Recentering Kashmiris: A webinar on Pakistan, India, and Kashmir

(*artwork by Incé Husain: “burnt homes are a mountain of ink/ when mixed with tears/ write” , excerpt from poem ‘KILL’ by Kashmiri poet Ather Zia.)

in Indian-occupied Kashmir, a poet Agha Shahid Ali, exhorted: “The world is full of paper. Write to me.” 

the hardest bar of the cage is the one which makes writing a crime. words get you killed and jailed. maimed and blinded. branded.

Shahid, the poet whose name means the witness, died young. let us say his brain killed him. but the rebel, his heart survived in 8 million hearts. his exhortation, a daily call to prayer: “Write to me.” 

the world might be full of crisp paper and dying trees 

but the gag is tighter, the knuckles whiter

the dead poet awaits a word, instead of Fateha 

will he never receive news from home? 

in the hereafter who will be accused of reneging on the promises made to their young, dead, poets, mothers, fighters? 

last night, the news was killed. again. 

nothing new.  

the news is no news in Kashmir.

it has been dying—a slow but sure and swift death on the potholed streets 

but strange specter this news. rises again and again.  

it has been like this for long in the land of the occupied 

hearing echoes in other lands occupied 

but still called free and home of the brave  

~ “GAG” by Kashmiri poet Ather Zia 

***

On May 18th, a Zoom webinar titled “Kashmir and India-Pakistan War Games 2025” explained the past, present, and imagined future of India-administered Kashmir (IAK). 

One of the most densely militarized places in the world, India illegally occupies the regions of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and routinely commits human rights abuses against Indigenous Kashmiris. 

Reports from the Kashmir Law & Justice Project list instances of “grave human rights violations” by Indian authorities in IAK. These include arbitrary raids, home demolitions, detentions, killings, enforced disappearances, and brutal crackdowns on free speech. Most of these crimes go unreported; every report by the Kashmir Law & Justice Project states: 

Due to ongoing repression by Indian authorities, key developments in the human rights situation in IAK [Indian-administered Kashmir] have gone unreported. Indian authorities have criminalized independent journalism and human rights work; all reporting from IAK is state-controlled. Indian authorities label pro-human rights and pro-self-determination activity “terrorism” and systematically legitimate violations against people in IAK through unsubstantiated, demonizing labels, including: "terrorist," "militant," "secessionist," "overground worker" (or "OGW"), "hybrid militant," "hybrid terrorist," “terrorist associate,” “militant associate,” "intruder," or "infiltrator."

The webinar speakers were Kashmiri anthropologist and poet Ather Zia, American journalist Robert Fantina, Pakistani critical disaster studies scholar Omer Aijazi, and Kashmiri lawyer Imraan Mir who works with the Kashmir Law and Justice Project. All have written extensively about humanitarian crises and resistance in Kashmir. 

Zia explained how multiple layers of Indian colonization have sustained the current subjugation of Kashmiris in IAK. Fantina listed the parallels between Zionism and the Hindutva ideology that drives the subjugation of Kashmiris. Aijazi shared accounts of life in Kashmir. Mir details the dynamics between Kashmir, India, and Pakistan through the lens of international law. 

The webinar was organized by Just Peace Advocates, South Asian Diaspora Action Collective, and Kashmir Scholars Consultative Advocacy Network, and co-sponsored by sixteen human rights organizations, including Palestine advocacy groups and Indian human rights groups.  

It came after a renewed awareness of Kashmir in global headlines following the killing of 26 tourists in IAK by gunmen on April 22nd. The Resistance Front, an armed Kashmiri nationalist group in IAK, initially claimed responsibility for the attack but then retracted it. No official investigation on who launched the attack took place, but India blamed Pakistan and bombed Pakistani cities, bringing Pakistan and India to the brink of war. Bombardment rained on Kashmir - both in IAK and the Pakistan-administered Kashmiri territories of Azad Kashmir (“free Kashmir”), Gilgit, and Baltisan. Pakistan and India came to a ceasefire agreement on May 10th. Headlines relaxed; IAK remains under illegal occupation. 

“Conspicuously absent in most of the reporting on these recent events are Kashmiris themselves. Kashmiris who have, by and large, been the ones injured and killed in these cross-border air assaults,” said historian Dolores Chew, a member of the South Asian Diaspora Collective who facilitated the webinar. 

