjoying in view of the peculiar nature of the state’s history and its controversial accession to India.

The actual disempowerment, is more than the loss of the special local identity. Brought by stealth and deceit, without fulfilling the constitutional requirement of participation of the state legislature, the abrogation of Article 370 and demotion of the erstwhile state has become fait accompli, as the hearings on a bunch of petitions challenging the move in the Supreme Court of India have been postponed multiple times.

A stringent clampdown on J&K under military boots including an absolute communication blockade allowed the Indian government to surreptitiously scrap its special status and split it into more pliable units. The longest-ever lockdown in Kashmir served the purpose of scuttling any public outrage and also ensured that information slipped into a black hole, making an entire population invisible and their grievances inaudible.

“It is horrible. I fear that time will come that we will not even feel safe in our homes.  We have been silenced “said a Kashmiri Muslim.

When India revoked the semi-autonomous status of the region, it also scrapped the local special citizenship law, guaranteed under Article 35 (A) of the Indian constitution. The move has drawn parallel with the occupied West Bank.   

Article 35 (A) had barred outsiders, including Indian nationals from other states, from settling and claiming government jobs to maintain the demographic balance in the region, which has seen decades of armed rebellion against the Indian rule.

The 2019 lockdown was unconstitutional, undemocratic and morally erroneous. But this has now become the foundational principle of India’s strategy in Kashmir with no punctuations of pretense.  If the first lockdown was successful in preventing public outcry over the loss of special status and protections, the other provided a stepping stone for laying the blueprint of what the Indian government intends to do as part of its larger agenda.

Kashmiris also fear that the domicile law is a conspiracy to bring about demographic change in Jammu Kashmir.  The certificate, a sort of citizenship right, entitles a person to residency and government jobs in the region, which till last year was reserved only for the local population.

Post Disclaimer

Disclaimer: Kashmir Day August 5 - Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Latheefarook.com point-of-view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *