A colony is a territory occupied and administered by people who originated from some other territory and who lack sovereignty (if they have this, they are a 'Dominion' not a 'Colony') even if they enjoy autonomy . Conquest of contiguous territory is not Colonialism. It is mere territorial expansion. The same is true regarding demographic change brought on by peaceful, even if illegal, immigration.
A country or territory which is occupied and administered by another is not necessarily a colony. The US and its allies occupied, and later maintained garrisons, in Germany and Japan- and more recently Afghanistan and Iraq- but this did not mean any of those countries were colonized. It did mean that they had done evil shit which really pissed off a much stronger power which was now systematically kicking their collective ass and taking names.
It is perfectly possible for stupid shitheads to describe something as colonialism even if isn't colonialism. Suppose a lot of immigrants move into your neighbourhood. Bigots may say 'we are being colonized by those savages. Did you know they eat puppy dogs and pussy cats?' However, we are not obliged to accept such testimony. We are welcome to tell such bigots to fuck the fuck off.
Equally, people in a portion of a country- e.g. a resource rich province or one which objects to liberal immigration laws- may think they would be better off if they separated from the rest of the nation. Such 'separatists' may claim that their province is being 'colonized' or 'plundered' or that vicious immigrants are eating their puppy dogs. But Separatism has nothing to do with Colonialism.
Back in the Nineties, a pair of Kashmiri Doctors invaded the USA as part of the colonization of that once great country by evil Islamic fanatics. Hafsa Kanjwal, though only 6 years old at that time, was a member of the Islamic Occupation Army in America which triumphed when an Islamist born in Nairobi- Barack Hussein Osama- became POTUS. Hafsa was notorious for beating, sodomizing, decapitating and committing genocide on trillions of innocent, Christian, Americans. Also, she ate their puppy dogs.
To distract attention from her own Colonialist project of subjugating Christian America, Hafsa pretends that the Kashmir her parents fled- because of a rise in Islamist terror in the region subsequent on the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan- is a colony of India. This is not the case. There may be separatism there but there was no Colonialism. Consider the American Civil War. The South was separatist. It didn't say it was a colony of the North. It said the North wanted to get rid of its 'peculiar institution'- viz. slavery. Similarly, the Islamic fanatics of Kashmir- like the Islamic fanatics in America- were attached to their own 'peculiar institution' viz. jihad against kaffirs- and display hostility to democratic institutions as well as to alethic research programs in Higher Education. Towards this end, they publish stupid, mischievous, lies so as to gain influence over bien pensant shitheads.
Hafsa Kanjwal, a Professor of stupid shite, writes in Aeon-
Colonies of former colonies
India’s ongoing subjugation of Kashmir holds portentous lessons about the nature of contemporary colonialism
But Pakistan's ongoing subjugation of Balochistan is worse as was their previous subjugation of East Bengal. If Hafsa's parents had to flee it was because Pakistan was backing Islamic terrorists in the Kashmir Valley. Sadly, they were not able to conquer it and impose Taliban rule. Hafsa was denied the opportunity to grow up illiterate. Unlike Malala Yousafzai, she was not shot in the head for the crime of going to school.
Though Islamist terrorism created a big problem in Kashmir valley, it was nothing the Indian Army could not handle. Thus Islamic terrorism has had a far more devastating impact on large swathes of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq and... actually, this problem exists even for UK and the US. But no 'portentous' lesson can be learnt from India or China in this regard. Why? They have unlimited military man-power to deal with a demographically very small threat. The plain fact is, over the last 25 years, Pakistan, with a much smaller population has taken about 80 or 90000 deaths from Islamist violence- whereas India may have taken about about 20,000. Last year, Pakistan had 1438 fatalities from Terrorism. India had 84.
In April 1955, at a closed session of the Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia,
which followed the Baghdad pact where Pakistan signed up with the 'Imperial' powers- i.e. Jim Crow America and a Britain which would soon launch, in partnership with the French and Israelis, an unprovoked attack on Egypt.
India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru
a blathershite
spoke forcefully about the need for countries in Asia and Africa to refuse to join either of the two great powers – the United States and the Soviet Union – and to remain unaligned. Arguing that alignment with either power during the Cold War would degrade or humiliate those countries that had ‘come out of bondage into freedom’, Nehru maintained that the moral force of postcolonial nations should serve as a counter to the military force of the great powers. At one point, Nehru chided the Iraqi and Turkish delegates at the conference who had simultaneously spoken favourably about the Western bloc and the formation of NATO while lamenting the continued French colonisation of North Africa. Nehru said:
We must take a complete view of the situation and not be contradictory ourselves when we talk about colonialism, when we say ‘colonialism must go’, and in the same voice say that we support every policy or some policies that confirm colonialism. It is an extraordinary attitude to take up.
Nehru was as stupid as shit. Still, his pal Kidwai had pulled the rug under his other great pal- Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmir.
A few years later, in 1961, along with Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana
who wrote to the Brits asking them not to help India against China in 1962
and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Nehru became one of the founders of the non-aligned movement. Having lifted the yoke of British colonialism,
Churchill was very evil. Did you know he prevented the Japanese from conquering India? What a bastard!
India presented itself as poised to take on the moral and political leadership of the decolonising world.
It could show them how to become incapable of feeding or defending yourself. Also, how come Eisenhower is wiping his own bum but refusing to come and wipe Nkrumah or Nehru's bum? Is it due to Eisenhower is RACIST?