She shared that few media outlets reported that Kashmiris almost unanimously condemned the tourist attacks in IAK, that Kashmiris were abused by vigilantes across India, and that two to three thousand Kashmiris - mostly human rights workers and members of press - were detained by Indian authorities for “questioning” about the IAK attacks. 

“Almost no one is mourning the loss of Kashmiri lives amidst these military actions. Unamplified are the thoughts and feelings of Kashmiris throughout these events. We are here today to recenter Kashmiris,” says Chew. “We will confront the failure of the international community to contribute meaningfully to resolving the long standing dispute over Kashmir - which has cost tens of thousands of lives for over seven decades - and has kept the region of Kashmir always on the brink of war. There is an urgency to find a just and permanent resolution of the Kashmir issue as per the wishes of the people of Kashmir.”

*** 

Kashmiri poet and anthropologist Ather Zia called IAK “unapologetically, explicitly, and spectacular as a settler colonial process”, marked by a “brutal” Indian military occupation that displaces and dispossesses native Kashmiris, facilitates military action and enforced demographic shifts, and sustains “iterative phases” beginning in 1947 of “conquering, assimilating, and ultimately erasing Kashmiri Indigeneity.”

“A word that increasingly resounds in the Kashmir Valley today is dispossession,” said Zia. 

She explained that India’s institutionalization of land expropriation has become central to displacing native Kashmirs. In August 2019, the Indian government revoked IAK’s autonomous status by scrapping Article 370, which predated the Indian subcontinent’s independence and updated in 1949 to implicate India. Article 370 had forbidden Indian settlers from buying Kashmiri land, holding government jobs or scholarships in Kashmir, and had granted Kashmiris rights to create their own laws with the exception of finance, defense, foreign affairs, and communications. Article 35A, formalized beneath Article 370 in 1954, gave Kashmiris rights to grant permanent residency. The original 1927 version of Article 370 stated Indigenous Kashmiris’ exclusive rights to land, votes, and standing for public office. 

After scrapping Article 370, India moved 10,000 troops to IAK and removed its independent constitution, flag, criminal code, and control of granting property rights. The two regions - Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh - came directly under Indian rule as union states to be “restored to the same statehood as any other India state.” India registered 2.5 million new voters in IAK and now allows Indian citizens to become permanent residents. Zia says India has since increased land grabs by creating laws to alter land ownership that permit widespread evictions, demolitions, and property confiscations from Kashmiris. 

“These legal changes are focused on promoting settlements and demographic change to systematically erase the Indigenous population while criminalizing their movement for sovereignty and self-determination,” said Zia. “Participation of native Kashmiris in political and economic decision-making is almost negligible…stripping the region of its territorial sovereignty.”

The Indian government also imposed a siege and seven-month Internet blackout the day it revoked Article 370. The longest recorded blackout in a democracy, it included cell phones, landlines, and cable TV; high-speed internet was only restored after 18 months. International media was banned, and Genocide Watch issued an alert. David Kaye, the then-UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, said the shutdown was “draconian in a way other shutdowns usually are not.”

“I can’t recall a situation where there has been a total blackout of not only the two-way, multi-point communication systems that we are familiar with now - anything on the Internet, Whatsapp etc - but also the one-direction communications like TV,” Kaye said in an interview with The Guardian in August 2019. 

Zia believes that Islamophobia - ingrained in global and regional politics -  normalizes the subjugation of Kashmiris. She said the Indian government claims that revoking Article 370 is for “integrating territory, development, and fighting Kashmiri resistance that is cast as outright terrorism or [Pakistani] proxy war.” Indian president Modi said the changes are “a beacon of hope, a promise of a brighter future and a testament to our collective resolve to build a stronger, more united India.” Modi’s government has framed IAK as Hindu land; Indigenous Kashmiri muslims are depicted as “invaders and outsiders.” 

India has violated international law and warped Kashmir with militarization, resource extraction, and economic exploitation. Zia said India’s occupation of Kashmir cleanly echoes European settler colonialism in Palestine and Turtle Island, but that India’s status as “postcolonial” and “democratic” allows it to use its own history of anticolonial liberation struggles to justify occupying Kashmir. Zia termed this “neocolonial governance.”

