India’s claim of big democracy cruel mockery of history: Safi
Islamabad: Convener of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Azad Jammu and Kashmir (APHC-AJK) chapter, Ghulam Muhammad Safi, has said that India’s claim of being the “world’s largest democracy” is a blatant contradiction, a grave deception, and a cruel mockery of history, particularly in the context of its continued occupation of Jammu and Kashmir.
According to Kashmir Media Service, in a statement issued on India’s Republic Day, Ghulam Muhammad Safi said a state that has forcibly occupied Jammu and Kashmir for the past 78 years, stripping its people of freedom, identity, land, livelihood and basic human rights, has no moral, legal or humanitarian justification to call itself democratic.
He said that in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the very concept of democracy has been buried under gun barrels, military laws, collective punishments, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, demolition of homes, confiscation of properties, dismissals from jobs, and systematic attempts to alter the territory’s demographic composition. He added that millions of Kashmiris are facing severe state repression for demanding their birthright—the right to self-determination—turning the entire territory into an open-air prison.
The APHC-AJK Convener said a state that displaces people from their homes and lands, renders them homeless in their own motherland, employs colonial tactics to convert a majority population into a minority, and crushes dissent by branding it as terrorism, reflects an imperial and colonial mindset, not democracy.
He also pointed out that India’s conduct is not limited to Kashmir, noting that religious and ethnic minorities within India are facing widespread discrimination, violence and hate campaigns. Mob lynchings, demolition of places of worship, denial of civil rights and state-backed politics of hatred, he said, expose the hollowness of India’s democratic claims.
Ghulam Muhammad Safi questioned the international community, the United Nations and global human rights organizations, asking whether a state that treats its minorities and subjugated nations with such brutality can genuinely be called democratic. He said India has emerged as one of the world’s most prominent imperial and colonial states of this century.
He urged the global community to move beyond India’s misleading democratic narrative, take serious notice of ongoing human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and play an effective role in ensuring the Kashmiri people’s inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with UN resolutions.
