In October, the Hindu-majority Indian government revoked Article 370. This is the portion of the Indian Constitution that gave the Muslim-majority Kashmir region special status as a semi-autonomous territory. The reasoning given was to make it easier to fight against militant groups in the area that attack Indian cities. Through this action, India is able to turn the region into a military state. This move may in turn provoke those same groups, though, such as Ansar Ghawzat-Ul-Hind even more.
Kashmir is one of the most militarized locations in the world. Contested between China, Pakistan and India, there have been multiple skirmishes over the region where none of the sides have given in to defeat. India’s portion of the Kashmir region, named Jammu and Kashmir, has been hotly contested between Pakistan and India. After revoking Article 370, the Indian parliament split the region and named the splitaway piece Ladakh.
Jammu and Kashmir, as previously mentioned, has a population where the majority of its practitioners are of Islam. The current Indian government, known as the Hindu Nationalist party, has not treated the Muslim population well, with many Muslim civilians being targeted and beaten/killed by Hindu nationalists. In the Indian Parliament, Hindu politicians have attacked Muslim politicians for not reciting their nationalist chant. On Oct. 9, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that land a mosque had been on for over 150 years actually belonged to the Hindu faith due to the fact it was previously the site of a Hindu temple. Muslims are only 14 percent of the population, yet since 2009, they have made up 62 percent of victims in cases of religious violence.
Kashmir is home to a region and a people stuck in the middle. A poll done in 2007 showed that 87 percent of people in the Kashmir region wanted to be independent. Not just from India, but also from Pakistan. India’s refusal to allow this independence has caused separatist groups to form and carry out attacks throughout India such as those in Mumbai in 2008. India has claimed that these groups originate in Pakistan and are using Kashmir as a base of operations to launch attacks deeper into India.
Making the region an actual part of India does allow the Indian government to assert more control. They are able to more easily add security, limit social media access and enforce curfews that try to curb the recruitment and planning of terrorist groups. The army would also be better able to watch the border with Pakistan where the Indian government believes these groups originate from. However, through this course of action, the Indian government is playing straight into the terrorists’ propaganda.
This move by the Indian government is similar to the United States’ increasing military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where we are now stuck in and actions that led to an increasing number of recruits for groups such as Daesh.
The separatist groups in Kashmir have been arguing that the government in New Dehli wants to control the Muslim population, and the government turning the only Muslim-majority state into a militarized zone confirms this narrative. In an environment where attacks on Muslims—like when one Muslim was forced to eat pork despite it being considered sacrilege in Islam—are frequent, it is easy to see how the revoking of Article 370 only adds to the terrorists’ message that the Indian government does not care about the Muslims in the country.
This move will only further embolden these groups and make them commit more attacks against the government and the Hindu people they see as invaders on their land.
