India's annexation of Kashmir

India’s annexation of Kashmirstraight out of the Israeli playbook

AZAD ESSA

OVER the past few years, Kashmiri scholars have been making the argument that India-administered Kashmir ought to be recognised as an occupied territory.

With more than 700 000 Indian soldiers, paramilitary and police in the region, the most militarised region on earth, they argued that Kashmiris were living under client leaders held firm by the might of the Indian military establishment.

Since the insurgency began in the late 1980s, more than 70 000 people had been killed, a further 7 000 enforced disappearances, thousands blinded and maimed by pellets and live ammunition; the argument was not hard to make but the veneer of India’s democracy, in a rough neighbourhood, made it to some, a hard sell.

But on Monday, August 5, 2019, the veneer dissipated.

Article 370, the clause in India’s constitution that illuminated Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status within the Indian Union, including the ability to handle its own affairs (besides defence, finance, communication and foreign affairs), the right to its own constitution, ability to make laws, as well as its own flag, would be immediately scrapped.

The Indian government said it would change the constitution in spite of multiple court rulings that the clause could not be tampered with.

But to many Indians, the project to abrogate Kashmir’s ‘special status’ within the Indian constitution, started by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and later floated as an election issue for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has finally reached fruition.

In so doing, India turned from administrator to fullyfledged coloniser, following in many ways, Israel’s methods to accomplish total control of the state and its people.