Kashmir Day, observed on the 5th of February Every year, highlights the enduring suffering of the Kashmiri people. In post-August 2019 stasis, Kashmir has once again become a source of contention between two nuclear-armed countries. Since the illegal occupation of the valley in 1948, India has continued with recurring rhetoric on the status of the region and has pursued aggressive policies, which pose a threat to regional peace and stability. Recently, the Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh made an unfounded assertion about the completion of the Kashmir region as it was before its illegal occupation by the Indian forces. However, the notion of a “Complete Kashmir”, a disputed region between two countries, needs a timely revisit beyond India’s geopolitical ambitions.
India has been obsessed with the notion of occupying and ruling the complete region of the formally princely state of Kashmir. India has long treated it as a geopolitical trophy for its hegemonic ambitions and paranoid prestige attached to geographical expansion. This disregards the lives of the people living in that area whose right to self-determination, as enshrined by the UN Charter and Security Council Resolutions, has long been held in abeyance by India. The region remains divided into Azad and Jammu Kashmir (AJ&K), a semi-autonomous region ruled by its indigenous people on the Pakistani side, and Indian Illogically Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIJOK). It remains under the rule of both countries in parts, with the claim by India over the whole region, while Pakistan’s diplomatic position on the Right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir over the past seven decades.
Kashmir has remained a bone of contention between Pakistan and India and awaits a solution under the UN Charter. However, with the understanding that no country can unilaterally change the region’s status quo, India did so unilaterally and illegally in 2019 by stripping the region’s autonomous status. Since then it has been hell-bent on portraying a false sense of normalcy out of the most militarized region of the world.
The Indian Minister Singh’s recent remarks are harping over the fact that “J&K Is “Incomplete” Without Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. In fact, it is Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K), ruled by Indigenous people of the region, which is incomplete without IIOJK. Is India ready to let Kashmir get complete? The notion of complete Kashmir, a home to its indigenous people, can and should be achieved only through the right to self-determination of its people which India has been denying to them for more than half a millennium. What else does India think will make Kashmir get complete? In essence, a complete Kashmir means the integration of its people across physical barriers and geographical limits. It lies in the internationally recognized right of the Kashmiri people on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) to determine their future. A complete Kashmir lies in how its people wish to live a life free from colonial occupation and repression. Not in the expansion of the most militarized region and open-air prison in the world: IIJOK, under Indian control. The completion of Kashmir on a territorial basis is nothing except a project of territorial expansion.
Besides, the Defense Minister, while ignoring the illegal Indian occupation and worst colonial treatment that India has perpetrated on the people of Kashmir, in general, and since 2019 in particular, sets another criterion for its completion. That is: how does a country treat people in the respective parts of the region? The Indian Minister said without a second thought that Pakistan is not treating the people of AJK well, which India is obsessed with calling PoK or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and justifying this for its occupation. If this is the criteria, that a country not treating the people of a certain region well should cede that territory to the neighboring country, then India is supposed to cede as much of its troubled regions to its neighbors as it has. i.e. Punjab to Sikh Community, Tamil to the indigenous Tamil people, and Assam to Bangladesh, among a long list of dozens of insurgencies going on in India. Otherwise, India’s paranoid ambitions of overgrowing its geographical size can do nothing but bring regional disaster of its own causing.
In the same string, the minister took a jab in the name of cross-border terrorism in the region. Despite the fact there is no border separating the two parts of the region, it is a “line of control” that marks the self-governance of Indigenous people in AJ&K and the freedom struggle of the local people on the other side of the line: in IIJOK. That said, the Indian minister’s statement seems more of Goebbels’s maxim of “accuse(ing) your enemy of your own sins”, or to accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty of yourself. That to shadow India’s own international terrorism: reportedly in Pakistan and cross-continental terrorism, beyond the region, in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
To conclude, the Idea of “complete” Kashmir should, in essence, bring an end to the sufferings of the people in IIJOK. It should bring an end to the territorial claims and conflict over Kashmir by peaceful means. Above all, it should lead to the socio-economic integration of the region and the uplift of its people to determine their future.
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