This was perhaps to be expected, especially given that India was the largest and most populous country to become independent from European colonial rule.
It was the largest and most populous territory to prefer British to Indian masters. Sadly, the Brits slyly fucked off because the place couldn't turn a profit.
The story of India’s anticolonial struggle, too, had been mythologised by the nonviolent resistance offered by Indian figures such as Mahatma (‘great soul’) Gandhi. Nehru, too, was perceived as a charismatic and well-read leader who spoke for the people of Asia and Africa, and attempted to find what the scholar Ian Hall has called a ‘different way to conduct international relations’. The stature of both men played a critical role in establishing Indian dominance in the Third World order, and also in establishing ‘the idea of India’ as a secular liberal democracy that was built on the foundational idea of unity in diversity.
Nonsense! India had refused a seat on the Security Council and a larger role in world affairs. It doubled down on begging for food and 'free money' from Uncle Sam. However, it was very careful to keep biting the hand that fed it.
Even as Nehru proclaimed the moral superiority of India for taking a stance against colonialism in all forms, he oversaw India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir.
Nope. Back in 1932, at the time of the Second Round Table Conference, there was a revolt against the Maharaja of Kashmir in the North West portion of the Kingdom. The Maharaja got help from the Viceroy but that area was subsequently garrisoned by British, not Dogra, officers. At the time of Partition, the British officers were content that the territory go to Pakistan and there was also a tribal invasion assisted by Pakistani army officers. The Maharaja acceded to India and India sent troops to save the Valley whose people didn't want to be raped and massacred by the invader. The problem was that the Muslim majority of the Valley wanted to dominate Hindu majority Jammu (actually there was some ethnic cleansing there) and Buddhist majority Ladakh. Sadly, Sheikh Abdullah got a bit too big for his boots and was replaced by a capable administrator under whom Kashmir made good progress. That is why there were no support there for the Pakistani infiltrators who turned up in 1965. Meanwhile Pakistan's colonial policies towards East Bengal would lead to the partition of that country.
In the middle of the 20th century, a wave of anticolonial and national liberation movements gained independence from European powers, by exercising their right to self-determination.
No. They got freedom because the colonial power felt the game was not worth the candle. Sometimes this was because of the high cost of defeating a native insurrection. At other times, it was because the place was a shithole.
Nationalist leaders of the former colonies, however, remained committed to the ideals of the nation-state and its territorial sovereignty that derived from European modernity.
No. Nationalist leaders came in all shapes and sizes. Some were Communists. Others were theocratic. Yet others just wanted to get rich through corruption.
Independence, it was widely accepted, came in the form of the nation-state,
No. You could have a multi-ethnic empire or confederation or collection of 'Soviets' or what have you.
which outshone other forms of political organisation or possibilities.
No. Malaysia was a Federation where the Presidency rotated amongst various royal houses while Indonesia (which claimed Malaysia) went in a different, initially crazier, direction. Iran and Ethiopia had Emperors while, in some other countries, military dictators replaced monarchs.
The borders of the nation-state became contested,
like the border between France and Germany of Austria-Hungary and Italy.
as European powers often imposed boundaries that ill suited visions of what constituted the political community.
This was certainly true of inter-war Europe.
This would have deleterious consequences for places where geography, demographics, history or political aspirations posed serious challenges to nationality.
e.g. Europe.
In turn, newly formed nation-states asserted their newfound sovereignty through violence and coercion,
just as in Europe where newly formed nation-states- e.g. France- asserted their newfound sovereignty by chopping off the heads of lots of people and fighting a war in the Vendee.
which had implications for Indigenous and stateless peoples within their borders
like the Romani in Europe or the Sami in Scandinavia.
whose parallel movements for self-determination were depicted as illegitimate to the sovereign nation-state order.
Just like in Europe.
Mona Bhan and Haley Duschinski call this process ‘Third World imperialism’.
Those two shitheads don't get that a lot of 'Third World' countries had Emperors before they were colonized. Still, it is a fact that after independence, people in many African and Asian countries displayed flatulence. This highlights the paradox that decolonization did not lead, as many have claimed, to the disappearance of the colon or intestines or anal sphincter. Consider what Nehru said in a closed session of the Bandung Conference 'I did not fart just now. Evil Viceroys were causing Indians to fart. Even now, Baghdad Pact is trying to get our Iraqi friends to fart. Only through Non-Alignment based on Secular, Socialist, Sententiousness sans Sexy Shenanigans can we preserve our new found freedom from flatulence. Don't point your finger at me and hold your nose! If anyone farted it was the fucking Turkish delegate. Did you know Turkey is a member of NATO? Fuck you Turkey! Fuck you very much!'
Some anticolonial nationalists were real nationalists,
while others were pretending to come from the planet Uranus
that is, they saw claims of self-determination within their imagined community of a nation as ‘separatist’, ‘secessionist’, ‘ethnonationalist insurgencies’ or ‘terrorism’.
Why America got so angry when some nice Arab peeps came to their country and killed lots of infidels on 9/11?
Such framings, rife in Indian discourses on Kashmir, are ahistorical and dehumanising.
It is very ahistorical and dehumanising to protest against nice Muslim peeps putting kaffirs out of their misery.
