Kashmir and Hindutva: The BJP’s Quest for Akhand Bharat
- Hindutva and Fascism – Modi's BJP-led government promotes Hindutva nationalism, suppressing religious minorities and revoking Kashmir's autonomy through Articles 370 and 35A.
- Human Rights Violations – India has escalated violence in Kashmir, with media blackouts, unlawful detentions, and widespread oppression under Modi’s rule.
- Regional Instability – India's aggressive policies, ceasefire breaches, and hostility toward Pakistan threaten regional security, necessitating international intervention.
The present right-wing BJP-led Indian government is an ongoing example of the rise of fascism and ultra-nationalist ideologies in today’s world. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power, the religious minorities in India have been facing socio-political issues, including discrimination in all fields of life. Not only this, violence and extremism are haunting the minority population of India under Modi. This extends to the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), who have been deprived by India of their right to self-determination for more than seven decades.
India plays the Kashmir card as a bilateral territorial dispute between Islamabad and New Delhi, as the two countries fought two major wars over Kashmir in 1948 and 1965 and a major conflict in Kargil (1999). Moreover, India continues to falsely claim Pakistan’s involvement in the ongoing freedom movements inside Kashmir. Pakistan’s principled stance on Kashmir is that Kashmir’s fate should be decided according to the will of the Kashmiri people by the United Nations Resolutions.
Indian atrocities under Modi are an open story to the world. In the last decade, approximately 50,000–100,000 people have been massacred in the valley, mostly young people. Some families have no male members left. As per an estimate in 2016, there are 22,808 widowed women with 107,550 orphaned children. The recent data is hard to find as there are frequent media blackouts after the unlawful assassination of the young freedom fighter, Burhan Wani, and the subsequent revocation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution in 2019.
The BJP government damaged the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir by revoking articles 370 and 35A. BJP and other Hindu right-wing nationalists have always opposed these articles on the pretext that they are against the spirit of Indian democratic norms and distort its secular image. Article 370 acknowledges the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in terms of autonomy, and Article 35A permits outsiders from permanently settling in the state. The state was divided into two union territories, namely Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir. Since 2019, the BJP-led Indian government has continued to ruthlessly violate human rights in Kashmir, arresting journalists, abusing women and arresting males, shutting down the internet for over 150 days, and imposing curfews for undefined periods.
Behind all this, the Modi agenda is Akhand Bharat, which means “undivided India,” to keep the purity of the land of the Indian subcontinent by restoring it towards Hinduism under the Hindutva ideology. Therefore, he is taking steps by passing cruel laws to convert India into a Hindu land. The revocation of articles 370 and 35A, including the illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, by the BJP government shows his cruel face to the world.
Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayansevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925, based on Hindu nationalism, which is projecting the Hedgewar ideology of Hindu nationalism. Bharatiya Janata Party is a political offshoot of RSS creating unrest in Kashmir by promoting Hindutva. Hindutava is an ideology that seeks to promote and emphasize the cultural, political, and social domains of Hindus. Promoting this ideology through violence and extremism adversely impacts Kashmiri people, who are 97 percent Muslims.
The Indian government’s policies on Kashmir under Modi and its hostile attitude towards Pakistan are compelling Islamabad to focus on enhancing its military strength for border security. Repetitive breaches of ceasefire by Indian military personnel (around 1,267 times only during one year of 2019), incidents like the Balakot (2019), as well as Indian fighter jets launching strikes across the Pakistani border, stand as illustrations of India’s aggressive and authoritarian policies towards Pakistan. More importantly, violence in Kashmir during the BJP government’s rule is the most significant indicator that Indian behavior is authoritarian, projecting fascism to fulfill their Hindutva ideology. Many Indians, including thinkers and authors like Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy, claim that Modi is a fascist leader.
The West should hold India accountable for human rights violations in Kashmir and Modi’s fascist agenda in overall India. The resolution of the Kashmir dispute necessitates a humanistic approach. Halting the surge of Modi’s authoritarianism requires initiating negotiations between India and Pakistan that move away from the singular party’s ideology. The solution should be firmly rooted in the well-being of the Kashmiri people, and this can only happen if India acknowledges the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination as outlined in UN resolutions.
The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Spine Times.
Johra Mustafa
The author is a student of International Relations.
