Al-Qalam 
Only international support and pressure will force India to see reason and give the people of Kashmir their internationally recognized political rights, says Mian Muhammad Zikra.
In 1947, with the end of the British colonial era in South Asia, two new countries emerged on the world map. India is a predominantly Hindu state and a Muslim Pakistan. The conceptual basis of this geographic change was essentially rooted in the religious identities as the Muslims, who were the rulers of India before the British colonization, wanted to have a separate country, having realized that after the departure of the Britishers, Hindus would be their new masters and besides physical bondage, it will lead to an ideological sabotage that will crush their Muslim identity as well.
A number of Indian historians have been contradicting this argument that India was divided on the basis of religion. They argue that the Indian National Congress, the dominant political party of India at the time, though mostly led by Hindus, also had some Muslims, and therefore, it was a rather secular party. However, subsequent history has comprehensively defeated this argument and proved that religion was indeed the main reason for the division.
There are two most prominent manifestations of the fact that the partition of the Indian subcontinent into present-day India and Pakistan was due to a political reaction to the impending Hindu dominance over Muslims, who were smaller in number and feeling politically vulnerable in a post-British India dominated by the Hindu majority.
One: contrary to the Indian claim that the creation of Bangladesh (that was once East Pakistan) in 1971 meant the failure of the religion-based ideology of Pakistan, Bangladesh did not revert back to India. Rather, it became an independent Muslim country. Secondly, the coming into power of BJP backed by RSS, the notorious ultra-nationalist Hindu extremist and Islamophobe organization in India, with a massive mandate in 2014, has clearly proved beyond any doubt that the overwhelming majority of Indian Hindus subscribe to the BJP /RSS ideology that Muslims were outsiders who had to either get out of India or make their religious identity subservient to Hinduism. These were exactly the anticipation that led to the Pakistan movement in the early 20th century, and it is the same reason that the Muslim state of India occupied Jammu and Kashmir has always been against Indian hegemony.
The issue of Jammu & Kashmir, which is a disputed state between India and Pakistan, has been waiting for its right to self-determination since the departure of the Britishers. This issue is also rooted in the religious identity of Kashmiri Muslims. When Britishers were leaving India, the State of Jammu and Kashmir was one of the hundreds of states within British India that was to choose whether it wanted to go to India or Pakistan. Since J&K was a predominantly Muslim-dominated state contiguous to Pakistan, its obvious choice was Pakistan.
Making this situation even worse, on 5 August 2019, India made changes in its constitution and usurped the little semblance of autonomy that J&K had under the law. The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35a by India was intended to make serious demographic and geographic changes in J&K, basically to change its Muslim identity and culture. As the people reacted to this arbitrary act, India imposed the worst kind of lockdown in the state, shutting down people in their homes for many months.
Since the illegal occupation of Kashmir by India, more than 95,000 Kashmiri youths have been killed, which includes more than 7,000 custodial killings, around 165,000 civilians arrested, leaving behind around 23,000 widows or half widows, more than 11,000 women raped or molested, and more than 110,000 houses have been burnt as collective punishments to the people who do not accept India’s illegal occupation.
Apart from these atrocities, there are the worst kinds of restrictions on media and free speech.
The situation in Indian-occupied J&K is an abominable example of colonialism and religion-based apartheid in modern times, which requires an international response.
We, the people of South Africa, understand the significance of international support and expression of solidarity, which had played a very important role in bringing the apartheid regime under international pressure and the ultimate end of discrimination. In the case of Kashmir, too, international support is inevitable to bring justice to the Kashmiris and stop India from its illegal and inhuman occupation of the state.
Standing by the oppressed people of Kashmir is the moral responsibility of every peace-loving citizen of the world. It is only international support and pressure that will force India to see reason and give the people of Kashmir their internationally recognized political rights.