When we move beyond seeing these regions from the perspective of the dominant nation-state, we come to see how they are places with their own histories, imaginaries and political aspirations –
e.g the desire to kill kaffirs. Why can't Kamala Harris just stab her Jewish husband repeatedly? Is it because she is Islamophobic?
some of which may reinscribe the nation, while others seek to move beyond it through understandings of other forms of sovereignty.
or lunacy. Still, this lady will get some nice reward for anti-India propaganda. But why bother? India is out of Quad in all but name. The danger that India might ally with America has been averted.
In popular and even scholarly discourses, colonialism is often seen as happening ‘overseas’ – from Europe to somewhere in the Global South.
No. It is not seen as happening at all. It isn't the case that people are upping sticks to go to some new continent currently only inhabited by penguins or guys with sticks through their noses.
Many people see colonialism as something that we are past temporally, despite acknowledgement of its ongoing legacies.
Which only stupid academics teaching worthless shite whine about
Forms of colonialism within the Global South remain more difficult for many to see because many of these regions are geographically contiguous to one another and, thus, seen as having some form of cultural or racial unity that would form a nation.
Colonialism and Emperors who wanted more and more territory ended a long time ago. You may as well gas on about the Spanish Inquisition. Did you know that many so called 'Protestants' nevertheless burn heretics at the stake? Look at Mike Pence.
This results in what Goldie Osuri
a Telugu Christian and anti-India hack. She is also involved in 'Whiteness studies'.
calls a ‘structural concealment of the relationship between postcolonial nation-states and their [own colonies],’ as well as the concealment of ‘the manner in which postcolonial nationalism is also an expansionist project.’ Contemporary colonies – like
Balochistan?
Kashmir, Western Sahara, Puerto Rico, Palestine, East Turkestan, among others
Puerto Rico? Why not Scotland? How about Wales?
–show the porous boundary between colonialism and postcolonialism, raising some difficult questions about the current global order.
No they show people who teach stupid shit are stupid shitheads.
The Himalayan region of Kashmir, at the northernmost tip of the subcontinent, is surrounded by India, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. Kashmir had long been a separate kingdom,
it was part of the Mughal and then the Sikh Empire. It was a British protectorate before the Maharaja acceded to India.
at the confluence of Persian and Indic spheres – hard to simply mark into the Persianate or the Indic (themselves, as Mana Kia points out, somewhat amorphous descriptions). Starting in the 16th century, Kashmir came to be ruled as a province by the Mughal, Afghan, and Sikh empires. When the British ruled the subcontinent, they sold Kashmir to the Dogras, Hindu chiefs from the nearby region of Jammu, in the aftermath of the first Anglo-Sikh War in 1846. Under the Dogras, the newly constituted Jammu and Kashmir was
slightly less shite than previously. But it was plenty shite.
one of the larger princely states within the broader ambit of British colonial rule. Its strategic significance in the north of the subcontinent was important for the British, especially during political competition with Russia for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game.
Not really. The place was very poor. Still, the Summers there were less horrible than on the Indian plains.
Unlike most princely states, Jammu and Kashmir was one of the few where the religious identity of its ruler was different from those of the majority of its subjects.
There were about 24 non-Muslim majority states ruled by Muslims. There were two or three non-Muslim ruled states with a Muslim majority- e.g. J&K and Kapurthala.
The Dogras were Hindu, while more than three-quarters of the people in the state were Muslim. This perhaps would not have been so significant had the Dogras not effectively run what the historian Mridu Rai has called ‘a Hindu state’, whereby the rulers privileged the Hindu minority and excluded ‘Muslims in the contest for the symbolic, political and economic resources of the state’. Kashmiri Muslims faced immense repression.
As they had from Afghan and other Muslim overlords
Most of them were peasants or artisans, forced to pay high taxes to the Dogra authorities. While an anticolonial movement against the British spread across British India, in Jammu and Kashmir, an anti-Dogra freedom movement gained traction in the 1930s and ’40s, only to be sidelined by the sweeping events across the subcontinent.
Nope. It came to power when Sheikh Abdullah became Premier.
During the Partition of 1947, the territories that the British directly (British India) or indirectly (princely states) governed in the subcontinent became the two new nation-states of India and Pakistan. Independence, and partition, ended nearly two centuries of British colonial rule. Partition was far from inevitable. Leaders of the Muslim League, such as Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, discussed a large federation with largely self-governing autonomous provinces to address the concerns of communities, especially Muslims of the subcontinent, who feared Hindu domination in a democratic India.
The problem was that Muslims liked killing kaffirs. Sadly, Islamists also like killing 'kufr' Muslims who aren't killing kufr Muslims because, obviously, they themselves are fucking kuffar! Kill them! As for the Shias, don't get me started mate.
In 1947, when the British hastily drew the lines that established India and Pakistan, nearly 1 million people were killed and another 15 million displaced in the ensuing violence.
Sadly, Kashmir Valley was not turned over to the tender mercies of tribals who would have raped everybody to death- including the goats.
However, the consolidation of India’s other territorial boundaries was not without incident. Junagadh, a princely state in what is today Gujarat, which had a Muslim ruler but a majority Hindu population, was annexed in February 1948; here, a plebiscite was held and an overwhelming majority voted for India. In September 1948, Nehru violently annexed the princely state of Hyderabad during what was called Operation Polo. Nehru crushed movements for self-determination in Northeastern India, in Nagaland
whose charming inhabitants liked head hunting
and Manipur.
the insurrection began in 1964. Nehru was dead by then.
