Why October 27 is
the Blackest
Day for Kashmiris!
M Raza Malik
The people of Jammu and Kashmir have been engaged in a peaceful
struggle to achieve freedom from India for the past several decades and the
worst kind of Indian state terrorism during all these years has failed to
intimidate them into submission.
The sufferings of Kashmiri people started with the landing
of Indian army in Jammu and Kashmir on October 27 in 1947. Since then the
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and across the globe are
observing the day as Black Day and consider it as the blackest day in the
history of Kashmir. India had landed its troops in Jammu and Kashmir in
complete disregard to the Indian Independence Act and Partition Plan in 1947,
which stated that the Indian British Colony would be divided into two sovereign
states, India, with Hindu-majority areas, and Pakistan, with the
Muslim-majority areas of Western provinces and east Bengal.
The Partition Plan had given the then princely states the
choice to join either of the two countries on the basis of their geographical
situation and communal amity but India forcibly occupied Hyderabad, Junagarh
and Jammu and Kashmir. Hyderabad and Junagarh were Hindu-majority states but
their rulers were Muslims. Jammu and Kashmir was a Muslim-majority state and
had a natural tendency to accede to Pakistan, but its then Hindu ruler,
Maharaja Hari Singh, destroyed the future of Kashmiri people by announcing its
accession to India under a controversial document (Instrument of Accession).
Many neutral observers like British historian, Alistair Lamb, reject the
existence of any such document with the argument that if it were there then
Indian government would have made it public either officially or at any
international forum. Indian troops, the forces of Dogra Maharaja, and Hindu
extremists massacred over three hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslims within a
period of two months with the intention to change the demographic composition
of the territory.
It is also a reality that the so-called Boundary
Commission, headed by British Barrister, Cyril Radcliff, that demarcated
partition line between Pakistan and India, played a pivotal role in paving the
way for Indian illegal occupation of Kashmir. The Commission split Gurdaspur, a
Muslim majority area, under a conspiracy, and handed it over to India,
providing it land route to Jammu and Kashmir.
Right from first day, the people of Kashmir did not accept
Indian illegal occupation and started an armed struggle supported by a public
uprising in 1947. After sensing defeat to its forces, India approached the UN
Security Council on January 1, 1948, seeking its help to settle the dispute
over Kashmir. Indian invasion and occupation of Kashmir was nullified by the
successive UN Security Council resolutions. The Security Council passed two
resolutions on August 13, 1948, and January 5, 1949, which were accepted both
by Pakistan and India. Through these resolutions, the UN approved a ceasefire,
demarcation of the ceasefire line, demilitarization of the state and a free and
impartial plebiscite to be conducted under the supervision of the United
Nations. Although one phase of these resolutions (ceasefire and demarcation of
ceasefire line) was implemented while demilitarization of the occupied
territory and holding of a plebiscite still remain unimplemented.
The Kashmiris’ determination and international pressure
forced Indian rulers to promise before the world community to resolve the
dispute and to give the people of Kashmir an opportunity to exercise their
right of self-determination, but later they backtracked from their commitments.
The continued callous attitude of New Delhi towards permanently settling the
Kashmir conflict has been a constant threat to the peace, security and
stability of the entire South Asian region for the last sixty-six years.
After the failure of all peaceful means of resolving the
Kashmir dispute, the people of Kashmir started a massive agitation, in 1989. It
gathered momentum with the passage of time and compelled the Indian rulers to
start negotiations with Pakistan to hammer out a resolution of the dispute. The
talks process between Pakistan and India started in January 2004 and continued
till the occurrence of Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008. While Pakistan
exhibited full seriousness and considerable flexibility in the dialogue
process, India’s intransigent approach continued to remain the biggest hurdle
in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute and it always looked for excuses to
derail the peace process. After the Mumbai incident, it wasted no time in
putting the responsibility of these attacks on Pakistan and its intelligence
agencies without any substantive evidence. Now an officer of Indian home
ministry has revealed that India itself had orchestrated the Parliament and Mumbai
attacks to strengthen its anti-terror laws. Since the Mumbai attacks, the
relations between the two countries could not become normal and tension between
them still exists particularly on the Line of Control.
On the other hand, in 2008, the Kashmiris added a new
dimension to their struggle against the Indian occupation. They started taking
to the streets in large numbers to express their anti-India sentiments and
demand their right to self-determination in a peaceful manner. This mass
uprising continued for three consecutive years. Sometimes the number of
peaceful protesters thronging the streets of Srinagar had exceeded one-million
mark. However, most of the time Indian forces responded to these peaceful
demonstrators with military might. The occupation forces killed more than
two-hundred peaceful protesters during this period. Unfortunately, instead of
taking these massive demonstrations as a referendum against its illegal hold on
Kashmir, New Delhi once again resorted to dilly-dallying tactics like sending
interlocutors and different delegations to Kashmir to buy time and pacify
tempers in the occupied territory.
India has exhausted all its resources but it has miserably
failed to suppress the liberation sentiment of the Kashmiri people. It has given
its forces unbridled powers under black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers
Act, Public Safety Act and Disturbed Areas Act to commit atrocities against the
innocent and unarmed civilians in occupied Kashmir. The trigger-happy troops
have martyred around ninety-four thousand
Kashmiris, widowed more than twenty-three thousand women, orphaned over one-lac
children and molested or gang raped more than ten thousand Kashmiri women
during the past 24 years. The whereabouts of thousands of innocent youth disappeared
in troops’ custody are still not known.
The discovery of thousands of unmarked and unnamed graves
across the territory have raised apprehensions about the safety of the
disappeared youth. The human rights commission of the territory and other
international humanitarian organizations like the Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch have demanded an independent thorough investigation into
these mass graves to ascertain the identity of the buried persons. Even the
European Union Parliament had unanimously passed a resolution in its session in
Strasbourg on July 10, 2008, asking India to conduct an impartial probe into
the matter. However, all these pleas have fallen on deaf ears as India is yet
to respond.
In a bid to send a strong message to the Kashmiris that
anyone who would challenge its rule on Kashmir would be dealt with sternly, New
Delhi has started sentencing innocent Kashmiri youth to life imprisonment in
false cases. The hanging of Muhammad Afzal Guru in February this year in
connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case just to “satisfy the conscience
of Indian society” was part of this game plan. India claims that Jammu and
Kashmir is its integral part but the harassment and killing of Kashmiris in all
parts of India continues unabated.
These are the reasons for observance of October 27 as
Black Day by the Kashmiris all across the globe. The observance is intended to
draw world attention towards the miseries and plight of the Kashmiri people and
appeal to the international community to come forward and help resolve the
lingering dispute in accordance with their aspirations. It is also aimed at
sending a loud and clear message to India that the Kashmiris reject its illegal
occupation of their homeland and that they would continue their struggle till
they achieved their inalienable right to self-determination.
(The writer is a Senior News Editor at Kashmir Media
Service and can be reached at razamalik849@yahoo.com)
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