For the past 63 years India has been keeping the Muslim majority Kashmir in subjugation. It has been deploying more than five hundred thousand soldiers in the occupied territory to put down the 16 million Muslims who have been clamoring for freedom all these six decades.

The tragic history of the Muslims of Kashmir actually goes back to the British period when the latter sold the territory to a Hindu potentate. The people of Kashmir had hoped that their destiny would also change with that of the peoples of the rest of the subcontinent after the departure of the British colonial rulers. But that was not to be. As the Muslims of Kashmir rose against the oppressive rule of the Hindu raja after the departure of his British masters, India landed its troops in the state and started worst kind of suppression of the people; thousands of freedom fighters and common people were killed by the marching Indian troops and thousands of others jailed or uprooted from the homes and made to flee across the border to Pakistan and to the liberated part of Kashmir, what is now Azad Kashmir. Later India illegally annexed the state against the wishes of its people.

Landing of Indian troops triggered war between India and Pakistan and the matter was taken to the United Nations. The UN Security Council resolved in 1948-49 that the future of Kashmir be decided through an internationally supervised plebiscite. India at first agreed under pressure of the Security Council members but later knowing full well that the Kashmiri people would not vote in its favor, it started dillydallying in the matter, and finally wriggled out of the commitment on the flimsy excuse that since Pakistan had signed a defense pact with the United States, the situation in the region had completely changed.

The people of Kashmir appealed to the conscience of the world but their voices were suppressed in the din of Indian propaganda. But the people continued their struggle for freedom from the Indian yoke. More than one hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslim youths were martyred in the fight against Indian forces during the 90s and first few years of the new century. That uprising which can be described as Kashmir Intifada, was blamed by India on 'infiltration of terrorists from Azad Kashmir and Pakistan' to hoodwink the post-9/11 world bitten by terrorism.

Now the Kashmiri youths are up again demanding freedom from Indian rule. They want India to withdraw its troops to let the people exercise their right to self determination as promised in the UN Security Council resolutions. But the Indian response to the latest uprising is the same as before- armed suppression of the people and misleading the world about the real situation in occupied Kashmir.

It is high time that the Muslim world comes to the rescue of the Kashmiri Muslims and raises the issue in the UN and other international forums to force India to withdraw its troops from the valley and let the people of Kashmir exercise their right to self determination through a UN supervised referendum as per UN Security Council resolutions.

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