Kashmir, Communalism, and the Collapse of Credibility

The Modi Government of India is in damage control. It was humiliated in the latest war against Pakistan. It has dispatched seven delegations, made up of MPs and retired diplomats, to more than 30 countries on an “outreach program” to “sensitize” other governments to present India’s perspective on terrorism and highlight Pakistan’s alleged role in sponsoring and enabling it. One such delegation to the US was headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor who claimed that “while the intent behind the Pahalgam terror attack was to divide people, it brought people together in India, irrespective of their religion or any other divide…There was an extraordinary amount of togetherness cutting across religious and other divides that people have tried to provoke.”

Tharoor is a seasoned politician who does not mind lying bigly to score a point. The facts are quite different inside India, let alone the Indian-administered Kashmir. As eyewitness reports also confirm, even before the Pahalgam attack by the alleged Muslim separatists, the hate directed against Muslims has been rising. These events have been chronicled by the Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, and few other rights groups. Dr. Ram Puniyani writes, “Islamophobia is gripping the country with increasing intensity.” In Latur, a Muslim was labelled a Pakistani and beaten black and blue. Humiliated by this, he committed suicide. “Kashmiri students in a hostel in Uttarakhand were thrown out in the middle of the night and had to stay put in front of the Dehradun airport.”

A report by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) documented 184 hate crimes across India between April 22 and May 8, 2025, with 106 of these incidents allegedly triggered by the Pahalgam attack. Eighty-four hate speeches, 39 assaults, 19 vandalism and 3 Murders are mentioned in the report. The reported incidents also include evictions, and social boycotts targeting Muslims and Kashmiris.

Here below are some examples: Kashmiri students and women were attacked in Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh; Muslim vendors were assaulted in places like Mussorie, Uttarakhand; a Muslim man was killed in Agra, Uttar Pradesh by members of the Kshatriya Gau Raksha Dal, with a Hindu supremacist claiming it was in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack; a Muslim man was lynched to death over an alleged “Pak slogan” in Mangaluru, Karnataka;  a third murder by lynching of a Muslim man by a Hindu mob was reported in Bokaro, Jharkhand; a Muslim boy was forced to urinate on a Pakistani flag in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh; Hindu mobs, including Bajrang Dal members armed with hockey sticks and swords, were reported to have assaulted Muslim women, children, and men in Santacruz, Maharashtra, in one instance allegedly forcing a Muslim woman carrying her child to say “Jai Shree Ram” and threatening her with “dragging” her to Pakistan. A mazaar (Muslim shrine) was vandalized and an attempt was made to demolish it in Uttarakhand. In Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, a Muslim residence was pelted with stones and set on fire, and other Muslim residences were targeted. Karachi Bakery, with a name associated with Pakistan, was vandalized in Andhra Pradesh. In several instances, police were accused of inaction, religious bias, or harassment against Muslim victims or those defending them. 

“Uttar Pradesh bore witness to the highest number of incidents, followed by Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Telangana. Other states like Karnataka, Punjab, Chandigarh, and West Bengal experienced serious cases,” the document by APCR stated.

The APCR report notes the involvement of right-wing Hindutvadi organizations in some incidents, such as the vandalism of Muslim-owned shops in Ambala. There are concerns regarding the lack of an official central government statement addressing the communal fallout and instances of alleged police inaction or bias. It is important to note that the APCR report considers its findings to be a conservative estimate due to potential underreporting. 

Other recent reports say that thousands of Muslims were left homeless in India, falsely branded “Bangladeshis,” despite decades of living in India and possessing voter ID cards and Aadhaar cards. Overnight, over 7,000 homes in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, mostly belonging to Muslims, were demolished in an anti-encroachment drive. 

In Modi’s Godi media, run by his cronies, a coordinated campaign has been unleashed, offline and online, with one message: Muslims were a threat to Hindus, and that Muslims needed to be punished through violence and boycotts.

It is not the Indian MP’s alone that are doing Modi’s bidding to mislead and disinform others about India’s so-called togetherness, a Muslim woman from the Army (Col. Qureshi) was put to the task of giving media briefings regularly while the war lasted. It was the height of hypocrisy, as noted by Ali Khan Mahmudabad, head of the department of Political Science at Haryana’s Ashok University.  “I am very happy to see so many right-wing commentators applauding Colonel Sophia Qureishi, but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate mongering be protected as Indian citizens. The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is important, but optics must translate to reality on the ground, otherwise it’s just hypocrisy,” an excerpt from his post read. He was arrested on May 18 after he faced two FIRs that were filed by BJP activists over his contentious social media post regarding “Operation Sindoor”. Now free on bail, Professor Mahmudabad has been asked by the Supreme Court not write on this matter and to deposit his passport.