“Post-coloniality and democracy - often presented as India’s defining characteristics - become tools used against Kashmiris, whose political aspirations closely mirror the subcontinent’s struggle for self-rule against British colonization,” said Zia. “It’s essential to problematize these frameworks to understand how they enable and justify the military occupation and settler colonialism in Kashmir.” 

Zia described distinct, interconnected phases of Indian settler colonialism that result in “cumulative native dispossession.” Initial annexation and territorial control by Indian forces escalated to replacing local agencies and UN resolutions with assimilationist policies that eroded Kashmiri identity. Cultural erasure is imposed by dominating the media, incarcerating human rights activists, and criminalizing resistance. 

The Indian militarization of Kashmir is held intact by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958). The act permits soldiers who are, or are equivalent to, commissioned, non-commissioned, or warrant officers to arrest without warrant, enter and search or destroy premises without warrant, and use force and firearms to kill at their discretion. These permissions are phrased as retaliation against people associated with “cognizable offences” and “ammunition”, or to recover “wrongfully restrained” people or property. But their implementation has no oversight and has enabled a slew of atrocities against Kashmiri civilians. A 2009 statement by Amnesty International urged Indian parliamentarians to amend the act, stating: 

[The Armed Forces Special Powers Act] laws have provided impunity for perpetrators of grave human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape and torture. Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have previously found patterns of widespread violations in areas where these laws are in force. Amnesty International has also observed that the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts have allowed violations of non-derogable human rights, under international human rights law, as provided in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which India is a state party. Among these rights are the right to life and freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 

Zia attests that IAK is one of the most densely militarized places in the world, administered by over 700,000 Indian troops that target both armed resistance groups and civilians. They have inflicted killings, torture, mass incarcerations, rapes, “relentless” curfews, crackdowns and military checkpoints, and the world’s first recorded case of mass blindings. Since 1989, over 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed and over 10,000 Kashmiris have been forcibly disappeared. All have “deepened Kashmir’s settler colonial nightmare.” 

Given the intense Indian militarization of Kashmir, Zia wonders “how this very recent attack in Pahalgam was even made or allowed or came into being.”

Zia explained that India’s amplification of tourism in IAK is used as a “soft colonial apparatus”, disciplining Kashmiris into service roles catered to influxes of Indian tourists and wielded to show the world that IAK is stable and normal. This “aggressive normalcy narrative” was complicated by the Pahalgam attacks. Kashmiris held solidarity protests and vigils for the attacked victims, and some were the first to fiercely protect them. Independent IAK-based journalist Auqib Javeed explained, in independent press Himal SouthAsian:

Baisaran meadow, where the massacre took place, is only accessible on foot or by horseback, with no motorable road connecting it directly to the town of Pahalgam, located about 5 kilometres away. This made it difficult for authorities and security forces to reach the site promptly for rescue operations. It was the local residents – horse riders, tourist guides and traders – who stepped in heroically to rescue and evacuate stranded tourists.  One of the horse riders, Syed Adil Hussain Shah, was shot dead by the attackers when he reportedly tried to confront them for killing the tourists. One resident, Sajad Ahmad, saved a stranded tourist by carrying him on his shoulders all the way from Baisaran to Pahalgam. Another local, Nazakat Ali, saved 11 tourists, and ensured they got away safely. This group included Arvind Agrawal, a member of the Chhattisgarh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing, and his wife. Many Kashmiris opened the doors of their homes and offered food, money and free transport to the tourists stranded in the area after the Pahalgam attack. 

“The desire for justice and freedom amongst Kashmiris should not be reduced to a will to inflict harm on people, in the least the tourists, an act which most Kashmiris protested in an unprecedented manner,” says Zia. “It is also telling how these solidarity protests and vigils, when this attack happened, were allowed by the government while Kashmiris have not been able to protest in the last five years at all, especially for the kind of human rights activities that were very actively being pursued by Kashmiris in the last 33 years.”

In the wake of the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, Zia feels that there is a growing danger of bypassing Kashmiris. Carved between Pakistan, India, and China since 1947, Kashmir has been portrayed as the “hot center” of the relationship between these countries rather than the home of Indigenous Kashmiris with strong political will. 

