Sarah Awan
Wake up and smell the coffee – Article 370 is his-tory, the sooner people realize it, the better”, said Indian foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meetings held in Goa last week. India-Pakistan rela-tions (or lack thereof) took centre stage at the forum that convened foreign ministers from China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on topics of regional development and security.
The catalyst was a question from a journalist in a press interview who asked Pakistani foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, if he endorsed the upcoming G20 events to be held in Indian-occupied Kashmir. Bhutto Zardari responded by saying the events were a display of India’s arrogance and lack of observation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements. In his response, he stated that while he obviously was not in support he would, “at the right time make a memorable statement” on his position. These words were reported in the Indian press as a direct and explicit threat of violence from the Paki-stani state.
The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs re-jected this claim, stating, “It [the insinuation that Bhutto Zardari was threatening violence] is an at-tempt to shift focus from the Foreign Minister’s key message of conflict resolution through dialogue and in accordance with international law and UN security council resolutions.”
In a separate press conference, Jaishankar was asked to share his thoughts on the matter. Jaishankar responded, “Jammu and Kashmir was, always is and always was part of India”. He went on to say that Pakistan is a “promoter, justifier and spokesperson of a terrorism industry” and that the only topic to discuss was “When will Pakistan vacate its illegal occupation of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir?”.
When asked about the lack of bilateral meetings at the summit between the two countries, Jaishankar refuted, “victims of terrorism do not sit with perpe-trators of terrorism to discuss terrorism”.
India took over the presidency of the G-20 — an economic cooperation bloc composed of 19 countries and the European Union — in December of 2022. The Indian government is expected to host a total of 215 G-20 meetings at over 55 locations this year, some of which will be focused on promoting the tourism sector. Currently, the G20 tourism working group meetings will be held in Srinagar, Kashmir, from May 22nd onwards.
The symbolism of hosting tourism sessions with foreign dignitaries in an area that has been one of the most militarized zones in the world, whose majority of citizens are smeared as murderous funda-mentalists, where people are caged and humiliated, tortured, raped, in mass graves or have disappeared, is uncomfortable, to say the least. The horrors ex-perienced by Kashmiris have long been veiled by the current Indian government. Efforts of assimilation and erasure of the lived experience of the Kashmiri people are taking new heights through normalizing international tourism in an area whose native residents remain to live under heavy surveillance.
The Indian state has routinely come under scru-tiny for its “occupation” of Kashmir, accused of human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, and repression of dissent, which has fueled resentment and resistance among the Kashmiri people. Its re-sponse has been to portray itself as a victim of in-ternational bias accusing foreign governments and human rights organizations of interfering in its in-ternal affairs. Indian officials have emphasized that the situation in the region is a matter of national security and have sought to downplay or dismiss reports of human rights violations.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s current ruling party, seems to possess a distinct historical amnesia with a strong desire to rewrite history in its consistent assertion that Kashmir, “always was an integral part of India”. It was India’s preceding governments, and its formative leaders including, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a Kashmiri Pandit, Deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Minister of Law and Justice, B.R. Ambedkar, assisted by Prime Minister of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir N Gopalas-wamy Iyengar and Indian Minister VP Menon, who contributed to the Instrument of Accession. The Instrument of Accession was the set of lawful con-ditions under which the Maharaja of Kashmir was to accede to India, Kashmiri autonomy and sovereignty being the document’s nucleus.
In August 2019, without warning and under the pretext of a looming terror threat from Pakistan, Narendra Modi and the BJP party told Hindu pil-grims and tourists to evacuate Kashmir and then barricaded 7 million Kashmiris in their homes and revoked Article 370, the segment in the Indian con-stitution that guaranteed Kashmir’s autonomous status. The change in political status was accompa-nied by an increase in security forces bringing the total number to 700, 000 Indian soldiers stationed in Kashmir, curfews were implemented and information black-outs lasted for several months. During the communication black-out, Kashmiris were denied access to doctors, hospitals, work, no business, no school, and no contact with loved ones.
Satya Pal Malik, the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir under which revocation occurred, said, “phone lines were not important for Kashmiris and were only used by terrorists”.
Since then, the central government has changed land and domicile laws that Kashmiris fear are aimed at bringing demographic changes in the Muslim-majority region. The new laws allow anyone from outside Jammu and Kashmir to buy land and property there, as well as apply for jobs in the region. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest industrialist had promised, ‘several announcements’ in the region, which possesses a fragile ecology, a land of vast glaciers, high-altitude lakes, and five major rivers. In the immediate aftermath, Google trends showed a surge in searches for, “marry a Kashmiri girl,” and, “buy land in Kashmir”.
The issue of India – Kashmir – Pakistan has been triangulated for over seven decades. Surprisingly, China has largely been absent from the mainstream narrative with China-Kashmir-India relations largely unnoticed, under-reported and under-analyzed.
The topic of Kashmiri sovereignty in the areas occupied by India has been taken to the UNSC sev-eral times. The first time was in January 1948, when India and Pakistan both sought the Council’s help to resolve the dispute. The UNSC passed a resolution on 17 January 1948, which called for an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of troops from the region. Since then, the issue has been brought before the Security Council in 1951, 1957, 1965, 1971, 1972, and 1998. The resolutions passed by the Security Council have not been fully implemented, a plebiscite which was promised to the Kashmiri people never occurred. The plebiscite would allow Kashmiris to decide whether they want to be part of India, Pakistan or an independent state. While India has maintained that the dispute is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan and has resisted outside intervention, Pakistan has called for the implementation of the UN resolutions.
The fears of holding a plebiscite now are hardly unimaginable.
[Sarah Awan is a Kashmiri-Australian writer, Practice Fellow at the Cambridge Center for Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge, and Executive Board Member for the non-profit, Girl Be Heard.]
