Written Statement for the Record
Aarti Tikoo Singh
Senior Assistant Editor
The Times of India
Submitted to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation
October 20, 2019
“Human Rights in South Asia: Views from the State Department and the Region”
Location: 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
Subcommittee: Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation
October 22, 2019
Biography
I am a senior journalist based in New Delhi with almost two decades of experience in
conflict-reporting, writing, research and analysis. I am an editor with India’s largest English daily
The Times of India, and previously worked for another major English daily of India, Hindustan
Times. Having covered Kashmir extensively, I broke some of the biggest news stories and
exclusives on Kashmir, which had major policy implications for both India and Pakistan. Besides
Kashmir, I have also reported from other conflict zones of India— Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and
Assam. My opinion pieces have been published in various national and international
publications.
I have been a recipient of several awards for my research, reporting and editorial
accomplishments. I am an alumnus of Columbia University, with a Masters in International
Affairs. I worked briefly at Columbia University and interned at the United Nations and BBC in
New York.
After the forced displacement of my entire community from Kashmir in 1990 (Hindus in Kashmir
were a minority), I grew up in destitution, in Jammu, the southern part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Though I am a displaced Kashmiri with my own history of struggle as a refugee in my own
country, I do not speak as a representative of the community and their political aspirations. I
primarily identify myself as a dispassionate journalist.
Background
In 1947, after India’s Partition, Pakistani armed forces and Pashtun tribesmen attacked the
Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), comprising of three ethnically diverse regions—
Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir. The state bordering Pakistan to its West and Tibet on its East
became part of India when its ruler decided to seek India’s military help and signed a legal
instrument of accession with India. The political leadership of Kashmir (a Muslim majority
region) at the time supported the accession.
Indian forces were deployed to counter the invasion, but Pakistan managed to occupy a
considerable part of the state. In 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47, requiring
all Pakistani military personnel and tribesmen to be withdrawn from the region before a
plebiscite could be held. A plebiscite would have resulted in Kashmiris voting to join India.
However, contrary to the requirements of Resolution 47, Pakistan increased its military
presence, and no plebiscite was held. In the area of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, known as
Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), over 40,000 Hindu families were forced to flee the invading
Pashtun tribesmen. Pakistan, in all, has initiated three additional conventional wars with India in
an attempt to invade Jammu & Kashmir and seize it by force.
In 1988, during the Cold War, while the US-funded mujahideen (Taliban) fought the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan, General Zia ul Haq’s regime began training
Islamists to launch jihad in Kashmir. By the time the US withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving
Pakistan’s military and intelligence service with unaccountable funds, arms and ammunition, an
Islamabad sponsored insurgency engulfed the Kashmir Valley. Former Pakistani ambassador to
the US, Husain Haqqani, in his books has documented how the ISI-supported jihad in Kashmir
was “rooted in the ideology of Pakistani Islamists, carefully nurtured for decades by the
Pakistani military.”
Since 1990, about a thousand Hindus and nearly 15,000 Kashmiri Muslims who disagreed with
Islamist jihad and the cause of Kashmir’s secession from India, have been killed by Pakistani
sponsored militants. In confronting the Pakistan sponsored militancy, the Indian army and state
police have also committed grave human rights abuses. However, what the foot-soldiers of the
Pakistani military and ISI have done to ordinary Kashmiri Muslims in the last 30 years, pales in
comparison to the human rights violations committed by the Indian state.
In the last 30 years, militants killed more Kashmiri Muslim civilians than the members of any
other community in Kashmir.