“We must understand Kashmir as one of the symptoms of neocolonial crisis that the world is facing today, born of nation-state frameworks imposed by colonial exit strategies, one that flattened the region’s deeply-rooted and interlaced cultural, spiritual, and political identities into the binary of nationalism…Kashmir is not seen through the lens of justice, self-determination, decolonization, or demilitarization, but as a risk to be managed by global power,” says Zia. “It’s the Kashmiris who do the dying. The irony is that global visibility may lead, not to solidarity with Kashmiris, but to their erasure where they are spoken about but never heard.”

***

Journalist Robert Fantina, and author of book Settler Colonialism in Palestine and Kashmir (2022), began his talk with a partial definition of settler colonialism from the Oxford Dictionary:

Settler colonialism is an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of Indigenous peoples and cultures. Settler colonialism normalizes the continuous settler occupation, exploiting lands and resources to which Indigenous people have genealogical relationships. Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism.

He says it “can’t be denied” that India’s subjugation of Kashmiris is settler colonialism.  

“One might wonder how the Indian government has caused the people of India to accept this blatant brutality against an innocent and basically defenseless population.” 

Fantina illustrated Hindutva teachings - practiced by Prime Minister Modi and other officials - by quoting passages from the paper “Hindutva Violence in India: Trends and implications”, authored by Indian security analyst Sudha Ramachandran. 

Ramachandran describes Hindutva as a “modern political ideology that views India as a Hindu nation and defines Indian culture in terms of Hindu cultural values. Its goal is to make India a Hindu state.” 

Ramachandran also quoted Madhav Sadashiv Golwaker, one of the founders of the Hindutva organization RSS that is now affiliated with the current Indian government: 

Foreign races - that is, Muslims and Christians in India - must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race or stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizens rights.

In 1992, the Babri masjid in India - nearly 500 years old - was destroyed by Hindutva mobs. Ramanchandran wrote that Hindutva “activists” - not “terrorists” or “criminals” - destroyed the mosque. In 2019, India’s Supreme Court allowed a Hindu temple to be constructed on the ruins of the Barbari masjid, legitimizing its “unlawful” destruction. 

Ashok Singhal, former president of Hindu organization VHP that pushed for the temple’s construction, stated: 

If the Hindu sentiments sweep the whole country, the Muslims would realise that neither the police nor the government nor political parties would be able to save them from the wrath. 

“These quotations are foundational to Hindutva and such sentiments are clearly in focus today,” said Fantina.

He shared that, in February 2025, the Washington-based India Hate Lab released a report that documented a 74% increase in hate speech in India in 2024, of which 98.5% targeted muslims. 

Fantina emphasizes that IAK and the Israeli occupation of Palestine are mirror images of colonial violence. 

“If I were discussing settler colonialism, occupation, military and illegal oppression of an occupied nation and a variety of other injustices without naming India and Kashmir, one might easily think I was discussing Israel and Palestine,” says Fantina. “Hindutva and Zionism… are cut from the same ugly mould. The similarities are remarkable but not surprising.” 

He lists that both India and Israel repress free speech and press; routinely arrest and detain civilians without charge, including children as young as twelve; and grant impunity to their militaries, who torture Indigenous populations with beatings, scaldings, starvation, and much more. 

In his 2019 article “Is Kashmir India’s Palestine?”, Fantina recounts Indian diplomat Sandeep Chakrovorty lauding Israel as an example of what ought to be done in Kashmir:

On November 16, Sandeep Chakravorty, who is India’s consul-general to New York City, was in New York attending a private event. He told Kashmiri Hindus and Indian nationals that India will build settlements modelled after Israel for the return of the Hindu population to Kashmir. He did not mince words; said he: “I believe the security situation will improve, it will allow the refugees to go back, and in your lifetime, you will be able to go back … and you will be able to find security, because we already have a model in the world. I don’t know why we don’t follow it. It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it.”

“What some nations call ‘terrorism’ is in truth ‘resistance’”, says Fantina. “It is unreasonable to believe that a nation whose citizens are oppressed, tortured, arrested, and detained without charge, forced to live without hope, will simply learn to tolerate these conditions. As they resist, whether in Palestine or Kashmir, those of us who can speak must speak. We must not rest until the people of Kashmir and of Palesinte are free.” 

