Our Correspondent
Muzaffarabad
Sardar Masood Khan, President Azad Jammu and Kashmir, has said that after grudgingly accepting the independence of Pakistan, India adopted a secular doctrine. This concept, he said, was an insincere attempt as this was nothing but Hinduism mascaraed as secularism. The President made these remarks while addressing two separate web-conferences organized by the Institute of Policy Studies on the topic of “India: Past, Present & Future: Perceptions of the Muslim World”; and by the Pakistan High Commission UK on the topic “Seeking Justice for Kashmiri Victims of Sexual Violence and Physical Torture, and Widows”
Speaking at the IPS Session – which was attended by leading international experts from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Nigeria – the President said Hindu fascists romanticize an imaginary state of Akhand Baharat that they claim to have existed before the arrival of Muslim rulers in the Sub-continent. This notion, he said, is not only unsubstantiated by history, it is also counterintuitive.
Referring to the faux secularism adopted by India, the AJK President said that over the decades, this glue of secularism had has come off and the real face of the India’s political masters has been exposed. Not long after Independence, on 27 October 1947 India began working on its imperialistic agenda, and invaded the Jammu and Kashmir State. Driven by its Hindu-extremist policy, India has carried on with this agenda over the years, he said.
Masood Khan said that lawmakers and the leadership of BJP, the RSS and their affiliates have publically declared that they would do away with Muslims from within India. This, he said, has caught the attention of Hindu zealots from across India which has consequently impacted the larger political landscape of India. This BJP-RSS nexus has waged three wars in the region; one against its minorities inside its own borders, the second one against Kashmiris in the occupied territory of Kashmir and the third one against all its neighbouring countries. Considering Pakistan as enemy number one, they have threatened to wipe off Pakistan from the face of the earth by the use of nuclear weapons, he informed.
President Masood Khan said that India’s ambition of becoming a colonial and imperial power in the region has led it to using the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh for sabotaging the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It has also formed a four member alliance QUAD – comprising of India, USA, Japan and Australia – to oppose the BRI and, especially, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
“India is the biggest barrier for progress in the region. SAARC has been struggling for decades and that too because India has been standing in the way of economic integration as it wants to establish its hegemony in South Asia”, said the President. Speaking about the situation in IOJK, he said that India is practising the policy of lebensraum by reoccupying the State of Jammu and Kashmir, bifurcating it and now bringing it under the direct rule of Delhi. He compared the New Domicile Rules introduced in IOJK, to the policy followed by Nazi Germany against the Jews, based initially on economic strangulation, followed by demonization and marginalization and finally physical extermination.
The President apprised that in IOJK political leaders have been incarcerated, the youth are being killed and tortured in jails all over IOJK and northern India. He added that 13,000 Kashmiri boys have been abducted and kept in prison houses where they are being subjected to torture and brainwashing. Bipin Rawat, India’s Chief of Defence Staff has said that these boys (some as young as 10 years old) are more dangerous than a pellet-firing shotgun because they raise the slogan of Azadi (freedom) and self-determination, he said.
The AJK President said that members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should start a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against India, while the corporate sector of these countries should be discouraged to invest in India as they are committing human rights violations against Kashmiris and Muslims of India. Start by banning the import of non-halal meat and non-halal into OIC countries and the formation of a Kashmir Humanitarian Fund with the help of the Islamic Development Bank and Islamic Solidarity Fund. He also suggested an international civil society movement be mobilized to delegitimize Hindutva and campaign to declare RSS a terrorist organization. “The biggest and the most trained terrorist organization in the world is the RSS. They have openly declared to target Muslims not only in South Asia but all over the world”, he said.
