The recent attack in Pahalgam and military exchanges between India and Pakistan have renewed international focus on a nearly 80-years-long conflict over Kashmir.
But a preliminary review of both North American and Indian media reveals only surface-level analyses.
North American news outlets primarily framed this as a territorial dispute between two nuclear-armed nations. Indian media presented it as a “war on terror.”
Missing from the coverage — and much academic analysis — is the story of Kashmiris as Indigenous Peoples. Their divided territory has been under multiple occupations since 1947, with other colonial rulers prior to that. International human rights groups have raised alarms about Kashmiris facing intensive repression by the Indian and Pakistani governments.
As a policy PhD scholar of Indigenous studies and governance, I can help fill in the gaps. I have developed an Indigenous policy research framework for how to more fully study situations around the world, particularly in Kashmir. This includes identifying familiar settler-colonial patterns: legalized land control, resource extraction and criminalization of the native population and resistance.
Patterns of colonial nation-building and settlement have produced orders and borders that have been controlling Kashmir since the 1947 British partition of India and Pakistan. The repressive Indian and Pakistani settler-colonial laws operate through interconnected legal, cultural and military mechanisms.
These methods eliminate Kashmiri self-determination, land rights and self-government.
Applying an Indigenous rights framework to Kashmir
Kashmir is among the world’s most militarized regions, home to vital but depleting water resources. Kashmiri territories are divided and controlled by India, Pakistan and China.
Its diverse, multi-faith communities include a Muslim majority and Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Christian minorities. An Indigenous rights framework recognizes Kashmiris as the first peoples of the land with cultural rights, inherent sovereignty, economic rights and collective rights to ancestral lands.
I have observed Indians and Pakistanis claiming Kashmiri identity through religious affiliation. This self-indigenizing erases actual Kashmiris by conflating religious and Indigenous identities.
According to the United Nations: “Indigenous refers to peoples of long settlement and connection to specific lands who have been adversely affected by incursions by industrial economies, displacement and settlement of their traditional territories by others.” In my peer-reviewed work, I have argued this definition applies to Kashmiri people.
Cultural criminalization of Kashmiri population
In popular and political ongoing anti-Kashmiri racist narratives, Kashmiris are cast as perpetual “security threats” and “terrorists.”
Post-Sept. 11 false “war on terror” narratives by media and academics has been deliberately manipulated against the Muslim-majority Kashmiris. For example, mainstream Indian media and popular Bollywood films have demonized Kashmiri-Muslims and delegitimized Indigenous resistance. This framing has especially been advanced by the Hindu-nationalist BJP and RSS under Indian leader Narendra Modi.
This framing allows for cultural dispossession through restricting religious practices by India, and extends to the marginalization of Kashmiri language and histories by India and Pakistan. Media restrictions are standard and limit self-representation.
Anti-Muslim profiling, surveillance, communication blockades and the criminalizing of dissent are regular occurrences in Kashmir.
Read more: In India, film and social media play recurring roles in politics
Repressive control and rights violations in India
Suppression of dissent and restrictions on freedom of information and expression prevent Kashmiris from voicing grievances to advance collective rights.
Since 2019, the human rights group Genocide Watch has issued multiple “genocide alerts” for Kashmir. Al Jazeera has recently reported patterns of enforced disappearances of dissenters. In 2012, The Guardian reported on “mass graves in Kashmir.”
Journalists face attacks and exile. Fahad Shah, editor of the Kashmir Walla, was imprisoned for 600 days.
Read more: Call the crime in Kashmir by its name: Ongoing genocide
Internet shutdowns and media censorship function as what one human rights group has called “digital apartheid.”
Indian government administrators conduct physical and digital surveillance in Kashmir, collecting personal data and monitoring connections.
Kashmiri rights defenders like Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj face arbitrary imprisonment.
Sexual violence has been documented as a weapon of control.
Military forces have destroyed infrastructure, including homes, businesses, schools and orchards.
These human rights violations continue on both sides of the border — by both India and Pakistan — with minimal scrutiny or accountability.
Indian legal and military control in Kashmir
Article 370 functioned as an interim treaty between India and Kashmir since 1949 until its 2019 revocation. It granted Kashmir a constitution and some legal autonomy.
Its removal eliminated remaining Indigenous Kashmiri rights protections, enabled new colonial laws on Kashmir and allowed non-Kashmiris to own land and hold public office.
The Indian Domicile Act has allowed demographic engineering whereby more than 80,000 non-Kashmiris were given Kashmiri membership rights between 2022-2024.
The Domicile Act is a typical colonial strategy and works to undermine Indigenous presence and resistance capacity.
Pakistan side of the border
On the Pakistani side, the Interim Constitution for Kashmir forbids political expression that challengs Pakistan’s control of and claim to Kashmir.
This constitution also established a governance system that initially included the Kashmir Council, with Pakistani officials holding significant power over legislation and appointments.
Following the 2018 13th amendment, many legislative powers transferred from the Kashmir Council to the Pakistani government rather than to the Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) Assembly. This means Pakistan retains exclusive control over many areas.
The elected AJK government remains structurally subordinate to Pakistan’s Ministry of Kashmir Affairs. Non-Kashmiri officials hold key executive powers in Islamabad. This gives Pakistan administrative oversight over Kashmir.
The United Nations has documented rights violations in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, including restricted expression and anti-terrorism law abuse to suppress dissent. Enforced disappearances have also been reported as journalists face threats.
Mining and resource extraction
Extractive settler-colonial government economies dispossess Kashmiris from their land through control of water, energy projects, lithium mining and deforestation.
India expedites mining operations that exploit Kashmir’s significant lithium deposits. They sideline environmental and community displacement concerns.
Extensive deforestation transforms Kashmir’s landscapes, displacing wildlife, destroying habitats and threatening traditional Kashmiri ways of life.
Indian and Pakistani control of Kashmir’s vital waterways has led to the creation of hydroelectric power projects on rivers like Chenab, Neelum and Jhelum, generating substantial energy through dams (Kishanganga, Baglihar dam, Mangla dam and the Azad Pattan Hydropower project).
Hydroelectric power generated from Kashmir is predominantly exported to outsiders. Cities in India and Pakistan benefit, while Kashmiris face high energy bills and electricity shortages.
Justice for peace
A sustainable peace requires undoing settler-colonial borders and orders across Kashmir. It requires reuniting Kashmiris across the colonial divide. Colonizers need to surrender governance power back to Indigenous Kashmiris.
Kashmiri self-government — without colonial oversight — would respect Kashmiri freedoms, sovereignty and self-determination over ancestral lands, waterways and resources. This would bring peace to the region.
Binish Ahmed is affiliated with Kashmir Gulposh, a Kashmiri rights education collective.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
