Key points
- Scrapping Article 370 led to repression, not promised development
- Legal reforms are being used to dispossess Kashmiris
- Local governance and press freedom have been dismantled
- World remains silent as rights abuses continue
When India revoked Article 370 of its Constitution in August 2019, it promised “integration, peace, and development” for Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. What followed, however, has been the unravelling of democratic institutions, the deepening of political alienation, and the construction of a settler-colonial regime designed to dispossess and silence a population under occupation.
In the six years since the abrogation, India has waged a silent but sweeping war on Kashmiris—on their land, their politics, their voice, and their very identity.
“Exercise in mass dispossession”
The demolition of homes, seizure of farmland, and the weaponisation of state machinery under the guise of legal reforms paint a chilling picture of modern-day imperialism. Millions of square feet of properties have been seized, and bulldozers roam through Kashmiri towns and villages with an impunity that defies both reason and humanity. As Tariq Mir aptly put it in The New York Review of Books published on 21 July 2024, this was an “unprecedented exercise in mass dispossession.”
In a region long marked by complex historical claims and emotional attachments to land, these seizures are not just real estate disputes—they are an existential threat. Entire communities, including nomadic tribes and mountain-dwelling pastoralists, have been uprooted under the vague label of “illegal occupation.” In reality, they are being erased to make way for demographic and political restructuring.
The Modi-led government has not just bulldozed homes; it has bulldozed democracy itself in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The amendments to the Transaction of Business Rules transferred critical powers from elected representatives to the unelected Lieutenant Governor. Even the right to appoint, transfer, or prosecute officers now rests with New Delhi.
Wall of media censorship
The consequences are far-reaching: a population without political agency, a legislative assembly reduced to municipal irrelevance, and a generation of youth growing up in a political vacuum.
Former Chief Minister of IIOJK Mehbooba Mufti described this erosion aptly: “The Centre is trying to reverse even the radical ‘land to the tiller’ reform of Sheikh Abdullah.”
To control the narrative, India has erected a wall of media censorship and disinformation. Local newspapers operate under threat. International journalists are denied access. Civil society voices are silenced under draconian laws like UAPA and PSA, which allow detention without trial for months or even years.
Prominent human rights defenders have been jailed, humanitarian organisations banned, and peaceful protests criminalised. The BJP government claims “normalcy”; what exists on the ground is surveillance, fear, and silence.
“No evidence”
Even credible Indian voices, such as former Home Minister P Chidambaram, have called out the falsehoods. His public rebuke—that there is “no evidence” linking the Pahalgam attack to Pakistan—undermines the very core of New Delhi’s manufactured justification for its militarised crackdown.
India’s legislative arsenal is now fully weaponised against dissent. AFSPA, NSA, UAPA, and FCRA have been systematically used to detain journalists, students, lawyers, and peaceful demonstrators. According to a recent report, 1,012 civilians—many of them young boys—have been killed since August 2019 under the pretext of counterterrorism; 2,471 were tortured and critically injured by Indian forces; 28,516 civilians were arrested; 1,163 structures were burnt or destroyed; 75 women were widowed; 205 children orphaned; and 136 women were gang-raped or molested.
These figures are not mere statistics. They represent a trauma that runs deep through Kashmiri society—widowed women, orphaned children, razed homes, and a public that lives in constant dread of arrest, harassment, or worse.
Realpolitik and economic opportunism
The Indian government’s attempts to portray Kashmir as a success story—of highways, tourism, and peace—fall flat in the face of these grave realities. And yet, global powers remain largely silent, caught in the web of realpolitik and economic opportunism.
The UN Human Rights Committee, however, recently exposed India’s duplicity. In July 2024, it questioned how anti-terror laws such as AFSPA and UAPA could possibly align with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee rightly flagged extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, censorship, and the failure to prosecute security forces as systemic failures of a democracy in name only.
The time for platitudes has passed. Kashmir is not a local issue—it is a global concern. The forced assimilation, demographic engineering, and institutionalised violence constitute a dangerous precedent for international law and human rights norms.
The international community—including the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Russia, and China—must hold India accountable. This means demanding a repeal of draconian laws, restoring statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, and ensuring the right to self-determination, as enshrined in UN Security Council resolutions.
Resisting erasure
Today, Kashmiris are not just resisting occupation—they are resisting erasure. What they seek is not sympathy but solidarity. Not pity but principled support. India’s obsession with optics—masked as “normalcy”—has only added to the anguish. Behind the glossy façade of development lies a region scarred by state repression, media censorship, and human rights violations. If peace is ever to bloom in the shadow of the Himalayas, it must begin with truth, justice, and the restoration of dignity to a people who have suffered for too long. It is high time that the world stops trying to please everyone—and starts holding states accountable for breaking the law.