Specifically, the militants:
● Blew up public spaces forcing people to restrict their movement and return home before
sunset and lock themselves indoors;
● Forced peaceful residents at gunpoint to provide them safe shelter by barging into
people’s homes against their wishes, staying for days, and making demands of various
nature;
● Razed bridges to prevent armed forces from entering a locality/village, thereby
ex-communicating the local Kashmiris from the outside world;
● Blocked roads, interrogated commoners at check-points, stopped ambulances, checked
drivers’ identity cards, beat them up if they defied their orders on days of their “protest”;
● Burnt schools to prevent forces from setting up security camps inside;
● Recruited child soldiers, coerced youth to come out of their homes to join protest
marches, and stone pelting squads;
● Banned national newspapers, magazines, cinema, video-halls, liquor shops, video, CD,
and cassette shops;
● Issued burqa and tilak diktats to ensure only non-hijab wearing Muslim women were
targeted with acid attacks, knee-capping, and other forms of violence;
● Illegally seized media houses to control content completely and enforced closure of
shops to show Kashmir is voluntarily shutdown;
● Forced the cancellation of a literary festival, opposed a Zubin Mehta music concert,
women rock bands, and publicly shamed a Kashmiri Muslim girl, Zaira Wasim for acting
in Bollywood;
● Threatened survivors and victims of terrorism against maligning the ‘freedom movement’
through slogans such as ‘Tehreek badnaam mat karo’. To find social legitimacy, they
also forced the children of their victims, like Mirwaiz Umar, Qazi Yasir, and Bilal Lone to
join their cause;
● Issued threats, directly or indirectly, through posters disseminated and pasted in
neighborhoods, and through acquaintances, newspapers, Whatsapp and Facebook
inboxes;
● Assassinated Shaban Shafi, Abdul Sattar Ranjoor, Mirwaiz Farooq, Moulana Showkat,
Abdul Gani Lone, Shujaat Bukhari, and other top intellectuals, dissenters, and moderate
leaders of Kashmir;
● To hide the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus in the Valley and outside, they
manufactured lies and propaganda and forced consensus around the conspiracy theory
that the government of India drove the Kashmiri Hindus out;
● In Kashmir, they called their activities Islamic ‘jihad’ and martyrdom, and outside
Kashmir, they projected themselves as ‘innocent victims’ of Indian oppression and
human rights abuses;
● Created law and order situations—stone pelting and mob violence being the persistent
tactic;
● In addition, they engaged in criminal activities like rape, forced marriages, kidnapping,
extortion, occupying properties illegally, etc.
According to Ambassador Haqqani, the Pakistan-sponsored insurgency sought to cleanse
Kashmir of non-Muslims to make the state entirely free of minorities. As a result, over 300,000
Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) were ethnically cleansed from the Valley (over 95% of the Valley’s
indigenous Hindu population) from 1989 to 1991 in a systematic campaign of targeted killings,
rape, threats, and destruction of properties and religious sites. In the ensuing three decades,
thousands of displaced Pandits have lived in dilapidated camps in Jammu and New Delhi, while
the central government of several administrations has failed to safely rehabilitate them.
Militant violence in Kashmir reached its peak in 2001, and then drastically declined in
subsequent years, leading to an upsurge in tourism, which brought an estimated 1.5 million
tourists to Kashmir in 2012 alone. At the same time, support for the insurgency started waning,
as voter participation in panchayat (village councils) and statewide elections significantly
increased. Many former militants were rehabilitated and reintegrated into society, with some
entering politics, such as Farooq Ahmed Dar, who on camera admitted to killing dozens of
Kashmiri Hindus, after which he forgot the count. However, Pakistan continued to foment
violence in the state and launch cross-border attacks. The period coincided with Islamic
radicalization through mosques, mushrooming of extremist schools of Islam like
Jamaat-e-Islami, Deoband, and Wahhabism in Kashmir, and in the last decade, smart phones
and internet access opened new floodgates to self-radicalization. Since the emergence of ISIS
and its social media propaganda, Islamic radicalization in Kashmir has reached new heights,
something prominent Kashmiri Muslim political leaders have warned against.
Many terror groups active in Kashmir today, such as Lashkar-eTaiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed
(JeM), and Hizbu-ul-Mujahideen (HM) have rightfully been labelled Foreign Terrorist
Organizations by the European Union, United States, and other countries. Yet these terrorists
continue to receive safe harbor, medical care, and financial support in Pakistan–exactly like
Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin-Laden who was killed in Abbottobad, Pakistan by US Special
Forces in 2011. These groups have launched terror attacks throughout India, including the
November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed over 165 people, and the September 2016 attack on
an Indian army base, which lead to an escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan. The
following are just a few high-profile incidents of Pakistani-sponsored terror:
● In 2016, HM commander and its social media face, Burhan Wani, was killed by security
forces, sparking widespread unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Wani openly sought to
establish a Caliphate in Kashmir. Over 7,000 civilians and 4,000 security personnel were
injured in the violence, while 82 people were killed in clashes between separatist groups
and security forces. Mobs also attacked rehabilitation camps of Hindus in six cities of
Kashmir.
