A realm controlled by foreign tyrants, a culture persecuted for existing, a land decimated by war. A plethora of displaced groups come to mind with these descriptors - Palestinians, Kurds, Uyghurs, so on and so forth. The oppressed not only lack access to their humanity and rights, but they also lack access to a voice with their pleas diluted in a storm of political facade. Most people living in the first world, such as the United States, will never understand the true desperation these people face. However, regardless of the region, culture, or ethnicity, the fight against persecution is a unified cause and a struggle that we should never abandon in action or words, which brings us to the subject of Kashmir.
The history of Kashmir dates back thousands of years, with archaeological evidence of early human settlements in the Valley during the Neolithic period, including places such as Burzahom where hubs of agriculture and animal domestication existed. Over time, the region became integrated in the South Asian cultural and political landscape. For centuries the valley was an important center of Hindu philosophy, specifically Shaivism, and Buddhist scholarship, benefiting from its location along trade routes linking Central Asia, South Asia, and Tibet.
In the 14th century, Islam entered Kashmir through the influence of Sufi missionaries and traders with the Shah Mir dynasty establishing Muslim rule by 1339. In the following centuries Kashmir remained a state under several major empires, including the Mughals (1586) Afghan Durrani (18th century) and Sikh (1819) Empires, while experiencing periods of isolated rule. After the First Anglo-Sikh War, the British transferred the region to Gulab Singh under the Treaty of Amritsar, creating the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir under the Dogra rule in 1846.
Partition and Aftermath
Following the year 1947, Great Britain removed their presence entirely from the subcontinent, and Kashmir was split amongst three nations of China, Pakistan, and India, with most of the region going to the latter. Jammu and Kashmir, the area designated under India’s jurisdiction, held onto its sovereignty via Article 370. Under Part XXI of the Indian Constitution, Article 370 clearly establishes Kashmir’s temporary status as an Indian state. In addition, the Indian law only applied to a certain extent in the region with Kashmir having its own separate legislative council, hinting at a future which is yet to arrive.
In 1964, the prospect of immediate Kashmiri sovereignty became a futile cause, with the government merging their Congress with the Indian National Congress. This effectively rendered Article 370 (later terminated August 5, 2019) useless and demoted the once autonomous territory to what is best described as a slave state. This strategic politicking served India very well, as it gave the Kashmiri people no legal basis upon which to protest the military presence.
The Struggle
Nestled within the Himalayan region, the land of Greater Kashmir has been claimed in full by both India and Pakistan and administered in parts by India, Pakistan, and China. Following 1947, the modern dispute over Kashmir intensified. When British India was partitioned into the nations of Pakistan and India, the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir became the subject of claims and conflicts resulting in the first Indo-Pakistani war. (1947-1948). This conflict ultimately split Kashmir into two–Pakistan administered Azad Kashmir and India administered Jammu and Kashmir. Repeated India-Pakistan crises and wars, such as the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War and the 1999 Kargil War, continued to affect Kashmir’s borders and governance.
After decades of steady poverty and increasing military control, the first major turning point inside of India administered Kashmir arrived in the late 1970s with the emergence of an armed insurgency. Following the Indo-Pakistani War in 1965, India’s malice towards the Islamic religion grew rapidly following the destruction caused by/blamed on the Muslim nation of Pakistan. This malice was channeled through the Indian military presence onto the Kashmir Muslims, who had already directly endured the war’s carnage, resulting in the creation of the Kashmiri National Liberation Front. Throughout the 1970s, the Kashmiri people started to rightfully protest their unsung plight, while the NLF took what they thought to be more practical measures by arming themselves with the sole purpose of freeing their people. Protests against their government’s lack of protection and mistreatment were met by further acts of injustice and violent repression. In 1976, the NLF came crashing down with the final definitive arrest of Maqbool Bhat and the self-exile of Amanullah Khan, the Front’s two most influential leaders. However, Khan went on to reform the NLF into the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in May of 1977, sustaining the only true form of protection the Kashmiri has ever had.
The 1980s brought forth a concoction of unfortunate scenarios for Kashmir. This set of cascading turns were prominently marked by the execution of Maqbool Bhat in a New Delhi jail in 1984, coupled with the subsequent hanging of other co-founders of the JKLF. Following this, the movement for Kashmiri independence suffered a large blow in morale, causing inefficiencies in militancy operations and allowing for the foreign interests of Pakistan to be sown. In the latter end of the decade, the Pakistani government started investing into more religiously extreme movements, funneling money and sending agents to rile up masses of discontent men at specific mosques remotely nestled away from cities packed with Indian forces. Over time, the center of gravity of the armed movement shifted, and the Pro-Pakistan network of cells under the banner of Hizbul Mujahideen violently contrasted the more secular, nationalist movements of the prior decade. The elevated violence, crackdowns, and destruction in the 90’s were triggered by one major night.
