Shakalis chus insaan magar @kashmirikur - Tumblr Blog

The late stages of the Cold War saw a dramatic improvement in Indian-Israeli relations. In 1992, under the premiership of Narasimha Rao, a member of the Indian National Congress, India and Israel established normal relations, with India opening an embassy in Tel Aviv in January. Two main factors explain this development, both of which are related to the outbreak of the First Intifada against Israel’s occupation as well as armed insurrection in Kashmir against Indian rule in the late 1980s.

The first reason stems from the decline of the Soviet Union, which forced India to search for a new supplier of arms and military technology. Israel, whose flagging economy at the time necessitated entering new markets, represented an ideal partner. The relationship was further strengthened when the U.S. imposed sanctions on arms sales to India after the latter conducted nuclear tests in 1998. Those sanctions resulted in India becoming Israel’s largest client for arms and military technology, a legacy that persists until today.

The second reason is based on the convergence of the logic that Israel and India employed in suppressing popular resistance in the occupied territories and armed insurrection in Kashmir, respectively, highlighting issues of security, counterterrorism and the threat of Islamic extremism. In 1992, then Indian Defense Minister Sharad Pawar admitted to Indian-Israeli cooperation on issues of counterterrorism, including exchanging information on so-called terrorist groups, national doctrines, and operational experience – in other words, strategies, methods, and tactics of occupation and domination. This lead to a shift in India’s position on Palestine, which began mirroring Israel’s insistence that Kashmir was primarily a matter of Indian domestic concern.

Relations between India and Israel grew even closer with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1990s. The BJP, which today is led by Modi, adheres to the political ideology known as Hindutva, or Hindu Nationalism. The history of Hindu nationalists’ affinity with Zionism is well documented by professor Sumantra Bose of the London School of Economics, who traces it back to the 1920s when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the father of Hindutva, supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The BJP and other Hindu Nationalists have since become obsessed with replicating the Zionist project in turning a constitutionally secular India into a Hindu ethnocratic state.

Many of the BJP’s aspirations and policy proposals for Kashmir are imitations of extant Israeli practices in Palestine. Key among these is the desire to build Israeli-style Hindu-only settlements in Kashmir as a way of instigating demographic change. For example, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a non-state volunteer Hindu paramilitary volunteer group to which the BJP are affiliated, have long desired the repeal of the state subject laws that have maintained the demographic make-up of Kashmir.

These changes are clearly inspired by the Israeli settlement model, as expressed by BJP lawmaker Ravinder Raina, who, in 2015, stated that the government of India will use its army to protect Hindu-only settlements in Jammu and Kashmir. This type of securitization and protection would entail an expansion of the security apparatus that already restricts the flow of life for most Kashmiris, using them as a pretext to justify a new level of domination and intrusiveness.

Aside from the parallels in policy objectives, the discourse used by supporters of the current regime in India resemble old Israeli refrains. Both Israel and India claim to be exceptional democracies, despite their treatment of large swaths of populations under their control. Additionally, both Zionists and Hindu Nationalists argue that the existence of many Muslim countries in the world necessitates a Jewish and Hindu state, respectively. This perpetuates the lie that Palestinians and Indian Muslims can supposedly live elsewhere, yet choose to live in Palestine and India only to antagonize Jews and Hindus.

Meanwhile, the variety of tactics used by India to control the civilian population of Kashmir strongly resembles those used by Israel in Palestine. These include, “arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, curfews, collective punishment, administrative detention, torture, rape and sexual abuse, the suppression of freedom of speech and assembly, house demolitions, and so forth.”

tariqah

The decision to revoke Kashmir's special status is part of a ghastly—and popular—agenda for Delhi's hard-right Hindu government.

tariqah

Against this backdrop of perpetual crisis, Modi has perfected the grand, autocratic gesture. In November 2016, he imperiled a sick economy by unilaterally announcing the cancellation of large-denomination rupee notes. This was allegedly done to curb the flow of untaxed income, a ludicrous claim, given the number of his cronies who sit in London and New York after defaulting on massive loans from government banks. The demonetization led to severe misery for a majority of the Indian population, wage laborers, and small traders who conduct their business largely in cash. It transformed everyday life by fiat, with long lines of desperate people outside banks, an eerie mirroring of voters queuing up outside election booths. But Modi’s gesture seized headlines and provided an intoxicating display of power, with the damage to the economy and misery visited upon the majority failing to dent Modi’s popularity. The BJP’s victory margin in last May’s election was even greater than when the party first took control.

Monday’s decision to dissolve Kashmir’s special status is copied from the same template: done suddenly at great cost to a large section of people, but certain to appeal to the Hindutva fanbase. The Hindu right has for decades stoked resentment about Article 370 and its special treatment of Kashmiri Muslims. (At a BJP rally in Kolkata many years ago, I heard a speaker tell the crowd that Kashmiris received subsidized mutton for a special price so low that it would not even buy dog meat in Kolkata.) Targeting Kashmir’s special status is also seen as a blow against the liberal elites who preceded the BJP in governance, and who supposedly lacked Modi’s requisite toughness in dealing with Kashmiri Muslims.