● On June 14, 2018, LeT terrorists killed Shujaat Bukhari, a very senior journalist and
peace activist who had been advocating dialogue between India and Pakistan.
● On February 14, 2019, a JeM suicide bomber attacked a convoy of Indian security forces
in the Kashmir town of Pulwama killing 41 Indian security officers. The attack once again
escalated tensions between India and Pakistan and India launched retaliatory airstrikes
on a JeM terror camp in Pakistan. Following the attack, JeM founder Masood Azhar was
designated as an international terrorist by the UN Security Council.
According to the US State Department, Pakistan has committed gross human rights violations in
the part of Kashmir it occupies. In PoK, Kashmiris have held large protests alleging human
rights violations by Pakistan’s military and ISI such as extrajudicial killings of Kashmiri activists,
rigged elections, and repression of political activists.
On August 5, the Indian government passed legislation in both houses of parliament–with
support from a wide array of political parties–to remove Articles 370 and 35A of India’s
Constitution. The removal of these temporary articles sought to better integrate the residents of
Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh into the rest of India. In particular, it would provide Kashmiris with
equal protection under the law and all the rights other Indian citizens enjoy, regardless of
gender, sexual orientation, religion, or social class. It would also give Kashmiris access to better
educational and economic opportunities. Finally, the removal of Articles 370 and 35A is
expected to facilitate the rehabilitation and resettlement of the ethnically cleansed Kashmiri
Pandit population in the Kashmir Valley.
Jammu and Kashmir was also divided into two Union Territories: one for Jammu and Kashmir,
and one for Ladakh. The creation of a Union Territory in Ladakh had been a long time demand
of the people of the region, who complained of being socially and economically marginalized by
state policies that favored the Kashmir Valley.
Ground Situation Post-370
With credible intelligence reports about terror attacks and mob rioting by over ground workers of
terror groups, the government imposed restrictions on movement and a blockade on
communication, which caused massive inconvenience and discomfort to the people in Kashmir
Valley. Initially, because of the blockade, it was challenging even for the press, including me, to
report from Kashmir. Though the government lifted restrictions on movement, restored landlines,
and now has restored post-paid mobile phones as well, mobile internet, remains suspended.
After two weeks of the government imposed shutdown, Pakistan backed terror groups—Hizbul
Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammad—issued threats by circulating and
pasting posters against the resumption of business and normal life.
Militants also engaged in the following violence against Kashmiri civilians:
● The over ground workers of militants began going to neighbourhood markets, forcing
shopkeepers to roll down shutters;
● They threw car battery acid on a shopkeeper in Srinagar, beat up another shopkeeper
for opening his shop;
● A 65-year-old shopkeeper, Ghulam Mohiuddin Mir, of Abu Bakr colony in Parimpora,
was killed by terrorists on August 29;
● A violent mob hurled stones at a civilian truck in Anantnag district in South Kashmir on
August 25, killing the 42-year-old driver Noor Mohammed Dar;
● Four civilians, including a minor of a family, were shot at by terrorists in Sopore District
on September 7;
● Militants on September 17 assaulted a man and set ablaze his car at Warpora area in
Sopore town of Baramulla District;
● A truck driver along with his vehicle was set ablaze while his two associates had a close
shave in Shopian District on October 14;
● A fruit merchant was killed and another critically injured when militants fired at them in
Shopian District and a labourer was shot dead in Pulwama District on October 16.
As a result, the situation in Kashmir has turned into a civil curfew imposed by militants and their
over ground workers. Though educational institutions were opened, students have mostly
stayed home. The new normal of the markets in Kashmir is that shops open early in the morning
at 6 am and shut down by 9 am and reopen at 6 pm and close by 9 pm. On some days, shops
extend their hours to 11 am and evening hours begin at 4 pm, leading to traffic jams in the city.
Even as the upscale markets and businesses remain shut, vegetable and fruit hawkers,
pharmacies, and small vendors on the roadside, have stayed open all day from the very
beginning. Businessmen who own shops in the high-end markets are also selling their products
in flea bazaars. However, tourism has been badly hit because of an initial advisory to domestic
tourists by the government.