In mid-1947, in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh, the last Dogra ruler, brutally crushed a local Muslim anti-Dogra rebellion. The rebels wanted Jammu and Kashmir to join Pakistan and were afraid that the Hindu ruler would opt for India. The height of the violence became known as the Jammu Massacre and lasted from October to November 1947.
Hindus and Sikhs ethnically cleansed Muslims so Jammu remained part of India.
The Dogras, supported by Right-wing forces in India, including the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the ‘National Volunteer Organisation’) ethnically cleansed Muslims from Jammu, changing the demographics of the region from a Muslim to a Hindu majority in a matter of weeks.
Dogras are smart. M.K Rasgotra was a Dogra Brahmin.
After Pathan Muslims from northwest Pakistan joined their coreligionists in the rebellion against the Dogras and were threatening to take over Kashmir, Singh signed a contested Treaty of Accession with the Indian government. By the terms of the treaty, India sent its army into Kashmir in late October 1947. India and Pakistan subsequently went to war and, in January 1948, India took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations. The UN called for a plebiscite or referendum to be held in the region once hostilities ceased (with the options being India or Pakistan). In 1949, the UN brokered a ceasefire line, later renamed the Line of Control, that divided the region between the two countries.
The UN was as useless then as it is now. At the time the US thought Abdullah might be a Commie in disguise. That's one reason the rug was pulled from underneath him. Still, he had pushed through land reform. The Valley began to prosper.
At first, Nehru agreed to the plebiscite, confident that the people of the region would vote for India. Yet, as it became clear that a plebiscite would not go in India’s favour, his commitment to it waned.
No. The Resolution was fatally flawed because it required Pakistan to remove 'tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purposes of fighting, and to prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State.' No government in Pakistan, then or now, could stop tribals rampaging.
While he ostensibly viewed the UN as an important international body tasked with promoting world peace, Nehru resisted a number of UN resolutions. He declared that Pakistan had joined military alliances with the US which made the plebiscite moot.
He was posturing for the benefit of the Indian Left. Still, Abdullah's supporters had started up a Plebiscite front in 1955.
India used other justifications for its opposition to a referendum, asserting that Pakistan had not removed its army from Kashmir, which the UN had called for, and arguing that local elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly served in lieu of the plebiscite and proved that Kashmiris had opted for India. Nehru maintained that these local elections made a plebiscite redundant. In fact, UN resolutions had called for both countries to remove their troops, but there was no agreement about the manner of troop removal, or their number, nor about the entity that would oversee the plebiscite.
In other words, the resolution was worthless. Why not ask Cows to stop saying 'moo'? That would be cool.
In 1951, the US also stated that local elections in Kashmir were not a substitute for a plebiscite.
Nor was sodomizing goats. But you can't prevent tribal militias from doing so any chance they get.
Within the part of Kashmir that it controlled, the Indian government put client regimes in power that were in support of accession to India, promising them greater autonomy within the Indian union. This autonomy was enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which gave the Jammu and Kashmir state ‘special status’ within the Indian Union.
In other words, it would have lower rights. Sheikh Abdullah was cool with that because it meant, when he returned to power, he could push through draconian legislation to incarcerate his opponents.
It ‘allowed’ the state its own constitution, flag and legislative assembly; in addition, the head of the state was called a prime minister, unlike Indian states where the head was a chief minister.
Under Provincial Autonomy, they were 'Prime Ministers'. J&K's Premier turned into a Chief Minister after 1965.
India was supposed to be responsible for defence, foreign affairs and communication. While India argued that Kashmir’s client regimes and local political leaders were ‘democratically elected’, this was not the case. The first election in 1951 for the local assembly was rigged as the pro-accession National Conference ran unopposed in 73 out of 75 seats. Those who opposed Kashmir’s accession to India were not allowed to run.
Pakistan did get around to holding a free and fair general election some twenty years later. It promptly broke in two. Incidentally, Pak occupied Kashmir is supposedly independent.
Pakistan resisting its troop removal from Kashmir was also based on the argument that a plebiscite could not take place under a local government that was effectively put in power by the Indian state as that would influence the outcome.
Within a few years, India moved beyond the restricted mandate of Article 370, and started to intervene in Kashmir’s internal affairs. Kashmir’s first prime minister and client politician, Sheikh Abdullah, offered some resistance.
His grandson just won the assembly election. It looks as though statehood will be restored next month.
A 1953 coup replaced him with his deputy, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad. The Indian government would replace him with the next prime minister, G M Sadiq. Meanwhile, Kashmiri resistance to Indian rule grew, as Kashmiris demanded the plebiscite
Abdullah's supporters did that.
recommended by the UN and agreed upon by India and Pakistan.
Not really. There was some talk of Nehru letting go of Kashmir, but that ended when he died. Ayub Khan thought the people of the Valley would welcome Pakistan's army in '65. But they hated Pakistan even more than they hated kaffirs.
In the 1960s, some organised political mobilisations began to speak of a third option – complete independence from both India and Pakistan. Eventually, in the late 1980s, a rigged election and the impact of international developments – including the first Intifada in Palestine and the Afghan defeat of the Soviet Union – sparked an armed rebellion against Indian rule, supported by Pakistan.
