Three years on, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to be received in Occupied Kashmir with open arms. His visit there is invariably ‘welcomed’ with complete shutdowns and bomb blasts throughout the state. That happened this past Sunday too following a call by Kashmiri leaders to mount protests against his visit. A grenade explosion killed a police officer and injured nine other security personnel in Srinagar. Modi was in Occupied Kashmir to inaugurate a tunnel connecting Jammu with Srinagar Valley, and thus facilitate India’s military access; but this becomes problematic because of landslides and snowfall. But he won’t admit it in so many words. At a rally in the town of Udhampur, he called upon the youth of Occupied Kashmir to choose between “terrorism and tourism.” “This bloody game could not do any good to anyone during the last forty years,” he said. If “doing good” to somebody means accepting Indian occupation that the Kashmiris would not do. They have consistently rejected Indian rule and fought against it, forcing New Delhi to deploy more than half-a-million troops and impose draconian laws. Building roads and tunnels is a cosmetic approach and cannot appease the people, the Kashmiri leaders say. To them Kashmir is a “political issue and not a problem related to governance, economic packages, incentives or law and order.” “Narendra Modi has two options: either follow his predecessors with folded eyes or as a statesman make history by taking bold steps, and that is by realizing realities and using wisdom for resolution, which needs extraordinary willpower and determination.” The issue in Occupied Kashmir is not economic development; it is its people’s right of self-determination, which stands recognized by the United Nations but denied by New Delhi. And for that the people of Kashmir have made huge sacrifices. Since 1989, at least 70,000 people have been killed by Indian troops, yet New Delhi failed to suppress that struggle for freedom.
If proverb “Mukh par ram-ram, baghal mein churi” was ever applicable to anyone. it is to Narendra Modi’s address at the inauguration of the tunnel. Were Prime Minister Modi a welcome visitor to Occupied Kashmir there was no need for unprecedented ground-to-air security that was put in place in Udhampur when he inaugurated the tunnel. And he said tongue in cheek let people in Azad Kashmir see how Occupied Kashmir has developed – not realizing that when the prime minister of Pakistan visits Azad Kashmir the markets do not shut down, nor is he greeted by bomb blasts. There is absolutely no reason why the people in Occupied Kashmir would accept Indian control. And more so now that Narendra Modi has appointed an extremist Hindutva preacher as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Obviously then, the people of Kashmir are expected to be more vigilant and assertive about the applicability of the UN resolutions. It was on January 5, 1948 that the Security Council reiterated that the question of accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan “will be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite.” The issue was on the table of the Security Council at the request of the then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Let Modi rise above his petty mindset and give the people of Kashmir the right to vote for self-determination. But he will not; he is committed to Hindutva but the vast majority of Kashmiris happen to be Muslims.
