But I know one thing for sure – things will not go according to the fantasies of the Hindu nationalists!
(Originally posted on Facebook on 11 August 2019, reproduced in my blog for the first anniversary of the change of status of Kashmir on 5 August 2019.
The picture on the left taken from The Economist: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/08/08/india-abruptly-ends-the-last-special-protection-enjoyed-by-kashmir.)
India is a powerful state and has a very strong military, in the context of South Asia. This means that the people of Kashmir, either alone or with the help of Pakistan, can never liberate their country from India.
The struggle of the Kashmiri people constitutes a struggle for liberation, especially from now on after the repealing of Article 370 by the Hindu Nationalist government of BJP. More than 99% of the Muslim people of Kashmir will now regret and oppose being part of India, unlike even perhaps a few weeks ago when there was more support for India among the Muslim people of Kashmir.
The Hindu nationalist government, by abrogating Article 370 without the consent and wishes of the people of Kashmir expressed through their elected representatives, has now made India become, without any ambiguity, a forceful occupier of Kashmir and it’s people with their large military deployment and the severe restrictions imposed on the people.
Article 370 created the basis for Kashmir joining India temporarily soon after partition, according to which Kashmir could be made a permanent part of India by following the mechanisms contained in the Article. After revoking the Article, India has sought to forcefully control Kashmir and dominate its people with a strong military operation.
So, what will happen next? It is impossible to know exactly or guess with any degree of credibility how things will pan out. However, there are logics and consequences of actions. How the powers of the powerful or the dominant force will act and behave and how the human spirit/resistance of the powerless Kashmiris will playout and endure will determine how the future will unfold.
On the one hand, the Hindu nationalists in India and around the Diaspora are on the rise and they are feeling very strong and happy about some of their recent achievements, which are also acting as fuels to further energise them and their ambitions. Many of them are expressing their joy, in many triumphant ways, after delivering another piece of humiliation to the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent.
On the other hand, the resistance and the defiance of the Kashmiri people will strengthen in the face of, from their points of view, their potential genocide at the hands of the expected Hindu settler movements that will move into Kashmir through government support and domestic and foreign Hindu nationalist investments.
In this regard, the Hindu nationalists are and will continue to emulate the Israelis and learn from them the methods and justifications utilised to forcefully settle in Palestinian lands. Parts of their inspiration also come from how the Chinese are dealing with the Uighur Muslims and what they have done to Tibet and its people – in addition to brutal force, both in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Chinese government has been engineering demographic changes by settling in Han Chinese people in these lands.
However, I do not believe that the ultimate dreams of the Hindu Nationalists will be achieved or their hold on power will prevail for long. There are many reasons for this. One of which is that the people of Kashmir will never accept the status quo created by the BJP government and their resistance will grow, deepen and widen. Another reason is that, unlike China with its long history of brutal central control of China and other people’s lands through conquests by successive dynasties and now under the communist party, India never had any kind of central brutal control by any king or any ruler in the past, and current India is not a communist dictatorship. Therefore, any political group that tries to act authoritarian and subvert the rule of law will sooner or later be kicked out. However, by what they have done and what they will do will leave a path and legacy of bloodshed, conflict and disunity, which the future generations will face the consequences of and will have to find a way to deal with.
How can humiliating more than half a billion Muslims of the Indian-subcontinent – in addition to the Hindu nationalist government’s recent action in Kashmir, by lynching, discriminating and excluding ordinary Indian Muslims – bring peace and prosperity to the people of India? Sooner or later, the folly of what the Hindu nationalists are doing will backfire.
The Hindu nationalists argue that the successive Congress governments since 1947 – by appeasing the Muslims – have created, perpetuated and increased the problems of disunity and integration problems for India. Now, they believe that as they are in charge and in power, they have the duty to and have plans to solve the many unsolved problems that held India back for more than 70 years. This may be partly true, in terms of unresolved issues and problems faced by India, but this kind of emotional and hateful understanding will not only not fail to address the problems but will most likely make things worse. Their aggressive Hindu nationalism, the marginalisation of Indian Muslims and the annulling of Article 370 will cause an inevitable rise in brutality everywhere in India, especially the story of Kashmir from now on.
One thing for sure is that there will be no peace and harmony between Hindus and Muslims in India, for a long time. It is also likely that the Indian Muslims will increasingly keep themselves muted and quietly accept their fate – the best strategy in the face of the increasing fear, danger, lynching and the marginalisation that they are facing – and their silence may create the impression in the minds of Hindu Nationalists that they have succeeded in ‘putting Muslims in their place’. But this will never be the case.
There will be perpetual Muslim integration problems for India as long as the Hindu nationalists try to ‘put Muslims in their place’ – whatever they mean by ‘putting Muslims in their place’. And, without an end, Kashmir will be hot, violent and full of resistance with unquenched and unsilenced desires and struggles for freedom. There may also be devastating wars between India and Pakistan as a result of the uncontrollable developments which will inevitably unfold in Kashmir.