The world’s largest democracy is scared. The irony of it, it isnt scared of armed gunmen, but of unarmed peacefull protestors who would just want to go out in the streets and tell the world that they want “Azadi” or freedom from India. And it is the fear that has forced India to deploy hundreds…
Tag: India
Kashmir, 1990: Islamic Revolt or Kashmiri Nationalism
The central question we wish to address is whether the contemporary Kashmiri expression of independence in 1990 is part of a global Islamic pattern or yet another temporary reaction to some local provocation?2 If the former, is it linked to the uprisings in Israel and the Muslim Central Asian Republics of the USSR? We look for a link, not a direct political one but a conceptual one. What are the similarities, what identical patterns, what unifying principle may be identified, common to these movements? Numerous related questions arise. Is this a Kashmiri intifada? If the latter, what are the sources of disaffection, what are the objectives and what affect will they have—and arc having—on the fate of other Muslims in India? Also, how has the Kashmiri uprising fed communal feelings among the majority Hindus and thus reinforced parties like the BJP?