To maintain its grasp on Kashmiri people India has worked with meticulous planning at multiple levels. India and its extremist Hindu parties see Kashmir as a cultural epicentre of what defines India as a nation. It has consistently legitimised massacres and rape as an essential counter-strategy of what India calls to ‘defeat Muslim terrorism’. From the moment of accession India has with the help of its suppliant clients in Kashmir worked to annex the territory of Kashmir from its people.

The process of attenuation is a definitive work of statecraft that is controlled from the top of Indian hierarchy. Its aim is to attenuate and delegitimise the struggle of Kashmiris for self-determination and can be broadly classified into the following categories

• Electoral management of Kashmir

  : Through this strategy, India has rotated power between its clients in Kashmir, supported by a very effective network of informers and civil service. The most important clients of India in Kashmir have been, the National Conference, Awami League and Peoples Democratic Party. These parties have leaders that inherit the localised wealth-power complex and constantly vie with each other for Indian favour. On 5 August 2019 India moved all of its political clientele in Kashmir into makeshift prisons inside Kashmir. The leaders of self-determination movement (i.e. APHC) were moved into prisons outside Kashmir.

• Military management of Kashmir

  India maintains its military formations inside and outside Kashmir that supply Indian troops along the LOC. India maintains military pressure on Pakistan by shelling the civilian hot spots in Azad Kashmir and has carried out numerous incursions to destroy what India calls terrorist launch pads or camps. Indian military forces frequently use chemically enhanced pellet guns that maim and blind Kashmiri protesters in urban areas.

• Urban Kettling and Village crackdowns

  In urban areas India uses the houses and old cinema halls to station its paramilitary forces that contain and monitor the daily activities of Kashmiris.

• Social engineering and demographic transition strategy

  India used its national capacity to move Kashmiri minority Hindus out of Kashmir in 1991 and used the vacated properties to act as local paramilitary camps. India also uses the lure of employment and lucrative loans to entrench its position in Kashmir.

• Torture, rapes and molestations

  There is a large body of evidence available that shows frequent use of rape against Kashmiri Muslim women. There is evidence of trafficking of minor girls to paramilitary camps inside Kashmir. The numbers often quoted are greater than 10,000 rape victims. There is no figure on the trafficking of girls inside and outside Kashmir

• Massacres, custodial deaths, fake encounters and military crackdowns

  Indian military responds with immense force against local boys who resent Indian rule and hegemony. The total number of causalities often used by human right activists in this category is 80,000 to 100,000. The deaths and rapes have taken an enormous psychological toll on the collective moral strength of Kashmiri Muslims and they are powerless to stop it. Targeted assassinations of civil leaders and prominent Kashmiri people also take place frequently and is always blamed on Pakistan and Muslim terrorists.

• Economic and communication lockdown

  After declaration, the abrogation of article 370 on 5 August 2019 India has imposed martial law and economic lockdown on Kashmiris to make them yield to India’s plotting. India also removed mobile, terrestrial phone lines and blocked access to the internet. The local journalists are allowed to use the local hub where their work is diligently monitored by the local sleuths.

• International platforms

  India has consistently propagated the position that there is no struggle of self-determination and the people have risen against India on the provocations from Pakistan. India calls Kashmiri indigenous struggle for self-determination, as Islamic terrorism. India has built a solid network of international lobbyists in the United Kingdom, the United States and in the European Union to support its position on Kashmir.

The ulterior objective of India in Kashmir is to accomplish two critical objectives. The primary objective is to engineer a demographic transformation of Kashmir by bringing settlers from India, by outbreeding Kashmiris through forcible marriage or mating with hapless Muslim women of Kashmir and offer lucrative contracts to factions that support India to rupture the social structures of Kashmiri Muslims.

There have been many reports written by Kashmiri activists that and also international organisations that detail the trauma Kashmiris Muslims have faced from 1987 to attain democracy and fairness. It is worth mentioning that on 8 July 2019 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report that gave some indication of the events in Kashmir. This report is available at https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/PK/KashmirUpdateReport_8July2019.pdf