Ruhullah Mehdi slams Modi govt for weaponising fear against Kashmiris
Says Delhi uses ‘national security’ to cover up intelligence failures
Srinagar: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, senior National Conference leader and Indian parliament member from Srinagar, Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, has strongly criticised the BJP-led Indian government’s handling of “national security” and its treatment of Kashmiri Muslims, calling it a “playbook of weaponizing fear to hide failures.”
According to Kashmir Media Service, Mehdi, writing in The Indian Express, said that incidents like the Pahalgam attack and the Red Fort blast were grave lapses of national security. He said, “These add to the long list of security lapses that [occupied] Jammu and Kashmir has seen during the BJP regime, despite big claims of wiping out terrorism and bringing in normalcy”. Such incidents, he said, should trigger accountability, but the government has replaced accountability with suspicion, targeting Kashmiri Muslims across India solely for their identity.
Mehdi said the Indian Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah repeatedly claim occupied Jammu and Kashmir has been “integrated” and that development and peace now define the territory. He said, “They leave no opportunity to insist that the abrogation of Article 370 sowed the seeds of a Naya Kashmir”, adding, “They have indeed created a Naya Kashmir, in which Kashmiri students, businessmen, and other groups residing across mainland Indian states have turned into targets of hate for crimes they neither committed nor condoned”. He cited attacks on Kashmiri traders in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Delhi by RSS-affiliated groups, and a case where a Kashmiri woman was denied accommodation, noting such discrimination has been normalised.
He said “national security” is now used as a pretext to divert attention from intelligence failures, while Kashmiri citizens are treated as permanent suspects. Mehdi emphasized, “If equality is real, it must extend beyond speeches, slogans, and jumlas. And if the Constitution still governs this country, no person can be reduced to a permanent suspect because of where they come from. Yet this is precisely what is being normalised.”
“Kashmiris are not an internal enemy to be managed, monitored, and mistrusted,” he added. “We are citizens who are entitled to privacy, liberty, and equality under the law. Anything less is not integration. It is domination. And it is non-negotiable,” Mehdi concluded.
