Kashmir has been in the world headlines in recent weeks, and not merely because the US president-elect Barack Obama made a mention of it during his election campaign. The picturesque valley attracted world attention because it has been hit by a new wave of protest against the Indian rule. This new wave is different from the militants’ strikes of the 90s and early 2000s. It is a mass movement. Now it is street power versus thepuppet government hoisted by India.
During the past few months there have been scores of demonstrations, protest marches, strikes and rallies which have shaken the Indian rulers. They took recourse to their old methods of armed suppression of the people. There were arrests of leaders and activists, public meetings were banned and in places where people tried to violate the ban, curfew was clamped. But the protest continues; every few days one hears of the police tear gassing or firing at the
crowds adding to the mounting death toll of Kashmiri youths.
The Kashmiri people have also rejected thepolitical overtures by India including holding of sham elections of the puppet assembly. They stand united in their demand that India should quit Kashmir. The Kashmiri Muslims’ struggle for emancipation is now more than one hundred years old. Their miseries began when the British colonialists sold the territory to a Hindu warlord for a few million rupees in 1840s. Since then they have suffered under worst kind of oppression and humiliation. The first big uprising against the atrocious rule of the Hindu raja took place in 1931 which was suppressed by the raja’s forces and the
rebels given most cruel punishments. Nevertheless, the movement against the raja’s rule continued. But the Kashmiri Muslims were bypassed even when British quit and the people of the sub continent won freedom. The Hindu ruler of the state acceded to India against the wishes of the people who had risen in revolt against him once again. India rushed its troops to Kashmir, crushed the popular revolt and reinstalled the ruler in the state capital Srinagar. And thus began another period of slavery and armed suppression of the people of Kashmir. Only a small portion of the state which had been liberated by the people was saved by Pakistan and for the last 61 years Kashmiris' land remains divided between the two sides by a ceasefire line orLine of Control, as it is called now.
India also took the dispute to the United Nations. The UN Security Council after a long debate resolved that the Kashmiris decide their political future through an impartial plebiscite. But India reneged from its promises and never implemented the resolution. Since then India and Pakistan have fought three wars, but the former never vacated Kashmir.
Now India has been deploying 600,000 troops in the territory, the highest concentration of troops anywhere in the world. It refuses either to vacate its
military occupation of the state or to allow the Kashmiris exercise their right to self determination, the UN resolutions notwithstanding. India’s latest diplomatic tactic to deny the Kashmiri Muslims their fundamental rights is to hold ‘ fresh elections’ of the puppetgovernment in the state and if the people rise against that unlawful regime then to have them brandedas terrorists and ride the
US bandwagon in the so called war on terror.
The sad story of the Kashmiri Muslims and their continued suppression by India is a challenge to the conscience of the Muslim world.

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