Violent Protests
Across the Valley, over 200 incidents of stone-pelting, mob rioting, and violence were reported
in the months of August and September. Most of them were concentrated in a few pockets of
Srinagar district. Over 50 protestors received pellet injuries in clashes with security forces,
according to official sources. While hundreds were detained under preventive custody, 102
people have been arrested under the Public Safety Act in the two months.There has been wide
coverage about the violent rioters and the injured in both Indian and international press. Human
rights activists in India have also been speaking about the abuses committed by the rioters and
arsonists at every platform inside and outside the country.
Are violent protests in Kashmir about Article 370?
None of the violent protests in Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370, have been about the
constitutional change that the government of India brought in relation to J&K. None of the
protests have demanded restoration of J&K’s flag or its constitution. Instead, in all the protests,
protestors waved only Islamic or Pakistani flags and raised Islamic or pro-Pakistan and
pro-separatist slogans, seeking separation from India.
In the biggest protest in Kashmir since August 5, protestors raised slogans of Zakir Musa, the
slain founder of provincial branch of Al-Qaeda in Kashmir. Also, Jammu Kashmir Liberation
Front, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind,
Wilayah-al-Hind (Islamic State of Jammu & Kashmir), and their supporters who are at the
forefront of these violent protests, have never believed in the Constitution of India or Jammu
and Kashmir. None of them have been proponents or supporters of Article 370. Instead,
militants and their over ground supporters (both sponsored by Pakistan) have persistently
demanded only one thing, that is, secession from India.
Can violence be dissent? Can perpetrators of violence be victims of human rights violations?
In the last 30 years, the majority in Kashmir has been silenced by the barrel of the gun that
Pakistan has aimed on Kashmir. Many prominent leaders and intellectuals of Kashmir who
disagreed with Pakistan’s cross border terrorism or militant violence, have been silenced by
bullets. Anyone among the intelligentsia who advocates peace has been gagged.
But ironically, the perpetrator of violence in Kashmir has been projected as the victim of human
rights abuse; violence and threats of violence have been presented as dissent. In none of the
great democracies like the United States, or those in Europe, have terror acts especially
sponsored by a rival state, been legitimized by calling it dissent. In a democracy, expression of
dissent or disagreement is not possible amidst intimidation and extreme violence. But it is a
travesty that the world press, which completely ignores or is not even aware of the history and
context of Kashmir and violence in the region, has unwittingly come to justify the perpetrators of
Mumbai terror attacks and September 11. It is also disingenuous that when it has been amply
established that terrorism in Kashmir is sponsored by Pakistan, a theocratic military state with
pretensions of a democracy, the criticism is deflected by calling terror groups like JeM, LeT and
HM as non-state actors. Husain Haqqani and Arif Jamal have documented how Kashmir-centric
terror groups enjoy complete protection and patronage of the Pakistani military and ISI.
Kashmiri society has been under siege for the last three decades because of Pakistan’s proxy
war in Kashmir. In an atmosphere of fear and dread, Kashmir has lost its voice and it speaks up
only during elections when it votes, and then too only if there is a sense of security. Because of
the fear of Pakistan sponsored violence, the dominant narrative remains critical of human rights
violations committed by the Indian security forces. It is absolutely necessary that Indian forces
are held accountable and prosecuted, but it is also important that Kashmiris have the sense of
security to speak freely and fearlessly about the colossal abuse they have suffered at the hands
of Pakistan sponsored militant violence.
Kashmiris, as of now, are caught in a ‘spiral of silence’, a process first theorized by German
political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in the context of German electorate in 1965. Spiral
of silence is a phenomenon in which one opinion becomes so forcefully dominant, that those
disagreeing refuse to speak up due to fear of harm or social isolation from holders of the
dominant opinion, and thereby fail to realize that their disagreement actually forms a majority.
This theory draws from the Lockesian view that humans are social animals and are therefore
afraid of isolation in their environment. Individuals constantly look for their own purpose,
meaning, relevance, popularity, respect, and integration in the society they live in. That requires
the individuals to extend huge importance to their society’s opinions and approval.
