by Waqar Mustafa
Six years have passed since New Delhi revoked Article 370, extinguishing the last fig leaf of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK)’s constitutional autonomy. For Pakistan, August 5 is not just a date—it is a sombre symbol of betrayal and brute force. What India trumpeted as “integration,” Pakistan and the world beyond recognise as annexation by stealth. On August 5, 2019, India tore through both international norms and its own constitutional fabric. Article 370—Kashmir’s fragile legal shield-was revoked. The region was divided into two centrally administered territories, stripped of autonomy, flooded with troops, and shrouded in curfews, lockdowns, and silence. Pakistan condemned it as an illegal annexation. India called it “normalcy.” For six years, India insisted that the move was a masterstroke enabling national integration, economic revival, and peacebuilding. But Pakistan—and now a growing chorus within India— saw it for what it was: unilateralism in the guise of reform. Occupation repackaged. Consent erased.
In his book Kashmir at the Crossroads, scholar Sumantra Bose describes the 2019 Reorganisation Act as a “hammer-and-axe assault”—not only on Kashmir’s autonomy but on India’s federal foundations. His fieldwork across Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh reveals a sobering truth: discontent is near-universal. Even traditional bastions of support, like the Buddhists of Ladakh and sections of Jammu Hindus, feel betrayed by New Delhi’s bureaucratic rule and economic neglect. And as the 2024 election proved, the BJP’s vision for Kashmir has failed to find resonance-even among its intended beneficiaries. In the 2024 elections-the first since the clampdown-Kashmiris answered. Watched, fenced in, and silenced, they still voted. The BJP was wiped out. Delhi’s proxies were rejected. For Pakistan, this wasn’t just a poll—it was a referendum. And the verdict was clear: Kashmir’s soul remains unconquered.
If the elections exposed political rejection, voices like that of Debashis Chakrabarti lay bare a deeper, ongoing trauma—what he calls “the subcontinent’s most damning indictment: of broken promises, unfinished decolonisation, and the triumph of state power over citizen dignity.” Chakrabarti, a political columnist and Commonwealth Fellow, in an article for The Wire, traces the roots of the crisis to 1947: the conditional accession of Maharaja Hari Singh and the still-unfulfilled promise of a plebiscite under UN Resolution 47. That original betrayal, he writes, reverberates through a Kashmir now watched by drones, crisscrossed by razor wire, and occupied by nearly 700,000 Indian troops-an extraordinary military presence for a civilian population of just over 8 million.
Democracy in Kashmir is a performance under siege. Elections are held, yes—but under curfews, surveillance towers, and with armed forces enjoying sweeping impunity under laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Justice is not delayed but denied. The 2019 abrogation, Chakrabarti argues, was not a legal reform but a “demographic signal” —a green light for settler colonialism. The removal of Article 35-A opened the gates for outsiders to settle in Kashmir, threatening to dilute its demography and political voice. And while New Delhi peddled dreams of development, the lived reality has been grim. According to World Bank and UNDP data, per capita income has stagnated or declined since 2019. Youth unemployment exceeds 25%. Tourism, once a lifeline, is state-managed. A 2022 UNICEF report found nearly 70% of Kashmiri children exhibit symptoms of trauma and anxiety. Kashmir, Chakrabarti writes, has become a testing ground for global technologies of control-Israeli drones American surveillance systems, Russian small arms. “Kashmiris are not consumers” he observes. “They are test subjects.”
For Pakistan–and for those in the international community who still believe in the right to self-determination— this is no revelation. But it remains a vital reminder: Kashmir is not a settled mater. It is an open wound. And even as India silences dissent, the truth continues to surface. International watchdogs, too, have spoken. In 2024, Amnesty International issued a blistering indictment of India’s crackdown in Jammu and Kashmir. Far from restoring democracy, the region has become a theatre of repression-where journalists, lawyers, activists, and ordinary civilians are detained arbitrarily, banned from travel, stripped of passports and subjected to constant surveillance. Governance has been replaced by management-of people, dissent, and perception.
In October 2024, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) published Your Land is Our Land a detailed exposé of how the Indian state has weaponised land policy in Kashmir. The report documents sweeping legal changes that paved the way for evictions, land grabs, and demographic engineering. Nearly 2.24 million kanals of land— roughly the size of Hong Kong— were seized under the guise of “anti-encroachment” drives. Most of the displaced belonged to indigenous Gujjar and Bakerwal communities. There was no due process, no compensation, and no consultation. As FIDH frames it, these moves are part of a larger state-sanctioned agenda of demographic transformation. The addition of 25 million new voters in 2022 and the redrawing of electoral boundaries— tailored to favour Hindu majority Jammu—have disenfranchised Kashmiri people.
Meanwhile, the press once a fragile witness to Kashmir’s agony— has been systematically silenced. Al Jazeera’s Institute reports that since 2019, journalists have faced routine harassment, surveillance, and anti-terror charges. Foreign correspondents are denied access. Local reporters are summoned, raided, and often forced to choose between silence and state reprisal. According to groups like Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty, this media clampdown is not incidental—it is integral to a broader strategy of narrative control, designed to project calm while suppressing reality. As Chakrabarti puts it: “Emergency becomes the norm in Kashmir.” Under AFSPA, the military operates with near-total impunity. Civilians are detained without trial. Torture is common. Disappearances are routine. Families search for the missing with no hope of justice. The valley, be writes, “operates under laws designed for war—even in supposed peacetime.” Kashmir bleeds in silence. Its suffering escapes headlines—only curfews that never lift, schools that stay shut, and futures that never come.
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