| 40 people ended up dead in the aftermath of killing of the terrorist leader, Burhan Wani, when there were no curbs of speech and assembly. Right now, the number of casualties stand at 0 [7]. Article 370, was a discriminatory law which treated everyone but the Sunni Muslim males of the valley, as second class citizens. Kashmir and it's political elite did nothing with the autonomy, and left the state in a more backward legal condition than India, where the law has at least (painfully) slowly evolved to decriminalise homosexuality, yielded greater property rights to women, and provide (controversial) affirmative action to disadvantaged sections of the population, among other things. Not to mention, democratic institutions governing elections, and investigating corruption have also been established, but not in Kashmir because of 370. Instead the elites have only used their autonomy to provide cover to terrorists, create corrupt patronage networks, dodged investigative agencies building anti-corruption cases, enable nepotistic official appointments etc [6]. In spite of these things, the valley's Muslim population supports 370, because they have significantly bought into radical Islamic ideology, to the extent that their struggle against India is now religious and seeks to establish an Islamic state, rather than freedom from India for ethnic Kashmiris (which only is only around 60% Sunni Muslim and the rest include Buddhists, Shias - who are in favour of 370 abrogation, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs). Their most popular slogan, which you can also hear in the video released by BBC is: "Hum kya chahte? Azaadi! Azaadi ka matlab kya? La illaha il allah!" which translates to ~> "What do we want? Freedom! What does freedom mean? There is no god but Allah!" In that video you can also hear them chanting the names of killed ISIS and Al Qaeda leaders and you can see people carrying ISIS and Jaish-e-Mohammed flags. In my opinion, any action taken by the government to eliminate these guys is fully justified, and any ground ceded to them will only result in more escalation of the conflict. See the current US negotiation with Taliban amidst daily attacks, suicide bombings and no ceasefire [4], [5]. Islamist tactics are the same everywhere, especially in this case, since they have both been supported by Pakistan. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38454483 [2]: https://www.bolantimes.com/pakistan-armed-forces-have-allege... [3]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1150066 [4]: https://thediplomat.com/2019/08/why-are-the-taliban-reluctan... [5]: https://time.com/5645984/afghanistan-taliban-suicide-car-bom... [6]: https://www.lawfareblog.com/indias-move-kashmir-unpacking-do... [7]: https://twitter.com/BDUTT/status/1161969318088699904 |