India’s Hindutva government led by fascist Narendra Modi is systematically paving the way for settler colonialism in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir by introducing new laws one after another following illegal and unilateral abrogation of the territory’s special status on 5 August 2019.
A report released by Kashmir Media Service, today, said, the fact of the matter is that India has been treating Jammu and Kashmir as its colony right from 27 October 1947 when it landed its troops in Srinagar and illegally occupied the territory against the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
It said that colonization of IIOJK has been a long-pending dream of RSS and BJP, adding that including non-Kashmiri Hindus in the voter list is yet another step to advance Hindutva government’s dangerous game plan in the occupied territory.
The report stated India is replicating Israeli model to further its settler-colonial agenda in IIOJK. As part of its settler-colonial project, the report said, “Modi regime is introducing many new laws to facilitate issuance of domiciles & land-owning rights to non-Kashmiri Hindus, changing demography of IIOJK, building separate Pandit settlements and soldiers’ colonies and eliminating Kashmiris through massacres & killings to settle non-locals in IIOJK”. It pointed out fascist Modi is using Indian business companies & tycoons to expand colonization of Kashmir.
To prove its point, the KMS cited a report titled “Colonial Diary – A Repository of Settler Colonial Diktats in IIOJK” released by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC-AJK) chapter and Legal Forum for Kashmir (LFK) jointly in Islamabad on Wednesday. The report includes around 220 legislations, administrative changes, orders, notifications, and press releases by India in the last three years (August 2019 – August 2022) after the abrogation of Article 370.
As per the Colonial Dairy, post-August 5, 2019, the Indian government introduced many new laws and amended several others to facilitate the issuance of domicile and land-owning rights to non-Kashmiris, mostly Hindus. Until June 2022, four million such certificates have been issued, making it very clear how India is wantonly altering the demography of Kashmir, it said, adding the new laws also allow the lands acquired by the government for industrial or commercial purposes to be disposed of or sold to any Indian and that these also authorize the Indian occupying forces to declare any area as “strategic” for operational and training purposes. It said, this is a form of land-grabbing as the Indian occupying forces are already occupying thousands of hectares of land in IIOJK.
The KMS report maintained that the RSS-backed Hindutva regime’s colonial measures in IIOJK are clear violations of the United Nations resolutions and urged the global community to wake up to take notice of the Indian settler-colonial project in the occupied territory.—KMS
