POST5 August 2019, the facade of “development” in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) began to fade rapidly.
What remains is a territory stripped of its rights, its people economically strangled, culturally assaulted, and religiously persecuted, its residents pushed to the brink of extinction in their own land. The economic disenfranchisement of Kashmiris is a calculated component of India’s post-abrogation policy. Where Article 370 once offered protection against outsider exploitation, its removal opened the floodgates to corporate land grabs, unregulated tourism and settler colonialism. Small businesses are suffocating, agricultural land has been expropriated and indigenous Kashmiris have become bystanders to their own economy.
Compounding this crisis is the great demographic alteration. By distributing domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris, including former military personnel and Hindu settlers, India aims to artificially dilute the Muslim majority-a tactic akin to changing the voter rolls before an election to guarantee a predetermined out-come. The longterm goal is disturbingly clear: make Kashmir Hindu, politically neuteredand submissively Indian.
In tandem, the assault on Kashmiri culture and identity is unrelenting. Kashmir’s separate flag and constitution were abolished. The Urdu language, historically central to Kashmir’s identity, is being phased out. Even street names, school syllabi, and local media are being “Hinduised” to erase all traces of a distinct Kashmiri Muslim ethos.The religious persecution is palpable. Mosques are being raided. Religious gatherings are restricted, especially during Fridays and Eid. Madrasahs face crackdowns. In 2022, the administration sealed dozens of Muslim schools and charities, accusing them of “radicalization” without credible evidence.
Human rights reports, such as those released by the UN in 2018 and 2019, had already highlighted the grave abuses: arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and the use of pellet guns that blinded hundreds. These violations have only escalated post-abrogation, with Kashmiris living in an Orwellian state where any expression of grief, defiance, or cultural pride is met with punishment. India’s use of Col-ective Punishment and Lawfare, including the Public Safety Act and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, has allowed it to detain thousands without trial. The Modi regime uses law not to uphold order, but to suppress resistance and manufacture silence.
The revocation of Articles 370 and 35A, far from fostering peace, has plunged Kashmir into a state of permanent emergency. What India sells as “integration” is, in truth, invasion. What it calls “normalcy” is surveillance and subjugation. And what it terms “development” is dispossession wrapped in propaganda. It is not just a constitutional fraud, but a moral collapse. It signals to the world that brute force now dictates the fate of a people once promised self-determination. The world must ask: Can a nation claiming to be the largest democracy thrive on the corpses of the rights, hopes and identities of eight million people? India has not integrated Kashmir; it has ruptured the very soul of Kashmir. It has indeed incarcerated it. Kashmir is under the siege. The ques-tion remains for the free world: How much longer will we watch in silence? —Concluded
—The writer is an alumnus of QAU, MPhil scholar & a freelance columnist, based in Islamabad.