***

Critical disaster studies scholar Omer Aijazi said that mainstream media was filled with Pakistan and India celebrating their soldiers with renewed nationalism after the May 10 ceasefire. Kashmiris faded from discourse.

“Whose lives are mourned in the public sphere? Whose lives are venerated? And whose lives are dismissed as mere casualties of war, or as collateral damage, and whose aspirations and desires are centred?” said Aijazi. “We’ve heard very little about Kashmiri lives that were arguably, once again, at the center of these escalations. Why is it that Kashmir always becomes the center of India-Pakistan warfare but we neve really hear about the impacts of war on their lives? It’s not that Kashmiris have not been speaking, or are voiceless, but as people of South Asia, are we prepared to listen?”

Aijazi described the “line of control” (LOC). A 740 kilometer-long “de facto border”, it divides Kashmir into IAK and Pakistan-administered Kashmir with Pakistani and Indian militaries stationed on either side. The LOC is filled with civilian villages; Aijazi says the Indian side has over one million people and the Pakistani side has even more, with many working in agriculture, as pastoralists, or as daily wage laborers. A BBC article calls life along the LOC “the razor’s edge between fragile peace and open conflict.”

“People in the vicinity of the LOC, for the most part, live under conditions of unpredictable war. Firing can start between militaries at any time. This includes mortar shelling, bombs, projectiles,” says Aijazi. “Each time relations between India and Pakistan worsen, there’s hostility across the LOC.”

The LOC was formalized in the Simla Agreement (1972) between Pakistan and India following the 1971 Pakistan-India war. One clause of the agreement states:

In Jammu and Kashmir, the line of control resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971 shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognized position of either side. Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations. 

The Simla Agreement also states that Pakistan and India are to peacefully resolve tensions through “bilateral negotiations.” This excludes external bodies, like the United Nations, from becoming involved. Following India’s suspension of the Indus River Water Treaty a day after the Pahalgam attack - a treaty which assures 90% of Pakistan’s water source  - Pakistan suspended the Simla Agreement. 

In an Al Jazeera interview, Ahmer Bilal Soofi, an expert of international law and legal advisor to the Pakistani government, said that suspending the Simla Agreement “allows Pakistan to revert to UN Security Council mechanisms to internationalize the Kashmir dispute.”

Following the Pahalgam attacks, Aijazi said that violence along the LOC was “activated in ways that have not been experienced in decades.” Heavy artillery exchange, drones, shellings, and firing traversed beyond rural villages into urban and semi-urban areas, “distant towns and cities that are typically spared from the firing.” People fled to bunkers and underground shelters; livestock was killed; homes, hospitals, and schools were damaged. Aijazi says the firing was so intense that there weren’t enough bunkers. Many tried evacuating their villages but the largely rural nature of Kashmir made transportation methods sparse; those who could evacuate didn’t know if any place was safe. Aijazi said many “stayed behind and took a chance.” First-person accounts of destruction, injury, and death flared from Kotli to Poonch to the Neelum Valley. 

Indian authorities banned live reporting in IAK. 

“We don’t have reliable figures of how many people were killed, injured, or the actual scale of the devastation caused,” said Aijazi. “Many people have reported that this was the heaviest shelling experience in their lifetime.. And there’s this compounded feeling of unsafety and this enduring sense of violence.” 

Aijazi said violence across the LOC is “normalized in the imagination of Kashmir.” Its designation as a “border area” dismisses any death and devastation as “inevitable”, erasing intuitive precedents for mourning lives lost. Attacks in Pakistani and Indian cities were met with uproar, anger scaffolded with convictions of sovereignty and self-defense. He shares that Pakistan and India’s recent evacuation exercises in higher-level institutions and school cancellations “seemed like a big deal” for Pakistani and Indian youth. But people in the LOC “have always lived in that uncertainty, at the whim of a trigger-happy soldier.” Aijazi’s colleague in the LOC told him: “maybe, for once, you too can understand what we go through on a regular basis.” 

“Kashmiris were once again reduced to casualties of war, collateral damage, as being insignificant in the theatre of war, and as a testing ground for new weapons.” 

