Al-Qalam 
By Imraan Buccus
Tensions between India and Pakistan soared following an attack on 22 April 2025, after militants opened fire on a group of mostly Hindu tourists in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam, killing 26 civilians. The Indian government swiftly alleged Pakistani involvement—a claim for which no evidence has been provided. The Indian media followed suit, stoking nationalist fervour. In the days that followed, both sides engaged in military posturing and cross-border exchanges of fire. Now that the immediate crisis has passed, it is time to take a deeper look at the unresolved tragedy of Kashmir—one of the longest-running and most dangerous conflicts in modern history.
What makes the current moment especially dangerous is the ideological nature of the regime in New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP first came to power in 2014. Modi built his national standing with the far right following the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, where he was chief minister, in 2002.
Under Modi’s rule, India has taken an openly authoritarian turn, built on a toxic cocktail of neoliberal economic policies and Hindu nationalism. The annexation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019—stripping the region of its autonomy, dissolving its legislature, and imposing a sweeping military clampdown—was a key moment in the BJP’s consolidation of power. It sent a clear message: for this government, Kashmiris are not equal participants in a democratic polity but a population to be subdued and ruled.
The parallels with the occupation of Palestine are impossible to ignore. Like Israel, India seeks to dominate a territory whose people overwhelmingly reject its rule. It floods the area with soldiers and surveillance. It shuts down internet access. It detains thousands without trial. It promotes demographic change through settler policies, hoping to shift the region’s character. And it silences dissent by branding it terrorism. This is not a project of democracy. It is a project of colonialism.
One of the most searing literary accounts of Kashmir’s anguish comes from Indian novelist and essayist Arundhati Roy, whose 2017 novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is partly set in the valley. Through the voice of a Kashmiri militant, she captures both the trauma of military repression and the clarity of defiance. Reflecting on the use of pellet guns—non-lethal weapons deployed by Indian forces that have blinded hundreds of young Kashmiris—Roy writes:
“One day Kashmir will make India self‑destruct in the same way. You may have blinded all of us, every one of us, with your pellet guns by then. But you will still have eyes to see what you have done to us… You’re not destroying us. You are constructing us. It’s yourselves that you are destroying.”
This haunting passage speaks not only to the physical brutality visited upon the Kashmiri people but also to the long-term moral corrosion inflicted on the Indian state. The attempt to crush dissent with overwhelming force is, as Roy suggests, a form of slow national suicide—one that eats away at democracy from within.
South African journalist Azad Essa, whose excellent book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel was published in 2023, maps the deepening strategic ties between the two states, from arms deals to surveillance systems and demographic policies. In an October 2024 interview, Essa observed:
“For example, in 2019, India essentially annexes Kashmir… Later, the Indian ambassador to the US makes a statement saying that they’re going to build settlements in the territory, just as Israel has built settlements in Palestine.”
Essa’s book explores how converging ethno-nationalist logics—Hindutva in India and Zionism in Israel—are driving policies in both regions, from annexation and surveillance to demographic engineering. In both cases, the occupying power claims that it is the victim.
And in both cases, any call for justice-any demand that the people of the land be given their basic political and human rights—is dismissed as extremism. When a Kashmiri teenager throws a stone or a Palestinian farmer defends his land, it is cast as an existential threat to a nuclear state. This absurd logic holds because it is backed by power: military, economic, and increasingly, diplomatic.
India’s international image has shifted dramatically in the last two decades. Once a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, it now seeks to be a junior partner to Western powers in the emerging strategic contest with China. As such, it benefits from the same impunity that shields Israeli aggression.
While Pakistan grapples with significant internal challenges across the economic, political, security and terrorism sectors, the oppression of Kashmir by India remains a paramount concern.
India’s refusal to recognise the political aspirations of the Kashmiri people is rooted in a narrow, majoritarian nationalism that sees Indian Muslims in general—and Kashmiris in particular—as suspect, as not fully Indian, as a fifth column. The rise of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist ideology, has made it almost impossible for even liberal voices inside India to advocate for justice in Kashmir without being labelled as traitors.
Hindu nationalism is not merely a cultural or religious identity. It is a form of fascism that seeks to define the Indian state in terms of an exclusionary ethno-religious ideal. It treats secularism and pluralism as threats. It rewrites history to suit its mythologies. It demonises minorities, especially Muslims, and it weaponises the media, the courts, and the police. In this context, Kashmir becomes both a real place and a symbol—a place to be crushed to prove the supremacy of what is now understood as a Hindu nation.
In South Africa, we have learned that peace cannot be built on injustice. The apartheid regime tried for decades to impose peace without justice. It failed. Our transition, for all its compromises, was grounded in the recognition that a lasting future required recognition, inclusion, and dignity for the oppressed. In Kashmir, as in Palestine, peace will only come when justice is done.
This means supporting the demand for self-determination. It means ending military occupation. It means releasing political prisoners, restoring civil liberties, and ending the project of demographic change.
South Africa has an important role to play here. Our history gives us a particular moral voice in the international arena. We have used it in relation to Palestine—and rightly so. We should do the same for Kashmir, the Congo and other countries suffering oppression.
Dr Imraan Buccus is the editor of Al-Qalam.
