RSS-BJP’s settler colonial project begins taking practical shape in IIOJK
Srinagar: The Indian BJP government’s settler-colonial agenda and attempts at demographic change in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir have begun taking practical shape through the upcoming census and the acquisition of Kashmiri properties, including land, in the name of establishing township colonies, industries, and railway projects.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the new census is scheduled to be conducted in the coming months. At the same time, industrial groups, including the Mumbai-based Jindal Group, laid the foundation stone of a steel processing unit in 2023 in the occupied territory. The plant, being set up in Pulwama district of south Kashmir, is described as the first major such project established after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A in August 2019. These Articles had guaranteed special status to IIOJK and exclusive rights to its residents.
The BJP regime revoked the special status of IIOJK on August 5, 2019, and subsequently introduced new domicile and land laws allowing Indian citizens to acquire land and secure government jobs in the occupied territory—privileges that were previously reserved for the state subjects of Jammu and Kashmir.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has earlier warned that the BJP government and its installed Lieutenant Governor’s administration are bent upon reducing the Muslim majority of IIOJK into a minority by permanently settling Indian citizens in the territory.
The APHC stated that India has treated occupied Jammu and Kashmir as a colony since October 27, 1947, when its troops landed in Srinagar against the spirit of the subcontinent’s partition plan and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people. It said the Modi regime has taken numerous steps since August 5, 2019, toward what it terms the colonization of Kashmir—an objective long associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The APHC added that the marginalization of the indigenous population and policies of land acquisition are clear manifestations of what it described as Modi’s colonial project in the occupied territory. It maintained that these measures constitute violations of United Nations resolutions and appealed to the international community to hold India accountable for its actions in IIOJK.