All of this is, of course, fake news. Kashmir, like other border territories absorbed uneasily into the Indian republic, has for decades been treated as a colony by liberal as well as right-wing Indian governments. It is disputed territory, and the special status promised in Article 370 only tells one side of the story. Another side is told by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a piece of colonial-era legislation, still in effect in Kashmir, that offers virtual immunity to security forces for all acts of violence. India’s military occupation of Kashmir has unfolded apace under this law, spurring massacres, disappearances, torture, rape, and the deliberate blinding of protesters with pump-action shotguns firing cartridges packed with hundreds of tiny “nonlethal” lead pellets.

As with Modi’s demonetization drive, the apparent suddenness of the decision to remove Article 370 and carve Kashmir up into two administrative units is contrived. The declaration was preceded by the announcement of two fall summits in Kashmir for prospective outside investors. What such investment in Kashmir will look like is easy to guess from a cursory glance at the rest of India: more trash, more cars, more pollution, more concrete, more aggressive Hindu rock music, and ever more ugly assertions of the race spirit that Golwalkar wanted Hindus to learn from Nazis. The BJP wants to allow its Hindu majoritarian supporters to expand into Kashmir. If it looks like settler colonialism, that’s because it is.

tariqah

Remember the fact that there’s still a telecommunications blockade in Kashmir so how the fuck is #KashmirWelcomesChange trending

Fuck them

I feel like vomiting

'Anxiety fills the air'

tariqah

With the help of over 38,000 additional troops dispatched to Kashmir over the past week, authorities have arrested more than 100 people, including political leaders and activists considered a threat to peace in the Valley. Meanwhile, police confirmed Wednesday that a young protester died after jumping into a river while being chased by police during a curfew in Srinagar.

But few Kashmiris will know about that. Many of them will not even know that on Monday morning, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announced to Parliament that the Indian government would strip their state of the special status that it held under the Indian Constitution for the last 70 years.

Revoking Article 370, which gave near-autonomy to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir, had long been a campaign pledge of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won a second term in a landslide victory in May. Shah also introduced a plan to break up the current state into two separate Union Territories, giving the Delhi government far more control over both. (A part of the Kashmir region remains with Pakistan, which claims the whole, and which has fought three wars with India over it since 1947.)

“My son was born a few minutes after I heard Article 370 was revoked,” says Sheikh, 40, who drives an auto-rickshaw in Srinagar. He and his wife came to the hospital earlier, hearing rumors of an impending curfew. Like many Kashmiris, they were surprised to see the administration preparing for a war-like situation, with various emergency orders, including calling all tourists and non-natives to “leave as soon as possible.”

Just hours before the rollback of Kashmir’s autonomy was announced to the world, we Kashmiris woke up to find our Internet cut off for the 53rd time this year, as well as the suspension of all cellular services and landline telephones. People remain cut off from their families, and journalists have no channels of communication to report through. The online homepage of Kashmir’s largest local paper is blank and the website of our own magazine has been offline since Monday. Many journalists like me have had to send out work on thumb drives with passengers flying out of the area by airplane. Only a small group of people using satellite dish networks have access to TV news channels. Speaker mounted vehicles are making announcements warning people not to venture out. There is no way to know or confirm if the situation has remained peaceful. Amid no communication, anxiety fills the air in the Valley.

The only way to get an idea of the situation is to visit hospitals. During the day, the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital in Srinagar was inaccessible to journalists, but at midnight on Tuesday I went to visit. As I stepped into the Ophthalmology ward, I saw five young men who had been hit by pellets, as hospital attendants fanned their bandaged faces. Government officials have denied using pellet guns this week, but pellet guns are common in Kashmir. (The state government said between July 2016 and February 2017, at least 6,221 people were injured by pellet guns, including 782 eye injuries; Amnesty International puts the figures even higher.)

“I am his neighbor and picked him up from outside his home when he was injured,” said a man, without giving his name, in his 30s, with one 17-year-old patient. “He was hit by pellets in both eyes and the doctors are observing his condition before operating. He says that he can’t see from his left eye also.” Attendants in the hospital said more than a dozen young people came in that day with injuries, including some with tear gas inhalation.

Healthcare availability for civilians is disrupted, with limited access to ambulances or any ability to call one. On the roads, there are barricades after every few hundred meters. An hour after leaving the hospital, I saw a teenage girl sitting next to her mother in a load carrier vehicle, with a drip needle pierced into her hand. “My daughter complained of pain in her appendix,” said her mother, who said she could not get an ambulance in the town of Pampore, 10 miles from Srinagar. “We left in the load carrier and were stopped at more than seven barricades.”