Aijazi believes that Pakistan-India military escalations like those fuelled by the Pahalgam attacks will “only accelerate and embolden militarization across the region.” These intensifications wreak more destruction in Kashmir, such as landmines and unexploded ammunition that usually kills children. They also bring increased surveillance on civilian life - checkpoints, other obstacles to entering or leaving the region, and heightened inspection of already-monitored phone calls and communications. 

Aijazi emphasizes that the LOC was never meant to be permanent. It was intended to be a temporary division until Kashmiris could hold a plebiscite to determine their own future - a formal vote where the people can choose to join with Pakistan or India.

“Kahsmiris have been calling for the immediate demilitarization of the LOC and a permanent ceasefire for a long time and for making the LOC more porous so that families can be reunited. I think whatever small gains that have been made will unfortunately be reversed or suspended, but not to lose hope,” said Aijazi. “Border zones are also sites of creativity and improvisation, and Kashmiris are resilient. They will find a way to flourish even in the most difficult circumstances and dehumanizing conditions.” 

***

Lawyer Imraan Mir discusses law “not so much as rules that impartially protect people, but rather a widely understable language that provides a standard that does certain work.” 

“I think the primary work that (law) does is that it is what we need to believe is real, or realizable, in order to have peace.” 

Mir offers legal definitions of “occupation” and “colonialism.”  “Occupation” means “effective control without title”, in which a state controls other territories without sovereign claim to it. “Colonization” means “alien domination, subjugation, and outsiders' denial of people’s rights to self-determination.” 

He said that the historic territories of Jammu and Kashmir - that preceded Pakistan and India’s independence from British rule - are all occupied territory today. Pakistan-administered Kashmir is occupied but not colonized. IAK is both occupied and colonized. A report by Kashmir Law and Justice Project titled “Is Kashmir Occupied? Is it Colonized?” states:

While occupation is not necessarily illegal, India’s occupation of IAJK is illegal because it was not consented to by a legitimate government (the remnant British colonial government of Hari Singh in IAJK was repressive,unrepresentative and illegitimate) or otherwise legally authorized (by the UN Security Council or otherwise).  Pakistan’s occupation of PAJK was consented to by what was likely a legitimate government in PAJK (that of the Provisional Free (Azad) Government).  While occupation is by definition temporary, India’s illegal occupation of IAJK began in October 1947 and continues to this day; Pakistan’s occupation of PAJK likely began in 1948 and continues to this day. While India has also annexed and colonized IAJK, Pakistan has not annexed or colonized PAJK.  Unlike its occupation, India’s annexation and colonization of IAJK is not (and was never) widely recognized.

“Under law, occupation - when not authorized, like in IAK - is illegal, and is considered to be a great illegality under international law. Colonization is way worse. It is impossibly illegal under international law,”  says Mir. “The principle of self-determination is at the core of the entire order that we live under. Colonization is a direct assault on the foundations of international order. Things like democracy, the rule of law, and human rights depend on us being in a postcolonial world. But unfortunately that is not true. We are not in a postcolonial world, and IAK is a leading example of that reality…In IAK, there’s a war being waged by a powerful state and a powerful military against a defenseless civilian population.” 

Mir says that the rampant human rights violations in IAK are not only committed with impunity, but are “promoted by the international community.”

Mir says the Indus River Water Treaty, brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960 by Pakistan and India to partition water resources between the countries, is “illegal and invalid according to international law.” He describes it as a “colonial allocation” of Kashmiri resources that is a U.S.-UK  “brainchild” based on India’s aversion to a Kashmiri plebiscite that might have severed India from Kashmir’s resources. A report by the Kashmir Law and Justice Project, “The blood flows with the water: An international legal assessment of the Indus Waters Treaty”, presents a  declassified US memo from September 24th, 1951 titled “The Kashmir Problem”. The memo reads:

…although the Kashmir problem had many well known political implications, the discovery of potential mineral resources might very likely turn out to be one of the main reasons why [Indian] Prime Minister Nehru was unwilling to risk a plebiscite…Thinking that possibly an economic solution might be the key to the problem, I [William D. Pawley, Consultant to the Secretary of State, to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs] asked Dr. Bhatnagar [Secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Scientific Research of the Government of India] if he thought the Prime Minister would be interested in a proposition in which the United States and England would participate with India and Pakistan in a corporation for the development of mineral resources, hydroelectric power and the other economic assets of Kashmir. 