“Individuals who when observing their environments notice that their own personal opinion is
spreading and taken over by others, will voice this opinion self-confidently in public. On the
other hand, individuals who notice that their own opinions are losing ground, will be inclined to
adopt a more reserved attitude when expressing their opinions in public.” The supporters of one
opinion becomes confident, articulate, and can even turn vociferous while the proponents of the
other opinion will retreat, withdraw and turn silent, especially in an environment ridden with
intimidation, violence and death. Silence, in such scenarios, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Neumann warns that “there is a definite influence on the environment; an opinion that is being
reinforced in this way appears stronger than it really is, while an opinion suppressed as
described will seem to be weaker than it is in reality. The result is a spiral process which
prompts other individuals to perceive the changes in opinion and to follow suit, until one opinion
has become established as the prevailing attitude while the other opinion will be pushed back
and rejected by everybody with the exception of the hard core that nevertheless sticks to that
opinion.”
This problem of perception that drives a public opinion leads to a complication called accuracy
of people’s environmental perceptions. The tendency of people to believe that others agree with
them is seen as a pattern called the ‘looking glass perception’. In a study on racism, Fields and
Schuman, for example, found that those supporting racial equality and civil liberties were
actually in the majority but were rarely believed to be a majority by themselves or by others in
the sample. This situation when a minority position in public opinion is incorrectly perceived to
be the majoritarian view has been termed as ‘pluralistic ignorance’.
This presents a huge challenge. Are the most dominant narratives in a conflict even
majoritarian? Do violent movements represent the majority or the minority? If a Kashmiri Muslim
is being silenced by the sword hanging on his head–that he is not a true Muslim if he speaks up
against the Muslim who riddled his son or father with bullets–can there be an intellectually
honest debate about human rights? Is the non-state really non-state when we know that the
bullet that recently killed a 65-year-old Kashmiri Muslim shopkeeper came from Pakistan Army?
The reality on the ground is that the majority in Kashmir seek and observe peace and they will
speak up only when the atmosphere is conducive. Since August 5th, the only violence that has
been committed in Kashmir is by Pakistan sponsored militants and separatists, not the majority
that abides by the rule of law. Human rights in Kashmir is not about the suspension of mobile
and internet services; it’s about the struggle of those who want to live freely and fearlessly and
those who don't want them to live. Pakistan wants Kashmiri Muslims to die for an Islamic cause
while Kashmir wants to live for a better future for its children.
So in any debate on human rights violations, it is important to identify who the real perpetrators
and the victims of abuse are. In Kashmir’s case, Pakistan is clearly the biggest violator of
human rights. Pakistan therefore has no legal or moral authority to speak of human rights
violations in Kashmir while India has lost thousands of Kashmiri citizens and soldiers to the
violence Pakistan has perpetrated.
The revocation of special status of J&K strengthens human rights
India chose to be a secular, democratic republic, unlike Pakistan which chose to be a theocratic
state, that today is run by its military while attempting to maintain a civilian face. As a secular
republic, with a strong union, constitutionally, India’s vision for itself is to promote egalitarianism,
equality where everyone has individual freedom to be who they are. Now for India to accept a
special status for a state only because its a Muslim majority, is in direct contradiction with its
philosophy and future outlook.
India rejected Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s two nation theory and the idea of Pakistan which
propounded that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist. The founding fathers of the Republic
fought against the exclusivity of religious groups and rejected it in unequivocal terms in 1947.
Until the revocation of its special status and its separate constitution, Jammu and Kashmir was
in the same league as 27 countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, and Somalia which limit a
woman’s ability to pass on citizenship to her child or spouse, if she was married to a non-J&K
resident. J&K, a constitutionally privileged state in India, had reduced women to second class
citizens, under its permanent residency laws guaranteed by Article 35A. J&K’s laws also barred
West Pakistan refugees from living in J&K since Partition and from acquiring state subject rights.
The state also denied thousands of descendants of Dalits, who were brought in from Punjab as
government sweepers in 1957, from getting any government jobs other than sweepers.
In a society still plagued by caste discrimination, the state laws ensured that the sweeper
community could not even get a Scheduled Caste certificate from the state government. As a
result, they were rendered ineligible for all the benefits under federal social programs too. Hindu
and Sikh refugees from West Pakistan remained non-permanent resident second-class citizens.
The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A has put an end to the era of misogynistic and
xenophobic attitudes that the state promoted in the last seven decades.
