Pakistan And Kashmir indiapost.com

What explains the intensity of Pakistani reaction to the changes in Jammu and Kashmir’s status following legislation enacted by the Indian Parliament? This reaction rests on a tripod of three different sets of reasons.

The first of these is human rights amplified by charged rhetoric about an “occupied territory”. The shrillness in the Pakistani polemic may seek to impart novelty but in truth, the argument itself is an old one. It has been employed by Pakistan since the winter of 1947 when the detection of its troops in an invasion of Kashmir led India to approach the UN Security Council.

Until the fiction became untenable, Pakistan had continued to insist that it had nothing to do with the fighting in Kashmir and what was taking place was an internal Kashmir revolt against human rights abuses.

Similarly, in August 1965, amidst a well-orchestrated plan to flood Jammu and Kashmir with infiltrators from its armed forces, Pakistan continued to maintain that what was happening was an internal insurrection in Kashmir. In 1999 in Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir, a similar fiction was propagated accompanied by high decibel diplomacy. In fact, the Pakistani military had infiltrated deep into India.

These historical parallels are of value also because they are illustrative of how deeply public opinion in Pakistan has internalized a narrative of Indian oppression. The Pakistani state also goes to considerable lengths to disguise and deny its own involvement in Jammu and Kashmir especially to its own citizens.