Which failed miserably. Pak sponsored terrorists decided killing Pakistanis was safer and more profitable than going across the border and getting slaughtered by the Indian army. Shooting Malala Yousafzai is just so much more satisfying than having some Indian interrogator shove a bumboo up your bum.
India militarised Kashmir at this time, making it the most militarised region in the world.
Both countries need a place to park their soldiers.
The 1990s were a harrowing period in Kashmir, with daily news of killings, massacres, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, torture, crackdowns and arrests.
People in Delhi or Islamabad laughed heartily at such news. But, the problem with terrorism is that spill over into your own backyard. Hindu India had less to fear in this regard. Islamic Pakistan has suffered greatly. It can't even protect Chinese nationals. the danger is that Chairman Xi will abandon that bankrupt failed state while forming an alliance with India. After all, Xi wrote the book on how to re-educate Muslim separatists. I suppose after the Dalai Lama pops his clogs, Nehru's China alliance will be revived.
Protected by draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Indian army had (and still has) impunity in its control and governing of Kashmir.
Just like Pakistani army in Azad Kashmir or Balochistan.
As Amnesty International reported in 1995, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed in 2018 and 2019, there is a ‘consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir’.
Scrapping statehood- thus bringing the police under the central government- turned out to be a great idea. The contrast between the freedom and security on the Indian side of the border and terrorism afflicted Islamic Pakistan has become stark indeed. Still, no doubt, this lady wants Kashmir valley can come under the Taliban so that people without penises are confined to their own homes.
Kashmir is India’s colony.
No. It is an integral part of the Indian Union. Pakistan occupied Kashmir is a colony.
The exercise and expansion of Indian territorial sovereignty, especially in Kashmir, is a colonial exercise.
Only if Texas is a colony of the US and Fort Cavazos hosts an army of occupation.
The exercise of Indian power in Kashmir is coercive, lacks a democratic basis, denies a people self-determination, and is buttressed by an intermediary class of local elites or compradors.
Only in the sense that the exercise of US power in Texas is coercive. Did you know that Islam is not the State religion of Texas? Women there don't even have to wear burqa! How can you say such a place is not the colony of the Satanic kuffar government of Amrika?
But it is also colonial because India’s rule in Kashmir relies on logics of more ‘classical’ forms of colonialism from Europe to the Global South:
just like Joe Biden is relying on Jewish logic to befool the innocent Muslims of America so that they are not even knowing they are Muslim!
civilisational discourses, saviourism, mythologies, economic extraction and racialisation. As with all imperial or colonial forces, India has sought to rule over Kashmir through subjugating its people and trampling their rights.
Just as Sir Keir Starmer is presiding over genocide of trillions of Muslims in UK while Joe Biden is personally sodomizing trillions of Netan-Yahoos just because this irks Hamas.
India’s status as a leader of a global anticolonial order
is like Britain's status as a leader of opposition to the Spanish Inquisition.
has made it difficult for the world to see Kashmiris as colonised.
Just as it has become difficult to see that Britain is colonized by Sir Keir Starmer who is busy exterminating trillions of indigenous Muslims.
It has obscured the anticolonial struggle of Kashmiris against India.
Which, sadly, isn't as lucrative as the struggle against the kuffar of Pakistan.
So, there has not been much support for Kashmir’s anticolonial struggle among various solidarity and anticolonial movements around the world.
Support for the Tibetans was and is useless. The same goes for support for Baloch or Ahmadiyas or non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan.
For decades, India insisted that the ‘Kashmir conflict’ was a territorial dispute to be solved between India and Pakistan; in recent years, it has denied that there even is a dispute or conflict in Kashmir. India instead maintains that Pakistan is interfering in India’s ‘internal affairs’.
It claims PoK. Pakistan may realize it was a mistake to pretend the place was independent.
This claim completely erases the agency of Kashmiris who have been demanding their right to self-determination for more than seven decades.
Sadly, this lady's claims don't erase shit.
Today, from Indian leaders on international forums to the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) IT Cell accounts on social media, you will hear that Kashmir is ‘an integral part of India’. The repetition is often supplemented by narratives of a 5,000-year-old Indian civilisation featuring a prominent role for Kashmir or claims that Kashmir simply belongs to Hindus.
How can anything belong to kaffirs? Next you will be saying that Biden has the right to rule US even though he does not have long beard and an Islamic name! Also, why hasn't he forced Kamala to wear burqa and to stab her Jewish husband repeatedly?
In reality, Kashmir’s history is far more vibrant than that conceived of by exclusionary Indian nationalist history;
Sadly, because of the Indian army, its vibrant history could not end with everybody- including the goats- getting raped to death by Afghans
Kashmir defies easy civilisational binaries.
Just like America which is actually contiguous to Mecca Sharif. Yet Joe Biden is pretending it is not now nor has always been an integral part of the Caliphate.
Through the Silk Road, Kashmir was a pivotal part of East and Central Asia.
Nope. It didn't matter in the slightest. The place was very poor. Still, it could provide a refuge from Mongol or other invaders from time to time.
Kashmiri traders and travellers journeyed from Srinagar to Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashgar and Tibet.
Also goats used to visit. This was very very important because vibrant goats were embracing Islam and saying 'death to kaffirs!' and 'USA is the Great Satan!'
Just as Kashmir was home to vibrant Sanskrit literature like the Rajatarangini, it was also home to Persian literature, like the Waqiat-i-Kashmir
a chronicle of famine and death
and the Baharistan-i-Shahi.
which was popular amongst goats.
