India?s residency law in Kashmir amplifies demographic fears

They say the changes will reduce the region to a colony.“Given the history of Indian state intervention in Kashmir, there are efforts to destroy the local, distinctive cultural identity of Kashmiris and forcibly assimilate Kashmiri Muslims into a Hindu, Indian polity,” said Saiba Varma, an assistant professor of cultural and medical anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.Residency rights were introduced in 1927 by Kashmir’s Hindu king, Hari Singh, to stop the influx of outsiders in the former princely state. India dubbed the armed rebellion terrorism abetted by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denies.Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict in the last three decades.Since the early 1950s, Hindu nationalists, including Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, have been advocating a solution in India’s favor by neutralizing Kashmir’s Muslim majority inhabitants through settlement of Hindus from other parts of the country.“The Indian Hindu right-wing wants a demographic solution to Kashmir, but their policies are sowing seeds for a new conflict, possibly one that will lead to unending bloodshed and lead to destabilization of the entire region,” said Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri political anthropologist.The militarization of the region has increased under Modi, and in July the government eased rules for Indian soldiers to acquire land in Kashmir and construct “strategic areas” seen as settlements by the natives.Kashmir’s oldest and main pro-India political party, the National Conference, slammed the move as a mission for a “major land grab” that could “turn the entire region into a military establishment.”With India allowing outsiders to become residents, many worry such a move could alter the results of a plebiscite if it were to ever take place, even though it was promised under the 1948 United Nations resolutions that gave Kashmir the choice of joining either Pakistan or India.