Well, if you have not yet seen the gigantic hollow in India’s make-belief propaganda of togetherness, just ponder on the highly communal hateful comments of Madhya Pradesh minister Kunwar Vijay Shah, belonging to the ruling BJP. Addressing a gathering, he did not mince his words when he called Colonel Sofiya Qureshi a “sister of terrorists,” alluding to her Muslim identity. He repeated this thrice. Taking serious note of the comments, the Supreme Court asked Shah, “What sort of statements are you making?” and reminded the minister of the importance of maintaining dignity in public remarks when the country is going through tense situations.

Shah has neither been censured by his party nor arrested for his derogatory comment against an entire Muslim community who have been viewed as aliens in Hindu-majority India. Muslims may serve in the defense forces of India and give their lives, but no patriotic sacrifice of theirs would earn them Indian-ness in ‘Modi-fied’ India. They can’t even talk about bulldozer justice and lynching mob that have all become new normal in today’s India. That is the ugly truth that Modi’s diplomatic missions will not disclose.

As rightly noted by Dr Puniyani, hate crimes and targeted violence against minority Muslims have become the “steppingstones for political career” of many successful politicians in Modi’s India. In a recent essay, he writes, “Just to recall in the prelude to 2019 Delhi violence, those calling for peace and harmony, Umar Khalid, Sharjil Imam are rotting in the jails for over 5 years, their cases not even coming to hearing state while a minister of state Anurag Thakur got promoted to full Cabinet rank after he made the people shout ‘Goli Maro’ slogans’.”

Disinformation and deceptions have become the cornerstone of India’s foreign policy since her birth in 1947 when she annexed nearly half of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), let alone scores of princely states. It boasts of democracy but refuses to holding a UN-sponsored plebiscite in J&K, promised back in 1949 in the UN but never delivered.

For over 75 years, the people of J&K have lived under what many analysts describe as one of the most brutal and prolonged military occupations in modern history. Today, Kashmir is among the most militarized regions in the world, a space where surveillance, censorship, and collective punishment define daily life under Indian occupation.

Since the 1980s, a hundred thousand Kashmiris have been killed by Indian forces; some 7,400 Kashmiris have died while in custody; 176,000 civilians have been arrested; more than 100,000 children have been orphaned; and more than 11,000 women have been either molested or raped by Indian forces. Thousands have been subjected to enforced disappearances, and widespread reports of torture and sexual violence, including rape of Kashmiri women, have emerged, often with complete impunity for the perpetrators. Mass graves have been discovered across the valley, and draconian laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) have shielded security personnel from prosecution. The 2019 abrogation of Article 370, which revoked Kashmir’s nominal autonomy, marked a new chapter of direct colonial rule. The limited political autonomy and property rights that safeguarded traditional life in the Kashmir Valley are now gone, enabling the most conservative Hindus’ goal of remaking the demography of India’s only Muslim-majority territory with an influx of Hindus.

Taking a cue from the apartheid state of Israel, India has long employed house demolitions as a tool of collective punishment in Kashmir, a tactic that has intensified following the April 22, 2025, Pahalgam attack. In the aftermath, authorities demolished homes of individuals suspected of militant ties, often without formal charges or due process. As of last week, since 22 April, 500 raids have been conducted, more than 2000 individuals detained, and 9 residential houses have been demolished by the Indian occupation forces. On April 28th, a local resident Altaf Lali was killed in an extrajudicial execution by the Indian occupation forces.

India’s draconian measures and massive betrayal have long ago lost the allegiance of frustrated young people in Kashmir.

Tharoor and other Indian delegates’ disinformation campaign against Pakistan will neither fool world leaders nor solve the long-standing problem of J&K. Give the people of J&K their rights to self-determination. Let them decide their own fate under a UN-sponsored plebiscite.

The Pahalgam attack on April 22, 2025, allegedly by the separatist Kashmiris, did not happen in vacuum. Nor will this tragic episode be the last of its kind unless India learns from history and changes its policy from one of exclusion and hatred to one of genuine inclusion and amity.

Dr Siddiqui is a rights activist whose latest book – ‘Modi-fied’ India: the transformation of a nation – is due to be published this year by Peter Lang.