Kashmir does not exclusively belong to any community – it has been home to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims (including Sunnis and Shias) and Sikhs.
What about goats? Were they not very vibrant?
Many Indian scholars, too, replicate the notion that Kashmir is ‘integral’ to India. Viewing Kashmir’s history only from the prism of Indian nationalist frameworks, scholars like Sumit Ganguly and Sumantra Bose are unable to move beyond the need to situate Kashmir firmly within the Indian nation-state.
Which is where it has remained for 75 years.
Even the postcolonial scholar Partha Chatterjee, who, while critical of nationalism and a founder of the field of subaltern studies, conceptualises Kashmir entirely within an Indian constitutional or national framework.
Because Pak army is shit.
Mainly focusing on the events surrounding 1947 in Kashmir, as well as the decades after the armed rebellion of the 1980s, an earlier generation of Indian scholars tried to find answers to the ‘failures’ of Indian democracy to better accommodate Kashmir within its federal structure, refusing to acknowledge the denial of self-determination and imposition of a colonial occupation.
Just like Joe Biden who won't even admit that US troops are forcefully subjugating trillions of Texan Muslim goats.
More recently, the field of Critical Kashmir Studies has emerged to contest these statist framings, placing the study of Kashmir more firmly into anticolonial and anti-occupation epistemologies.
Sadly, the field of Critical Texan Studies has, as yet, failed to place the study of Tacos on a firmly anti-Biden footing. This is because relevant goats are lacking in vibrancy probably because they are not playing pivotal role in the Silk road.
Scholars of Critical Kashmir Studies
are less vibrant than goats. Sad.
examine how colonialism, settler-colonialism and occupation are all important aspects of India’s relationship with Kashmir, elements of which India has used to fortify its rule in Kashmir over time, and to manage Kashmiri resistance.
Just like the illegal American occupation of Texas.
In truth, Kashmir was made integral to India in the aftermath of Partition.
India has a unitary constitution. There is no 'dual sovereignty' such as is enjoyed by Texas.
Through Kashmir’s client regimes, as well as the type of state-building that occurred under those regimes, India was able to further legally, economically and politically integrate Kashmir into the Indian Union. In my book Colonizing Kashmir (2023), I examine the decade that Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, the second prime minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was in power, from 1953-63. As a client politician, he was tasked with confirming the state’s contested accession to India, but also with ensuring that Kashmiris realised that being under Indian rule would benefit them.
He was a good administrator. The stupid Kamraj plan ousted him.
The Indian government and Kashmir’s client regimes initially supposed that, if Kashmiris were to see the benefits of Indian rule, alternative political aspirations, such as independence or merging with Pakistan, could be kept at bay. As Nehru is reported to have told his predecessor, Sheikh Abdullah: ‘India would bind Kashmir in golden chains.’
Reported by a liar. India had no fucking gold.
I argue that Bakshi did this by utilising the politics of life, in which the Indian government and Kashmir’s client regimes propagated development, empowerment and progress to secure the wellbeing of Kashmir’s population and to normalise the occupation for multiple audiences.
This proves he was very evil.
In an attempt to secure the livelihoods of Kashmiris, the politics of life entailed foregrounding the day-to-day concerns of employment, food, education and provision of basic services. At the same time, demands for self-determination were heavily repressed.
Not really. Kashmiris are a sensible people.
Policies focused on land reform, building schools and increasing employment opportunities.
Bakshi was acutely invested in financially integrating Kashmir to India. He differed from Abdullah in seeing financial integration as important to development. Between 1953-1954, Bakshi renegotiated Kashmir’s financial relationship with the Indian government, placing certain fiscal demands on the Indian state with regards to grants and agricultural subsidies. The new arrangement also undermined Kashmir’s autonomy, ensuring that it would not be self-sufficient.
i.e. less reliant on medical and educational services provided by goats.
In this way, Kashmir grew dependent on the Indian state,
i.e. it stopped being as poor as shit
which gave the Indian government great leverage. Bakshi’s example is important to understand that colonial occupations are not a one-way process.
Similarly, the fact that Texans have a good standard of living doesn't mean they aren't actually starving Muslims who have been befooled by Biden into thinking they are kaffirs of some disgusting sort.
They require native enablers, local collaborators who have agency in determining its contours.
and are respectably married to other goats
In the 1950s and ’60s, India also turned to film and tourism in order to further India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir, especially for Indian audiences.
The TV series 'Dallas' furthered America's colonial occupation of Muslim majority Texas- especially for audiences made up of kuffar goats.
Dozens of Indian films, including most of the leading blockbusters like Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) or Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), were made in Kashmir during this time, and middle- and upper-class Indian tourists flocked to Kashmir throughout the year for fun and adventure.
Pakistan was much nicer that India in that it sent terrorists not tourists.
Through their personal or cinematic experiences of Kashmir’s beautiful landscape – its rivers, lakes, forests and mountains – Kashmir became what Ananya Jahanara Kabir calls a ‘territory of desire’ for the Indian imaginary, consolidating colonial claims.
Just as 'Dallas' consolidated Kuffar colonial claims on the purely Islamic lands of Texas.
Kashmir was also a place of religious attachment for Indian Hindus,
which is why Kashmiris like killing Hindus. Sadly, two can play at that game.
and cultivation of Kashmir’s links with Hinduism was important to the early Indian colonial project.
