By Sana Hamid

Have you ever heard a story about paradise in disguise? Maybe not or it might be the one you chose not to pay heed to as despite reverberating in the humanitarian corridors strikingly and persistently, the only audience it tends to attract is politics-the pity politics of the world. This paradise is sent reeling while its illegitimate occupants try to make it wear a disguise that betrays its very character of peace and purity.

The paradise is bleeding but exhibits a miracle. More the blood is shed over its catastrophic land, more fertile the land gets. This fertility is striving to bloom, wandering about the corridors of national and international domains to seek light of hope and productivity and in the process evolving, consolidating enough to achieve a stature worthy of being a paradise.

This paradise is known to the general audience as IIOJK (Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir). The more the paradise is battered, the more strength and consolidation it garners. It has a history of repetitive blows and systemic injustices. As a region, it was one of those 584 princely states of the Indian sub-continent that were advised by the then Viceroy to either join India or Pakistan, keeping in view the wishes of their people and geographical contiguity. In this regard, the region was deprived of its legitimate right as its ruler Maharaja Hari Singh in utter disregard of both the above mentioned principles of secession, ceded its allegiance to India. The Kashmiri Muslims had two major reasons to join Pakistan: geographical contiguity and numerical preponderance (80%) of the population.

Just as the people in the region began to identify Indian state's nefarious political designs of the region, the movement to independence gained fire in 1980s. Despite holding plebiscite, as guaranteed by United Nations Security Council Resolutions’ (UNSC) 38, 47, 51, 91 and 122-and as pledged more than forty times by Indian authorities-the aspirations and hence right of the valley to self-determination never materialized. Not only did the commitments not materialize, egregious systemic human rights violations, repression, injustice, incarceration and segregation continued to fester. According to Kashmir Media Service, more than 96, 000 people have been victims of extra judicial murders while about 165, 000 people got disappeared in arbitrary detentions between 1982-2022.

India is presiding over G20 in times when its themes set women empowerment as its foremost agenda but in instances whereby more than 11, 000 women are raped with about 22, 000 widowed in Kashmir alone.

The more the state of India indulges into repression, the more vociferous Kashmir dilemma becomes. It is to curb such ever increasing momentum that at least 35 journalists in Kashmir have faced ‘police interrogation, raids, threats, physical assault or criminal cases’ in relation to their work, as per reports of Human Rights Watch. The press-the foremost instrument of democracy and justice-in IIOJK continue to be at the receiving end of the pressure, intimidation and harassment by the authorities. But as a matter of fact, we live in the world of globalization where everything has turned into a global village. Despite world’s largest number of internet crackdowns in Kashmir, the world today identifies-yet deliberately overlooks- BJP war crimes in IIOJK.

India, in violation of various UNSC Resolutions, Article 25 of UN Charter and Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, has now abrogated Articles 370 and 35 (A) and has divided the region into two Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh, governed directly by the center. In the subsequent J&K Reorganization Act, the delimitation commission proposed  new electoral boundaries for the stats, being run on the basis of geography rather than population, that has been a universally accepted measure for demarcation of boundaries. There would be 43 seats for Jammu and 47 for Kashmir. As per the population, there should be 51 constituencies for Kashmir (6.8 million population) and 39 for Jammu (5.3 million population). In addition to this, ECI Chief Electoral Officer Hirdesh Kumar has proclaimed on 17 August 2022 that ‘We are expecting an addition of 2.5 million new voters in the final list’. Presently in IIOJK, there are 7.6 million existing voters who are permanent residents, and that means that India has successfully achieved registering 3.5 million fake domiciles for the Kashmir region.

This bifurcation has put India into a two throng dilemma. Not only the international human rights organizations and civil societies are taking pace in building pressure, but tensions have soared in India’s own political landscape for revival of statehood in Jammu and Kashmir region. "We demand immediate restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir and holding of Assembly polls," Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Vikar Rasool Wani said this February. He also accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre of creating "dictatorship" in Jammu and Kashmir.

The paradise in razors is reeling but its unflinching commitment to peace, that will be attained in visuals of statehood remains unwavering. The spectators are all ears. All they need to do is develop conscience to process what they see.

 *Opinions expressed in this article are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The South Asia Times