By November 8th, 1951, plans for developing the Indus River waters were established. Representatives from Pakistan, India, and the World Bank were involved. There was no mention of Kashmir. 

“The US and the UK were promoting their own foreign policy goals…the manner in which they did it was to partition the waters of the Indus Basin between India and Pakistan to promote their economic development and to attempt to diffuse a political situation that has never been diffused by categorically and specifically erasing Kashmir and Kashmiris and promoting the violation of Kashmiri rights,” says Mir. “That is the product of the international community being engaged, and what it produced was a violative agreement that promoted the marginalization of the people it should have centered.”

Mir says the Indian government is implementing programs that were developed by fascist Hindu parties in the early 1950s. The programs’ policy goals are to disintegrate Kashmir, dominate Kashmiri muslims, and “Hinduize” Kashmiris, erasing and replacing their history and identity. As such, Kashmiris currently have no freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, access to human rights work, or access to independent journalism. 

In the weeks following the Pahalgam attacks, Mir says there has been intensified surveillance, repression, raids, killings, demonization and scapegoating, hate speech, collective punishment, and mass arbitrary detentions in the IAK. No international aid can reach IAK; it is not permitted by the Indian state. 

“There’s a total silencing, pervasive surveillance, very limited news, and all of that news is state controlled. Most of that news is entirely consisting of or comprised of disinformation,” says Mir. “The population itself is isolated from the international community, or at least those members of it who would seek to help.”

***

The webinar ended with speakers discussing what self-determination and landback means for Kashmiris. 

Zia talked about defining “decolonization”.

“It is ending the militarist regime. It means ending the settler colonial apparatus that is prevalent in the region. And it means a decolonization - and overarchingly, we have to question what decolonization even means,” says Zia. “Decolonization means making more countries in the mirror reflection of the West nation state system - is that what we want for the region? Is that what we want for the world? From Palestine to Kashmir, we are tending to the ills of what is seen as postcolonialism but what is actually neocolonialism.”

Fantina emphasized that Kashmiris must have the right to choose their own futures, pointing out that the plebiscite provides options for joining Pakistan or India but not for independence. 

“The Kashmiris need to determine their own way going forward, their own government. What independence and land-back is going to look like has to be determined by the Kashmiris. No one else can force that on them.” 

He adds that India will delay the plebiscite - as it has for 70 years - until it manages to fill IAK with so many Indian settlers that the plebiscite vote will favour India.

Aijazi refrained from sharing his personal views on Kashmiri self-determination, instead striving to build spaces where Kashmiris can freely discuss their futures. 

“I always say I should not be the one answering that question. For me, the main idea is - I should be creating discourse and the conditions where Kashmiri people can debate that question. For me, the most important thing to do is step aside and let these conversations flourish within my Kashmiri colleagues and the people I’m in conversation with.”

Mir believes that the level of harm in Kashmir has to be thoroughly understood before futures can be contemplated. He also speaks of “azadi” - a “total liberation” that spans political, economic, spiritual life, and more. 

“We say Azadi. Our struggle for freedom and justice has nothing in particular to do with India and Pakistan - it predates the creation of those states by generations. The concept of Azadi amongst Kashmiris is not limited to political liberation. It’s also economic liberation and spiritual liberation, it’s total liberation, it has a whole history to it,” says Mir. “If you are a victim, if you have been violated, you are owed more, not less. The more that you have been violated, the more you are owed. Why are we willing to accept things that we should not accept? Why are we so limited in our imagination of what’s possible?” ♦

To listen to the full webinar, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9nEAVfQXh4

For more information on Kashmir, see: 

“Gag, home, kill”, poetry on Kashmir by Ather Zia 

Kashmir Law & Justice Project, a group led by Kashmiri diaspora lawyers that documents human rights violations in IAK 

“A guide to the resolution of the Kashmir Issue and FAQs since the August 2019 siege of Kashmir” by Kashmir Scholars Consultative Action Network, an international, interdisciplinary group of scholars who study Kashmir’s history and potential resolutions, with reference to policy makers

Canadians for Peace and Justice in Kashmir, a group of Canadians from diverse backgrounds that produces educational resources and aims to have justice-oriented dialogue about Kashmir with Canadian policy makers