On Pahalgam, imperial fortresses and Kashmir’s settler colonialism

With good reason, India has focussed on Pakistan as the culprit behind the Pahalgam terror attack which left 26 people dead. It is telling that their army chief declared to Pakistanis that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations and that Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein. He implied that Pakistan is the ideal Islamic state as in Venkat Dhulipala’s Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India. This could have been a signal to the terrorists to create maximum offence while massacring Hindus.

Given Kargil, IC 814, Mumbai 26/11, Uri, Pulwama, and now Pahalgam, India is justified in cutting ties to Pakistan, including trade, sports, the cringe Attari circus, and even diplomatic relations. India did once mass its forces at the Line of Control in Operation Parakram, but honouring the Shimla Agreement, did not cross. Now that Pakistan has cancelled the Agreement, there is no legal reason for restraint, especially since the nuclear bogey is no longer credible.

But there is more. The Pakistani defence minister said that his country had been doing the dirty work for the US and the West for decades. Maybe he meant the Afghan war against the Soviets and the post-9/11 somersaults by Pakistan. But that’s only scratching the surface.

Britain explicitly created Pakistan as a Great Game weapon against Russia/Soviet Union, and when that collapsed, against India. It has been using Pakistan as an “imperial fortress”. Whitehall tilts strongly towards Pakistani interests, even in the case of widespread gang-rapes of minor white girls.

Official mouthpiece BBC never speaks of Pakistani terrorists, only ‘gunmen’; it is always “Indian-controlled Kashmir”; and an extraordinary headline recently said: ‘Pakistan suspends visas for Indians after deadly Kashmir attack on tourists’. These are not accidents.

Britain and the US Deep State (eg. Madeleine Albright and other Atlanticists) worry about the waning influence of Europe. Naturally, incumbent powers go to war with a rising power (the Thucydides Trap: Graham Allison’s thesis). This has been the rationale for containing Russia, now it is being turned to Asia. China is rather inscrutable and impregnable, so they attack India, which is easier prey.

Then there is the Otherisation of Hindus and thus Indians. Even as staunch an atheist as Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker) admits Judeo-Christian cultural biases. Only Christopher Hitchens among modern atheists was self-reflective enough to avoid this. The Abrahamics would like to make us disappear, and so engendered the great famines in India (‘Late Victorian Holocausts’). Now this is reprising through climatism (at an Alexandra Ocasio Cortez rally, there was a woman earnestly saying “we have to eat babies” to reduce emissions).

Let’s not forget China, also unhappy about India’s possible economic rise; so it dutifully regurgitated “all-weather” support for Pakistan. They have used Pakistan to keep India down, as a force multiplier for violence and trouble. Then China can market itself as a safe investment destination compared to a dangerous India where FDI may be risky. I suspect this is part of their siren song to big firms (eg. Apple) now.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the settler-colonial complex of Kashmiri Muslims. They trot out South Africa, other European conquests, and Gaza as examples of colonialists violating natives’ rights and imply the same in Kashmir. The bitter irony, of course, is that it is Kashmir’s indigenous Hindus – who have a 5,000-year history there – who are being pushed out. The logic, however, has been turned on its head: see the Harvard Law Review paper ‘From Domicile to Dominion, India’s Settler Colonial Agenda in Kashmir’.

There have been seven exoduses of Hindus from Kashmir: 1. 1389-1413 (Sultan Sikandar Shah), 2. 1505-1514 (Fateh Shah II), 3. 16th-17th century (Timurid period), 4. 1752-1819 (Durrani rule), 5. 1931 (Anti-Dogra riots), 6. 1986 (Anantnag riots), 7. 1989-1990 (militancy-driven exodus).

Reports are emerging that local overground workers arranged the logistics for the Pahalgam massacre. Acts of terror need local support, possibly including from local politicians.

Yes, it is good to punish Pakistan with measures such as the pause on the Indus Waters Treaty but terror will persist until Kashmiri Muslims realise that their future lies with rising, multi-religious India, not failed-state Pakistan.