#kashmir #kashmir conflict #justice for kashmir #indian occupied kashmir #kashmirbleeds

tariqah

Over the last few decades, ANI has emerged as India's biggest television news agency through a mutually beneficial relationship with the gov

This is long but READ IT

tariqah

Do you really think Kashmir, the very same Kashmir that was persecuting and murdering its Hindu population only 30 years ago, is a completley blameless victim of those big bad and evil Hindus?

I really love this so you think Kashmiri genocide and colonisation is warranted as a “tit for tat” and have you heard of the Kashmiri Muslims who’ve been killed did you hear about their genocide in Jammu by armed forces working with the Maharaja Hari Singh? Are you going to bring that up? Are you going to bring up the various Kashmiri Muslims killed and dissappeared by India?

tariqah

What kind of sadistic logic makes you see colonisation and be like “ can you really call them blameless 😳”

veryfemmeandantifascist

Help a sister out if you can! Tschan Andrews is a black british trans model/activist who just lost her job because a hating ass cisgender girl outed her in public. It’s very convenient to label transphobia as just a cisgender male problem when cisgender women are never held accountable for violence against trans women. Please donate if you can!

https://www.gofundme.com/tschanffs

daloy-politsey

Rella is a 93 year-old Holocaust survivor. Not only has she had to endure the trauma of the concentration camps and losing her own mother at Auschwitz, but now she is the victim of elderly exploitation and grand theft. Beginning as early as 2011, her caretaker started exploiting her fragile condi...

One of the terrible things about this occupation is that even if you hear news about anyone you cannot even share the source with loved ones for fear that the source will get into trouble.

Indians use this to make up excuses that our sources are fake, but in reality the environment they have created makes it unsafe for anyone to even share news on how someone is doing.

#kashmir #india #indian-occupied kashmir

blackwoolncrown

Call to action to help native Hawaiians protect Mauna Kea

“Call Governor IGE’s office 808-586-0034

Call lieutenant Gov Josh Green’s office 808-586-2211

Tell then to immediately halt construction

Tell Governor IGE and UH President David Lassner to Stop construction of TMT - Email David Lassner at [email protected]“

Signal Boost and call

tariqah

Congress MP and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad is set to travel to Srinagar on Thursday, but sources said he is expect

“Around 400 people, including three business leaders and a university professor, mainstream and separatist activists have been rounded up by police in the latest crackdown in Kashmir, officials told The Indian Express.”

tariqah

kashmirikur

Disgusting

tariqah

The way women are treated as an extension of both the state and Kashmiri men so this whole thing about marrying Kashmiri girls are based on trying to convert them, humiliate their family and Kashmir as an extension, and regular sexual predation

kashmirikur

Fuck them. Oppressors always exoticize and dream of dominating women who are being oppressed by them.

I hope they get their dicks chopped off.

tariqah

"Over 100 political leaders and activists have been arrested in the valley so far," a senior official of the J&K said.

Academics and activists have also been arrested

kashmirikur

We just found out one of my relatives has been arrested on 5th august at midnight. We have no idea where they have taken him and no idea how to find out.

This is hell.

The Modi government’s move could mean increased regional instability.

In practice, Kashmiris had far less autonomy than the constitution would suggest. New Delhi generally kept elected state governments on a tight leash. In repeated episodes of “Governor’s Rule,” some governments were outright dismissed. Nonetheless, mainstream moderates in J&K as well as separatist groups prized the constitutional provisions because they recognized J&K’s different status. The scrapping of Article 35-A allows for non-Kashmiri settlement of the area, opening up concerns that the Hindu right might attempt to engineer a West Bank-style resettlement of the territory.

The constitutional changes are a big deal in themselves. The decision to make J&K a Union Territory makes it an even bigger one, subjecting J&K government decisions to central government veto, a relatively unusual arrangement. Excluding Delhi, only about 0.2 percent of the country’s citizens live in a Union Territory. As one analyst explained, “Kashmir can now not even be trusted to be a state.”

Critics, both in and outside Kashmir, are not only upset by the changes, but how the government made these decisions. There was little parliamentary debate in New Delhi and, more importantly, no participation from Kashmiri politicians. Some analysts view the changes as a kind of authoritarian centralization in a country famous for its federalism.

In Kashmir, the already-restive population is likely to be further angered by the government’s decision. Resentment was already simmering in the state, leading to major uprisings from 2008 to 2010 and 2016 to 2017, less than a generation after the brutal crackdown against the Kashmiri separatist movement in the early 1990s. Some local officials privately estimate that 90 percent of the population of the Kashmir Valley is already opposed to the Indian state.

[The Kashmir attack could prompt a crisis in South Asia. Here’s why.]

The federal government anticipated an angry response to its announcement and flooded J&K — already one of the world’s most militarized regions — with tens of thousands of troops and instituted a curfew. Over the weekend, the Indian government placed mainstream politicians under house arrest and shut off Internet and phone connectivity.

#kashmir #indian occupied kashmir #india

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Shakalis chus insaan magar