Whereas killing Hindus and Sikhs was important to the early Pakistani colonial project. Sadly, they eventually had to settle for killing Bengalis, Baloch, Ahmadiyas and each other.
Nehru and other Indian leaders would say that India’s secular ideals (as opposed to Pakistan’s religious ones) were proven superior through its only Muslim-majority state ‘choosing’ India.
Abdullah and his son and his grandson have chosen India. The last named is back in office as Chief Minister.
Despite exploiting Kashmir’s ‘secular credentials’ for international audiences,
which is what America did when it represented pious Texan Muslims as 'cowboys' in films like 'Stagecoach' and 'Red River'.
for domestic ones, India largely presented Kashmir as a Hindu place
Texans were presented as speaking English and going to Church whereas the fact is 1.5 trillion Texans are Arabic speaking Muslims.
and the heart of Indian civilisation from ancient to present times. Muslim monuments, mosques, figures and histories were erased or toned down in tourism materials for Indian travellers.
Who were escaping from supposedly Texan 'cowboys'.
In the dozens of Indian films made in Kashmir
they were typical rich girl loves poor boy or, more complicatedly, poor girl is actually rich girls who loves rich boy who is actually very poor because two babies were swapped at birth or some such hooey.
during this time, it was rare to find a Muslim character, astounding given its Muslim-majority status.
Not astounding given the nature of the films. If the characters involved were Muslim rich girl can have temporary marriage with poor boy or, if things are the other way around, rich dude can have 4 poor wives and just keep divorcing them as fresh goods enter the market.
Through educational institutions, school curricula and cultural reform, the Indian government and Kashmir’s client regimes have attempted to produce certain kinds of Kashmiris, in particular, good Kashmiri secular subjects.
Why not concentrate on churning out terrorists who will force women to stay at home?
Yet, as a part of this secularism, historical and literary works have foregrounded Hindu geographies, imaginaries and histories, relying on British colonial and Brahmanical understandings of Kashmir’s history. For example, the ‘origin’ story of Kashmir (basically, how the region came to be) used in history curricula and tourism manuals relied on mythological Sanskrit texts like the Rajatarangini. It portrayed Hindus as indigenous or aboriginal to Kashmir, and Kashmir being a place of ancient Hindu learning.
Whereas, as with Texas, Kashmir was actually contiguous with Mecca Sharif. Its original inhabitants spoke Arabic till subjugated by Joe Biden.
Muslims were depicted as ‘invaders’.
Whereas they were actually indigenous terrorists.
Accounts of Kashmir’s past rely on Sanskrit texts (and also conflate mythology with history) while erasing other works in Persian that offer different narratives of history and belonging by drawing upon Kashmir’s significance for the Islamic world.
Sadly, that significance now lies in the fact that if you do terrorism there, your life will be very brief.
In short, Indian nationalist history has relied on Orientalist and Brahmanical renderings of history to help enable anti-Muslim history.
Whereas this lady's history relies on stupidity and ignorance.
This has then furthered the idea that Kashmir is ‘integral’ to India.
Not to mention a place that is lethal for Islamist terrorists.
Bakshi’s decade in power consolidated India’s colonial occupation of Kashmir, but it still did not result in emotionally integrating Kashmiris to the Indian union. The year 1963, when Bakshi was ousted from power, saw the flourishing of large movements for self-determination in Kashmir.
If so, why were Pakistanis not welcomed in 1965?
After the Indian government massively rigged a local election in 1987,
The Nehru dynasty and the Abdullah dynasty were playing silly games. Sadly, both dynasties have grown stronger over the past couple of years.
Kashmiris took up armed resistance.
Nafsa and her parents invaded the US towards this end.
The Indian state resorted to killings, torture and disappearances.
Nafsa and her parents became US citizens. Their taxes helped pay for the slaughter of 1.3 million Muslims and the displacement of tens of millions more in the so called 'war on terror'. No doubt, Nafsa is delighted that the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan. If only India could be defeated militarily so Kashmiri girls can enjoy the benefits of Sharia law!
This does not mean that the decades prior were peaceful –
It did mean the Kashmir Valley didn't turn into a Taliban training camp and US drones didn't keep slaughtering its people. Evil Indian Army was responsible for this tragic outcome.
state repression was high – but that various strategies were foregrounded in different moments, especially in response to Kashmiri resistance and international developments.
In August 2019, India revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status,
thus greatly curbing terrorism and corruption. Now the Abdullahs are back in charge, things will worsen.
fully annexing the region, and advancing its settler-colonial ambitions.
Only in the sense that Nafsa is advancing her settler-colonial ambition to turn the US into an terrorist training camp.
The government revoked laws that had previously restricted land, property and employment rights to Kashmir’s permanent residents.
They remain. Sadly, the Kashimri Muslims colonial-settler desire to dominate Ladakh has been frustrated. Will Jammu be split off or will it be left to the tender mercies of the corrupt Abdullah clan?
These restrictions had been insisted upon by Kashmir’s earlier client regimes to protect the demographics of the Muslim-majority state. Jammu and Kashmir’s Muslims now fear demographic change and an accelerated settler-colonial agenda by which Indian (Hindus) can now buy land and property and settle in the region, undermining the movement for self-determination. Indian officials are already on the record calling for ‘Israeli-like’ settlements to be built in Kashmir for Hindus.