Crimes against humanity have been constantly present in Kashmir since 1947, but these atrocious events are repeatedly denied by the Indian government, always referred to as baseless and exaggerated. However, a couple events stand out even in the sea of administered lies– the 1991 Kunan Poshpora Incident. On February 23 1991, Indian security forces near the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in the Kupwara District were allegedly shot at by militants. In retaliation, they decided to enter these villages and “search” and “secure” the area. House by house, they dragged the men out and kept the women inside, perpetrating a disgusting mass rape, leaving a devilish trail of burnt evidence. The horrors of this night rippled through the Valley, and to this day (speaking as a personal eyewitness) the people from those villages will never be the same. The initial reports in the following months reached 23, with the youngest age of a victim being 13. But the worst was yet to be revealed. Human rights organizations under the United Nations, conducted an investigation amidst threats and obstacles directly from the Indian military and government. In these investigations, the estimated a growing number of rapes, with the damning statistics jumping from 23 to 60 to potentially over a 100 women. The age range of the victims horrifically expanded as well, with some reports going as low as 1 years old all the way up to 80 years old. Despite all this, the Indian government has continued to cartoonishly deny the event from ever happening, a stance maintained to this day under the accusation of “terrorist propaganda”. This horrific night and how it has been brushed over the years serves to paint the perfect picture of Kashmir under India. A stained sanguine tapestry burnt by the flames of propaganda, the smoldering ashes snuffed by the stomping boots of the military.
The response the mass rape incident was more than an average Kashmiri could ever hope to handle. Militancy cells like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaishe-e-Mohammed sparked into a fiery retaliation spinning the Valley into unprecedented violence. The response was not exactly heroic, with these networks responding with mirroring tactics. Murder and rape become common on both sides; the militancy targeting remaining Pandits and suspected Indian informants while the Security Forces continued to target civilians and suspected families of militants. The violation of a woman’s sanctity became as common of a weapon in Kashmir as a side arm. In this battle of degeneracy, the JKLF simmered into a political stance, an idealistic dream fading into the background. The official disbandment came in 1994, with the remnants of the movement’s armed wing declaring an indefinite ceasefire in hopes to quell the violence especially that directed at their families. The Indian Security Forces, refusing to break their creed of repulsive counter-action, launched their final anti-JKLF operation, tracking down remaining fighters and their families arresting, killing, or raping before burning down the evidence.
Kashmir’s Conundrum
The new millennium introduced the internet to India, which reached even the most poverty-stricken regions. This would have given Kashmir an opportunity to raise awareness and spread information on half a century of unjust rule. However, India opted to take a page out of the old authoritarian playbook and lock down the Kashmiri general public’s access to the web. Within the last decade, tensions in Kashmir have eased up, but have recently reignited after the ascension of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. His connections to the radical Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has obviously influenced his party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as his policies as Prime Minister. Since the beginning of his term, Modi has encouraged and increased the military presence in Kashmir, with “safety personnel” numbers reaching as high as 700,000. In addition, the army corps fed off the Kashmiri lands and resources, pilfering the people’s hospitality. Furthermore, Modi’s administration deliberately limited the amount of relief packages delivered to the north following the 2014 India-Pakistan Floods. In September 2014, Jammu and Kashmir experienced catastrophic effects with 287 people killed either via drowning or fatal injury. In addition, the flood adversely affected around two million residents, including severe inundations across many paralyzed cities like Srinagar.
On the other side, the Pakistani government proves itself to be an almost equal adversary with their underhanded involvement in mass terror. For example, a recent shooting incident occurred that connected to the wider Kashmiri conflict. On April 22, 2025, armed militants attacked tourists in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam killing 26 civilians and injuring an additional 20. While the Pakistani government has denied any accusations of being involved, the attackers were reportedly linked to the previously mentioned pro-Pakistani Laskar-e-Taiba and entered the popular meadow with assault rifles, opening fire while verbally identifying victims by religion. The attack was one of deadliest civilian attacks on Indian soil, leading to heightening tensions and increasing the burden on the Kashmiri people.
All the while, the United Nations watched comfortably from the Secretariat Building while their Military Observer Groups continued to ignore the destruction and bloodshed. Reading through this article and slowly absorbing the maniacal reality of Kashmir, you might have forgotten that an organization dedicated to international peacekeeping even exists. For decades, the United Nations has failed to enforce its beliefs on multiple fronts and on multiple occasions. The United Nations, created to replace and avenge the failures of the League of Nations, has wilted into an echo of its past self, which hopes to replace its own credibility with all of the world’s fear of a return to a chaos-driven past - a past that Kashmir has not ceased to sustain.
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