American foreign policy in South Asia has hurt human rights and democracy in the
region
Because Pakistan made itself useful to the US during the Cold War, the US has consistently
enabled and empowered Pakistani military establishment to wage war against democratic India,
including by means of a vast network of Islamist terror groups. This has included US Presidents
falsely certifying that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons, when in fact it was, so that it
could continue to receive American military hardware that had no purpose other than to assault
India. Pakistan has used American cooperation to develop a nuclear umbrella from behind
which it has carried out a 30 year campaign of Islamic terrorism directed against India, which
has become an all consuming crisis for India and has galvanised India into taking whatever
steps are necessary to defend itself from terrorism that Pakistan has carried out with American
patronage.
This has hurt the US as it now finds itself trapped in the longest war in its history thanks to
Pakistan using the resources it acquired under American patronage against America itself.
Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Taliban from behind its nuclear curtain has left America hostage
in Afghanistan to Pakistan, neither able to force Pakistani cooperation nor able to complete its
mission, nor able to withdraw without Afghanistan once again becoming Pakistan's terror
factory.
Despite this history, many sections of the US political class and Western media are found
censuring India while giving a free pass to Pakistan. This has happened even when the
Pakistani Prime Minister made clear that Pakistan's activities in Kashmir are an Islamic struggle
or jihad. These sections of the press and political class have rarely, if ever, acknowledged the
ethnic cleansing of the Hindus of Kashmir–the indigenous people of Kashmir–by Pakistani
sponsored terrorists. They have never asked that if it is a struggle for Kashmiri independence,
rather than a jihad against Hindus, how was it that the first step taken by Pakistan sponsored
terrorists was the extermination of Kashmiri Hindus.
Furthermore, the territory of J&K that is occupied by Pakistan has been subjected to ethnic
re-engineering by Pakistan to such an extent that now 97% of its population is Punjabi
speaking. This while India spent 70 years shielding the residents of the Kashmir Valley from
encroachment by any Indian ethnic population. In addition, while India has spent billions of
dollars every year in Kashmir for development, infrastructure, education, hospitals, and
increasing living standards, the indigenous inhabitants of PoK have no access to modern
education, healthcare or transportation infrastructure.
Recommendations
The US must understand that there is a paradigm shift in India because of Islamic terrorism.
Pakistan’s cross border jihad in the last three decades has led to the rise of a radical fringe
within Hindu society which has manifested itself in cow vigilantism and lynchings of innocent
Muslims over beef. It has also politically polarized Indian society, which has been culturally
largely peaceful, tolerant and pluralistic. If Pakistan continues to use jihad as a tool of foreign
policy towards India, it will only strengthen the extremist elements among Hindus. That in turn
will influence the overall politics of India, pushing it further right and aggressive. As it is, there is
almost complete unanimity in India that any government in New Delhi must be on an offensive
against Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism across the Line of Control. If the world assists
Pakistan's jihad against India under the pretence of human rights, the radicals will push New
Delhi to tell that world in no uncertain terms that the Democratic Republic of India needs no
lectures from patrons of the world's prime state sponsor of terrorism.
Therefore, US policy makers should understand that any tolerance for Islamist terrorism against
India in Kashmir or other regions, will only further empower the fringe amongst Hindus. The US
pressure following the 9/11 attacks forced Pakistan to dial down the rhetoric of jihad in Kashmir,
but its energies since then have been spent primarily in keeping the Kashmiri population
inflamed against the Indian state, and preventing peace and normalcy to return.
Pakistan eagerly awaits America’s defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan, before reigniting the
flame in Kashmir again. In the meantime, before the assault on Kashmir is renewed, Pakistan
will go around the world projecting Indian state’s efforts to keep peace as “gross human rights
violations by India”. But if democracy means anything, and if we want to continue to believe that
liberal democracies are natural allies, then as duly elected legislators of one of the great
democracies of the world, you are obliged to recognize Kashmir as a victim of Pakistan’s
unrelenting efforts to destroy it and its people by cross-border terrorism.
It is time the US stopped, directly or indirectly, helping the cruel, brutal, and unjust Islamic
Republic of Pakistan in causing relentless violence against ordinary Kashmiri Muslims and other
communities in India. Members of Congress concerned about Kashmir can indicate their
sincerity by holding Pakistan accountable for its support of terrorism and grotesque human
rights violations in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Balochistan, and Sindh.