Christian Americans may equally fear Islamist settler-colonialism. Did you know Muslims are buying property in your neighbourhood? This is because they plan to eat your puppy dog.
The Modi government’s removal of Article 370 was based on a
decision by the Supreme Court which said the place had 'no shred of sovereignty'.
long-standing demand by Hindu nationalists
those evil bastards don't want Muslim girls to be shot in the head if they have the temerity to go to shcool
who felt unhappy that the Indian state under the Indian National Congress was trying to appease Kashmir’s Muslims with promises of autonomy.
Indira Gandhi didn't offer anyone autonomy. She offered them forced sterilization. Still, it must be said, had she been alive, there would have been no ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits.
This decision was immensely popular in India.
though the biggest beneficiary was the Kashmir Valley.
Today, India is again using the politics of life, or the idea that it is benefiting Kashmiris through development and better opportunity to justify the abrogation, while also using film and tourism to declare normalcy.
India just keeps winning. Evil Indians in America may also prevent Islamist Colonialist in that country from properly slaughtering kaffirs there. Also, did you know many American girls go to school? Why is Biden not arranging for them to be shot in the head?
In the current phase of Indian control, the Indian state has completely undermined civil society.
i.e. shooting school girls in the head.
All possible modes of dissent – from pro-freedom groups
shooting shooting-girls in the head
to journalism,
praising bearded dudes who shoot school-girls in the head
academia and human rights organisations
shitty blathershites.
– have been clinically silenced.
Not, sadly, with bullets in the head. Even evil Indian bastards understand that only school-girls deserve this benefit.
From internet shutdowns, to the arrests of journalists or human rights defenders, to the surveilling of social media sites and restricting movement by suspending passports, India has left no stone unturned to criminalise
terrorism. Indeed, they are even cracking down on corruption. Who will shoot school-girls in the head if this terrorism continues?
political speech and project normalcy to domestic or international audiences. A new description of ‘white-collar terrorist’ is given to anyone who contests Indian sovereignty, and anti-terror legislation is used against all forms of expression, including for example, against students cheering for the Pakistani cricket team, as happened last year.
Cricket is un-Islamic. Shoot them in the back of the head- more particularly if they are female.
Because Kashmiri Muslims fear losing their livelihoods or property, many have been forced to resort to self-censorship.
Whereas, in America, Nafsa's family didn't need to self-censor. They loudly condemned America's war on terror. Sadly they failed to shoot their daughter in the head even though she went to school.
The United Arab Emirates and Israel have signed agreements with the Indian government, ensuring foreign investment for Kashmir. India has long exploited Kashmir’s natural resources, including water. During the cold winter months, Kashmiris face electricity scarcity and loadshedding. Yet India sells Kashmir’s hydroelectric power to Rajasthan and other states.
Sadly, it is refusing to shoot Kashmiri school-girls in the head.
Kashmir could see escalating climate disaster; experts have long warned about its receding glaciers and other ecological fragilities, exacerbated by decades of military occupation.
by Pakistan and China. Incidentally Pak handed over some of its captured Kashmiri territory to China.
With the Indian government giving contracts to Indian companies to mine for minerals,
like Pakistan, it should be giving contracts to Chinese companies. Also, why did India not host Osama bin Laden? Why is Pakistan alone having to provide hospitality to all sorts of Islamist nutjobs? Where is the Indian Malala Yousafzai? Why are Indians not shooting school-girls in the head? It is because they have 'settler-colonial' mentality just like Americans or Britishers.
Kashmir is further vulnerable as these companies do not adhere to environmental regulations, nor do they have knowledge of the local ecology.
Islamists adhere to environmental regulations. To promote sustainability they shoot school-girls in the head.
India’s contemporary colonisation is defined by surveillance technology, the arms trade, neoliberal resource extraction, criminalisation of all forms of dissent, and climate change.
All that is well and good but what about shooting school-girl's in the head? How is it that only Islamist nutters are bothering with this vital activity?
Many countries around the world have their own Kashmirs,
some do have budding Islamic terrorists who want to kill kaffirs. However, many Muslim countries don't tolerate any such people and kill them before they can start killing.
places they have subjugated either through overt forms of violence or through assimilating forms of control, and at times both.
Hafsa and family were eager to emigrate and take citizenship in the country which, in this century, has killed more Muslims than any other non-Muslim power. Perhaps, she like Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai gets some cash from the Pakistanis. If so she needs to register as a foreign agent. Otherwise she may go to jail.
Contemporary forms of colonialism exist across authoritarian and democratic governments.
No. The age of slavery and colonies and empires has passed. It was succeeded by an age of immigration from shithole countries to places still ruled by White peeps. If Kamala Harris becomes POTUS, she will be the first President both of whose parents were immigrants. This may cause some bigots to say that America has been colonized by puppy dog devouring invaders. Otherwise, such outcome would be impossible in a genuine democracy.
In the case of India, they exist in a country that claims to be the largest democracy in the world.
It is a democracy. Abdullah's grandson is back in power as Chief Minister in Srinagar. Perhaps Nehru's great-grandson will achieve something similar in Delhi. But this will only happen if his party gets more votes. As for terrorists or nutters like Hafsa, nobody gives a shit about them. If they kill, they are quickly killed. If they tell stupid lies, we denounce them as stupid liars who have invaded America and eaten everybody's pussy.
The case of Kashmir not only challenges this claim but contests the idea of India altogether.