Kashmir, Ayodhya and Kartarpur will impact Indo-Pak subcontinent’s social-religious-political milieus and bilateral relations between India and Pakistan in emphatic albeit contrasting ways. The colossal paradigm shifts and the ominous precedents being set will henceforth define and determine the future of this region of well over a billion and a half people of diverse religions, cultures, traditions, languages, ethnicities, nationalities and persuasions.
The strategic environment in Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IOJ&K) and the region perseveres in an ominous state of suspended animation. The Kashmiris remain incarcerated, incommunicado, bereft of all human rights and civil liberties. PM Modi and his repressive Occupation Forces remain frozen in a crippling strategic paralysis unable to bring the crisis to a viable closure. Pakistan continues to internationalize the injustices, brutalities and HR violations being visited upon the Kashmiris. The impotent UN is still incapable of enforcing its numerous Resolutions on Kashmir. The world looks on pitiably, paralyzed by its self-serving capitalist interests in the Indian market and economy. There is literally no movement on Kashmir either to resolve it or address it meaningfully. Status quo persists and portends very grim and portentous tidings. Regardless, a violent backlash, an indigenous Kashmiri Resistance Movement is inevitable. The Resistance will not only physically challenge the “annexation” of IOJ&K but will also petition the international community to intervene - morally, politically, diplomatically, legally and failing which, physically through the UN/international peace keeping forces! The world cannot remain indefinitely indifferent to the destabilization of Kashmir, the most critical and likely nuclear flashpoint on earth. A possible global nuclear winter has, of necessity, to be forestalled!
The abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A has set a foreboding precedent that will make the eleven states whose special status has been guaranteed by Article 371 (A to L) in the Indian Constitution, extremely panicky, jittery and tense. They are Maharashtra, Gujerat, Nagaland (up in arms already), Assam (disturbed), Manipur (Unilaterally Declared Independence in London recently), Andhra Pradesh, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa and Sikkim. Similarly, the eleven states of the Red Corridor along the eastern fringes of the Indian peninsula and Punjab-Khalistan (Referendum 2020) would be very nervous and edgy about their future. All will observe and assess events in IOJ&K very minutely and draw relevant lessons. None of them will brook being treated like IOJ&K, under any pretext whatsoever. Any mishandling by the Modi Government will unleash vicious centrifugal forces that will polarize, destabilize and eventually rend the Indian Union asunder. Instead of having “gained(?)” IOJ&K, PM Modi might just have initiated the imminent disintegration of the Indian Union.
The Indian SC has decreed to hand over the Babri Masjid (Ram Mandir?) to the majority Hindus thus bringing a religious issue to a rather contentious and unconvincing closure - or has it? A very disruptive and divisive legal precedent has thus been set which will seriously divide and unsettle the Indian Union and its multi-religious, multi-ethnic society. Signs of the RSS, the enforcement wing of the BJP,
morphing into a modern-day avatar of the dreaded Nazi era Sturm Abteilung (SA) or the Schutz Staffel (SS) are menacingly apparent. Was such a hostile environment deliberately created by it in the Indian religious, social, legal, political and media domains that it decisively foreclosed all but this decision on the Babri Masjid-Ram Mandir issue? Henceforth, all minorities including the Dalits (the Untouchables), Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Agnostics, Animists etc will live under the threat of having their religious sites or others of note “reclaimed and acquired” under similar pretexts as the Babri Masjid! The rampaging Sangh Parivaar-RSS-BJP Combine is riding rough shod over all moral, legal and judicial checks and balances in Indian society. The marginalized minorities will question their relative social status, their rights and privileges as equal citizens of the so-called largest democracy in the world. The BJP’s frenzied pursuit of the utopian Hindu Rashtra-Akhand Bharat ideal will splinter the Indian nation (as opposed to the Hindu Rashtra/Nation) and society, irretrievably. “Apartheid” is characterized by an authoritarian political culture which ensures the supremacy and political, social, economic and cultural domination of one group over the rest of the nation. It is institutionalized in Hinduism in the form of its Caste System. The ruthless application of Hindutva will expand it further to stratify and classify all minorities too in a descending social order led by the Brahmins - ostensibly the Sangh Parivaar-RSS-BJP Combine’s ultimate objective! The idea of a secular India is clearly under a fatal threat!
On the other hand, Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan (IK) in an unprecedented move opened up Pakistan’s Kartarpur Corridor (KC) for Sikh pilgrims especially from India. It was a great humanitarian gesture from Pakistan. It was too, a superb exterior manoeuvre by PM IK, whereby he completely outflanked PM Modi’s Hindutva inspired BJP Government in humanitarian, geopolitical and even geostrategic terms, bringing forth their stark exclusivist, supremist and racist policies into sharp international and domestic focus. To his abiding credit PM IK stayed the course on the KC despite the many Indian instigations and provocations in IOJ&K and across the LOC to forestall its creation/opening. The KC won Pakistan the goodwill and gratitude of Sikhs and peace-loving peoples/governments around the world. It reversed, largely, the (mis)perceptions that were held by the international community about Pakistan and importantly about India. The contrast could not be blunter; PM IK seeks inclusiveness while PM Modi is instituting Brahmin-Hindu exclusiveness!
The precedents that have been set will impact the region singularly. PM Modi will need to evolve as a statesman. Religious bigotry, mob lynching and senseless megalomaniac rantings will take him and India nowhere. It was on his watch in Gujerat that Muslims were subjected to a planned, spiteful and rapacious pogrom. The genocide of Muslims continues in IOJ&K and elsewhere in India. Polarization of Indian society and body politic and the marginalization of its minorities are clearly discernible. The paradigm shift from a secular India into a Hindu Rashtra is now very palpable.
The Sangh Parivaar-RSS-BJP Combine’s vengeful and vindictive approach to Kashmir, Ayodhya and KC will inevitably hasten the disintegration of the Indian Union!