Altaf Hussain Wani
The invasion of Jammu & Kashmir by India on the fateful day of October 27 is the most dreadful incident of India’s colonial history that threw the region into throes of instability and perpetual violence.
Right on this day in 1947 the leaders of the so-called secular India hurriedly rushed its troops to Srinagar in the dark of night trampling down under the jackboots the Kashmiris’ fundamental political and democratic rights for which the Indians had themselves fought for years together under and against the British rule.
The shameful act, rightly censored by neutral observers as an act of aggression, not only put a stumbling block in the way of smooth and full implementation of the agenda of partition plan in the subcontinent but also laid a horrible foundation of the deadly conflict that threatens peace and stability in the South Asian region.
Etched deep down into the collective memory of the people of Jammu and Kashmir this bloody trail of colonialism haunts Kashmiris even after the passage of seven decades. The naked aggression on the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir ushered in decades of conflict leading to two full-fledged wars between Indian and Pakistan and decades long struggle against India’s illegal occupation of the territory.
The unresolved dispute on one hand continues to bedevil relations between the two nuclear neighbours while on the other it poses most serious existential threat to Kashmiris who have been worst victims of the deadly conflict, which has now assumed dangerous proportions after the Indian fascist regime led by BJP stripped the region of its 70-year old special status guaranteed to it under article 370 of the Indian constitution.
