India’s illegal power grab is turning Kashmir into a colony

Narendra Modi’s nationalist takeover runs roughshod over Kashmir’s special status and its people’s rights, says journalist and author Mirza Waheed

We usually talk or exchange messages a few times during the day, mostly about their creeping health issues or about my children’s latest antics here in London. But now, not a peep. It’s because, like all Kashmiris, they’re under siege, experiencing the worst crackdown in three decades, imposed by the Indian government as it revoked the region’s autonomy by abrogating article 370 of the constitution

The article, dating back to 1949, guaranteed Kashmir’s special status within the larger Indian union and enshrined the conditions of the state’s accession to India soon after partition in 1947. The newly created states of India and Pakistan had gone to war over Muslim-majority Kashmir, an independent kingdom at the time. After mediation from the United Nations, all parties agreed that the future of Kashmir was to be decided later via a referendum – something India and Pakistan have failed to honour. The provisions of the article meant that, pending the final resolution via a plebiscite, the state had its own constitution, its own national flag, a prime minister and a president, even as successive Indian regimes, starting in the early 1950s, diluted the article in order to diminish Kashmir’s autonomy.

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