Modi Trying To Engineer A Hindu Majority In Kashmir: US Magazine Article

NEW YORK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Aug, 2021 ) :Under the smokescreen of electoral redistricting in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) , India is manipulating to politically neuter the disputed region's Muslim majority, according to an article in Foreign Policy, a prestigious American magazine.

Kaisar Andrabi and Zubair Amin, two independent Srinagar-based journalists, the article's authors, said the Indian government has commenced preparations to redraw the electoral boundaries in Kashmir two years after New Delhi rescinded the semi-autonomous status of the state, and introduced tighter Federal controls.

"In 2019, New Delhi hoped that ratcheting up federal control would make it easier to subdue Kashmir's population and many groups' calls for self-determination," they wrote, adding that it has since targeted local politicians, traders, publishing houses, and even government employees who have been or potentially could become sources of dissent.

"The crackdowns have also targeted protesters, members of civil society, and journalists, who are charged under draconian anti-terrorism laws that guarantee lengthy pretrial detentions and make bail an exception," the two Kashmiri journalists said in their write-up.

"Now, the delimitation program envisions breaking up the electoral Constituencies of the erstwhile semi-autonomous state into several new voter units in a manner that's likely to give numerical heft to the southern region of Jammu, where there is a larger concentration of Hindu voters," according to the article.

"Altered demographics and a reconfiguration of electoral constituencies would allow Hindu-nationalist politicians to realize their long-standing goal of installing a Hindu chief minister in Kashmir.

" Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government has also started to enforce hundreds of federal Indian laws and policies in Kashmir, it said "New Delhi has dismantled structures of self-government in Kashmir with remarkable speed. The Indian government opened ownership of land in Indian-administered Kashmir to outsiders, made it easy to acquire domicile rights, and overturned historic land reforms,' the two Kashmiri journalists said, adding that those steps were followed by a move that reduced the share of Kashmiri candidates entering the Indian civil service from 50 percent to 33 percent, which in the future will increase the number of nonlocal officers in Kashmir's administration.

"The federal government has also empowered the Indian armed forces to declare any area in the disputed region as 'strategic' and ended the 131-year reign of urdu as the sole official language of the region, the article said.

Unlike other Indian states, these laws and policies were not applicable in the region until August 2019 as Kashmir had its own constitution and its legislative assembly had exclusive power to make the laws, it was pointed out.

The article pointed out that Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority region. Before 2019, Hindu-nationalist groups had long campaigned for the annulment of Kashmir's special status enshrined in (now repealed) Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Another feature of this extinguished legislation was Article 35A, which restricted the purchase of land to local residents alone.

Modi discarded both laws in a highly controversial move that has since soured India's relations with Pakistan and China, it said.