Rishi Suri\u2019s recent opinion piece, which appeared in daily morning times Srinager Indian occupied Kashmir ,while eloquently lamenting the coarseness of public discourse, builds its argument on a foundation of historical revisionism and a profound misdiagnosis of the Kashmir conflict. His central thesis\u2014that turmoil in Indian occupied J& K stems from a failure of \u201csmarter politics\u201d and internal discord\u2014conveniently sidesteps the root cause: the systematic denial of a political right, internationally recognized and solemnly pledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suri speaks of the \u201cprice\u201d Kashmir has paid, attributing it vaguely to separatist rhetoric and external sponsors. This is a staggering oversimplification. The price Kashmiris are paying is not for failed politics, but for the denial of the very right to determine that politics. The foundational event is not the rise of militancy in the late 1980s, but the subversion of the democratic will in 1947 and the subsequent broken promises. The Government of India itself took the issue to the United Nations, which, through successive resolutions, affirmed the principle that the future of Jammu and Kashmir would be decided through a free and impartial plebiscite. To reduce seven decades of political struggle, marked by mass mobilizations, electoral boycotts, and persistent demands for that promised right, to mere \u201cseparatist rhetoric\u201d is to erase history. What Suri dismisses as an \u201cidea\u201d is, in fact, an unresolved legal and political commitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, his pillar of \u201ccounter-terrorism clarity\u201d inverts reality. What the Indian state terms \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d has, for countless Kashmiris, been experienced as state-sponsored terrorism\u2014a relentless campaign of militarization, enforced disappearances, torture, and impunity under laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). The \u201cviolence\u201d he mentions is not a symmetrical force but exists within a context of overwhelming, institutionalized state violence used to suppress political dissent. The voices \u201ccalling for rights\u201d have not been engaged with politically; they have been criminalized, jailed, and silenced. To speak of accountability for Kashmiri leaders while ignoring the absolute lack of accountability for state forces is to argue in bad faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suri rightly calls for debate, but his prescription is hollow in the current context. Debate with whom, and how? The Indian government has systematically closed every door for a meaningful political dialogue. The events of August 2019\u2014the unilateral annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, the dissolution of its statehood, the mass arrests, and the ongoing demographic engineering\u2014are not policies of \u201cengagement\u201d but of enforced silence and absorption. You cannot champion \u201ccivic empathy\u201d while simultaneously dismantling the very constitutional framework that gave the region a semblance of political identity. The demand for dialogue is not a refusal to move forward; it is a plea to address the core issue that has been forcibly buried, not resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding the criticism of the Mirwaiz, Suri\u2019s call for context is selective. Any rational critique must indeed consider the historical role of the institution. But it must also acknowledge the suffocating political environment in which figures like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq now operate\u2014an environment crafted by the Indian state. For years, he was either incarcerated or severely restricted, his voice muted. The space for any Kashmiri political expression that falls outside the narrowly defined limits of New Delhi\u2019s narrative has been violently constricted. Criticizing leadership is valid, but it is intellectually dishonest to do so without acknowledging that the choices available to them are dictated by an occupying power that has shown zero tolerance for genuine political dissent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
True peace in Kashmir will not emerge from \u201csmarter anchors\u201d within India\u2019s imposed framework or from \u201ceconomic stakeholding\u201d that treats a political wound as a developmental project. It can only be achieved by reopening the dialogue on the real issue: the political future of Kashmir and the rights of its people, as promised and internationally acknowledged. This requires India to move beyond its policy of annexation and destruction and to engage, without preconditions, with all stakeholders, including Pakistan and the true representatives of the Kashmiri people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kashmir does not need to \u201cstop living in the past.\u201d It needs a partner willing to honestly address the historical grievances of that past. It does not need a debate on how to better manage its occupation, but a courageous conversation on how to end it. The path to \u201cpolitical adulthood\u201d and \u201creclaiming political seriousness\u201d that Suri yearns for begins not with lecturing Kashmiris on their discourse, but with India honoring its own old promises and confronting its contemporary actions. Until then, calls for \u201cdignity in disagreement\u201d ring hollow when the most fundamental agreement\u2014on the right to self-determination\u2014remains the greatest point of violent contention.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rishi Suri\u2019s recent opinion piece, which appeared in daily morning times Srinager Indian occupied Kashmir ,while eloquently lamenting the coarseness of public discourse, builds its argument on a foundation of historical revisionism and a profound misdiagnosis of the Kashmir conflict. His central thesis\u2014that turmoil in Indian occupied J& K stems from a failure of \u201csmarter […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":11142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}