S Tariq This year on Independence Eve 2010, sitting in my study with H.G. Wells eternal classic on time travel in my lap, I too take a trip through time. The year is 1948 and intrigue dark and deadly stares me in the face. Kashmir has been denied the right to join the newly created Pakistan, in spite of the agreed formula that all Muslim majority states would do so. The Kashmiris, a traditionally docile race, rise up in arms and are soon joined by Pakistani volunteers. Success follows lightning success and Srinagar is within reach, when the Indian military is ordered to occupy the former princely state. Pakistan also mobilises its forces, but a little too late - the Indians push back the freedom fighters till a UN brokered ceasefire halts the fighting. Kashmir now stands divided into the Azad or Liberated Region and the Indian Occupied Zone. The UN resolutions call for a plebiscite to determine the will of the Kashmiri people, but in stark defiance, India turns the occupied area into a concentration camp, cleverly concealed behind a glittering faade of tourists and bollywood film crews. Behind this faade, there is a reign of terror let loose by the Indian police, intelligence services and the military. Things come to a point where even members of the UN Military Observer Group deployed to monitor the ceasefire and report its violations to the Secretary General are treated like internees and confined to the capital Srinagar. The year is 1964 and the Kashmiris have once again risen in revolt. A year later, a frustrated India aggravates matters by cross border violations into Pakistan, which forces the latter to launch a military operation across the ceasefire line in Chamb-Jaurian area. With Pakistani troops on the verge of cutting off the vital line of communication at Akhnur, the Indians initiate a full-fledged war on the Lahore and Sialkot fronts. Foiled in their design to have a drink in Lahore Gymkhana by the Pakistani armed forces, the Indians recoil with their tails between its legs. Regretfully, however, the insurgency in the Vale of Kashmir loses impetus because of this war. The Indian military now goes on a rampage against the population, the likes of which can perhaps be paralleled only by Nazi barbarism and the Holocaust. It is now 1988 and a full-fledged insurgency has once again taken hold of the Kashmir Valley. These are common citizens turned freedom fighters, many of them refugees, who have fled the occupied area vowing revenge for the rape and death of their loved ones. More troops are pumped into the valley, till they number 700,000, along with 16 secret agencies spreading terror amongst 8.3 million citizens. September 1999 and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre lie in ruins, with Muslims around the world wrongly stereotyped as instruments of violence. India is quick to exploit the situation and manages to internationally brand the Armed Kashmiri Freedom Struggle as terrorism, aided by Pakistan. The dice are once again rolling against the Kashmiri people. I am jarred back into the present by a loud thunderclap as rain begins to pelt my house. It has now been three years since a revolt has once again taken hold of the Indian Occupied Kashmir, but this time things are different. The international media has finally seen through the Indian faade and is reporting the events in their true light. The New York Times publishes a piece by Lydia Polgreen that talks of Kashmirs bloody summer of rage. It reports that more than 50 people have been killed in this summer alone in protests against Indias military presence in the occupied region. The New York Times terms the uprising as an Intifada-like popular revolt against the Indian military presence. The report quotes Professor Amitabh Matoo from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and himself a Kashmiri Hindu, as acknowledging that there is a whole generation of Kashmiris who thinks that India is a huge monster represented by bunkers and security forces. The New York Times report says that Kashmirs demand for self-determination is sharper today than it has been at perhaps any other time. It reinforces indications that perhaps, the final chapter in the epic struggle of the Kashmiri people against Indian occupation is now being written. Every death, every rape fuels the ferocity and scale of the revolt and a writing has begun to appear on every wall in the occupied area - a writing that heralds the dawn of freedom. The writer is a freelance columnist.