ISLAMABAD, Feb 4 (APP):Speakers at a symposium on Tuesday said with the rise of Hindu fascism in India, collective international intervention from major powers an urgent need of the hour.
They were speaking at a symposium on “Situation in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir: Exploring Policy Options for Pakistan” organized by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) here shed light on the security, military and diplomatic dimensions of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed highlighted the extreme conditions being faced by the Kashmiri people since the August 5, 2019 lockdown.
He lamented that those Kashmiris who brave it out to peacefully demonstrate against the August 5 revocation even after 184 days were either jailed or fired upon by the Indian army.
He outlined how the Nazi-inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have captured state power and use its full capacity to further their goals, especially in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Modi’s fascist regime was sticking to the exercise of smoke and mirrors while banning more than two million prepaid mobile connections. Moreover, the Indian army refuses to reduce the number of boots on the ground, Senator Mushahid remarked.
He highlighted that under battered police vehicles, checkposts fortified with sandbags, the besieged Kashmiris are living a life of fear and anger, struggling to have access to something as basic as a carton of milk, a scenario reminiscent of an Auschwitz camp.
In his opening remarks, Ambassador Vice Admiral (R) Khan Hashambin Saddique, HI(M), President IPRI, highlighted that with the presence of more than 800, 000 security forces, Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is virtually a garrison with the largest concentration of security forces anywhere in the world.
He outlined the factors undermining peace in the region including theabsence of aneffective regional security mechanism; lack of regional economic and cultural integration caused by the hegemonic inclinations of India; and absence of reliable dispute resolution bodies.
Discussing the impact of Hindu nationalism on Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Ambassador (R) Afrasiab Mehdi Hashmi Qureshi, former High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Bhutan & New Zealand, highlighted that history suggests that India did not pay heed to international law and norms by manifesting textbook bigotry, especially under the manifestations of fascism and Nazism espoused by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) now adhered to by the Indian government.
He discussed how RSS played a critical role in the bloodbath in the Gujarat pogroms and how they were playing the same role in IOJ&K.
Giving a brief historical overview of the organization, he said that the RSS was a Nazi-inspired movement based on the use of paramilitary forces for extra-legal blackmail and violence.
He was of the view that while Hitler floated the idea of nationalistic nationalism, the world today was heading towards religious fascism and India under the RSS’s fascist rhetoric now faces an existential threat.
From institutionalized rape and mass graves as an instrument of control to cajoling Kashmiris with false developmental schemes, have all failed to wobble the resolve of the Kashmir people, he said.