Indias immediate reaction to any sort of criticism emanating either from internal or external sources is an overwhelmingly amplified use of brute force against the rising tide of resistance of the present phase of Kashmiri intifada.
The call for justice raised by the famous Indian writer and human rights activist, Arundhati Roy, in a seminar titled “Whither Kashmir? Freedom or Enslavement,” has eloquently revealed the Indian mindset for it has adopted the role of a colonizing power soon after independence for want of replacing the British imperialism in order to subjugate and oppress the people of various regions which demanded freedom from India.
India needs Azadi from Kashmir and Kashmir from India Ms Roy asserts. She calls India a hollow super power with a security force that is being acknowledged as one of the most oppressive and tyrannical one with a shockingly horrifying track record of human rights violations.
The hue and cry raised by the Indian authorities at the call for exercising constraint on the humanitarian atrocities against unarmed protestors issued by the UN Secretary General exemplifies the Indian desire for a unipolar South Asia with India at the hub. A turbulent phase of 63 years is now morphing into a simply chaotic affair as the Kashmir issue has played central in maintaining a protracted discord between Pakistan and India. Thus, the regional peace is heavily tied to Kashmir which becomes the major cause of discontent among the people of both the nations which subsequently triggers distrust towards the West that ought to have acted as mediator for a peaceful resolution of the conflict by executing the promised plebiscite.
From this overstretched conflict has stemmed a wave of unrest that has by now engulfed the entire region, with India undoubtedly at the hub, not for being a self-envisage superpower, but for being the core that emits an uncontrolled disorder and uproar through brutal suppression of ethnic and religious minorities and supporting cross border terrorism that may lead to a renewed phase of disaster and instability for the region that may surpass the current phase.
The US and the UN, have to act the role they assign to themselves for being authoritative entities with an explicitly humanitarian mission towards a peaceful global climate in which the Kashmir issue with its intensity takes precedence over every other issue at hand.
LUBNA UMAR
Islamabad