#kashmir issue

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    The aftermath of Free (Azad) Kashmir

    ByJustpaste.in

    For centuries, poets have romanticized Kashmir. The famous Persian couplet claimed: “Agar firdaus bar roo-e-zameen ast, hameen ast-o, hameen ast-o, hameen ast” If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this. Our national rhetoric held this idea and declared Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) as an Eden of resilient souls. We were taught to view the region through a single prism from our classrooms to our living rooms. Kashmir is a land of dignity waiting for liberation. We rightly raised our voices in moral outrage against Indian state violence.  We condemned the pellet guns in Srinagar. We  called out internet blackouts as crimes against basic humanity. Yet today, as the late Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali lamented: “Kashmiri people are being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell.” When the same heavy boots, digital blockades, and live gunfire echo through Rawalakot, Kotli, and Mirpur, our collective morality falls into a deafening silence. Finally, the elections have settled down with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) securing its lead amid heavy security deployments. Still, the official state narrative speaks of democratic continuity and institutional order.  Beyond the victory speeches lies a darker reality. Elections held under the shadow of civil crackdowns are not a triumph of democracy. In fact, they are an exercise in management. The citizens of Azad Kashmir have not taken to the streets over abstract political games. Their demands were fundamental, human, and modest organized under grassroots movements like the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC). They protested peacefully for affordable flour, fair electricity tariffs, local economic dignity, and genuine political representation. Instead of earnest dialogue, the state answered by banning civil rights, mobile internet access, and deploying paramilitary forces. The cost of this refusal to listen is written in blood. Over months of recurring unrest, clashes between security forces and civilian demonstrators have left dozens dead. The deaths consumed local traders, young protesters, and security personnel alongside over 100 people wounded across the region. Reports of continuous firing near Rawalakot confirm a tragic pattern. Whenever citizens ask for basic constitutional rights, they are met with gunshots.  It is painful to admit this hypocrisy, but honesty demands it. As ordinary citizens living in Punjab, we cannot spend our lives idealizing human rights movements across the border while remaining selectively blind to Kashmir. When Delhi cut the internet in the Kashmir Valley, we rightfully called it authoritarian. What name do we give to the blackouts imposed on Muzaffarabad and Poonch? When Indian police opened fire on demonstrators, we called it state violence. How do we rationalize our forces opening fire on citizens asking for fair economic treatment? We must acknowledge that living outside the valley does not grant us the privilege of silence. True solidarity cannot be a convenient geopolitical slogan. Azad (Free) Kashmir must’ve to be anything more than an empty prefix. Its people must possess the freedom to speak, to dissent, to connect, and to live without fear of a bullet. There mustn’t be such an electoral victory that carries legitimacy at the expense of Kashmiri lives. These political wins will remain hollow until the blockades are lifted and the state listens with humility rather than force.  

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    Analysing Pakistan’s system collapse through Orwell’s 1984

    ByJustpaste.in

    Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, publicly conceded that the nation’s existing governance structure has collapsed. The minister admitted that the administrative machinery can no longer resolve the country’s compounding socio-economic crises. The phrase strategically slipped through while addressing the Pakistan Economic Summit in Islamabad. He warned that adhering to the status quo would drag the nation into the same stagnant cycle  ten years from now. Amidst, he called upon political parties to set aside differences, decentralize power, and establish new administrative units to avert total destabilization. Yet, this public declaration does not occur in a vacuum. It arrives amidst mounting public resentment, economic desperation, and an escalating crackdown on political dissent, particularly in regions like Azad Jammu & Kashmir and urban political centers where mass protests against state austerity and police overreach have intensified. On the surface, the minister’s statement sounds like a candid plea for political reform and democratic unity. Beneath it, lies a far more insidious dynamic. One that mirrors the political theology of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984. Big Brother and the Permanent State In Orwell’s 1984, the state of Oceania is governed by a dual reality. On the visible surface sits the Outer Party and its administrative ministries: the Ministry of Peace (which wages war), the Ministry of Plenty (which manages scarcity), and the Ministry of Truth (which manufactures lies). But behind these facade institutions resides the true, unquestionable entity: the Party itself, epitomized by the omnipotent figure of Big Brother. The purpose of the ministers, bureaucrats, and politicians is not to serve the citizenry, but to safeguard the survival of the core entity at all costs. When applied to the political landscape of Pakistan, the Interior Minister’s declaration functions as a quintessential display of Orwellian doublethink. The ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accept both of them. The visible civilians admit powerlessness, yet the hidden apparatus of establishment and the deep-state continues to wield absolute authority. The state apparatus operates under an unwritten constitutional clause: individual rights, democratic mandates, and administrative cohesion may be sacrificed, so long as the core, permanent security apparatus remains untouched and supreme. Echoes From 1971 to Kashmir This pattern of preserving an unseen core entity while allowing civilian institutions to decay is not a novel phenomenon. Rather, it is the recurring motif of the region’s post-colonial history. During the 1971 crisis in East Pakistan, the political leadership and the military high command operated under the illusion that they were protecting the sacred unity of the state. In reality, the democratic mandate of the majority population in Bengal was suppressed to protect the ideological and structural hegemony of the West Pakistani establishment—the ruling entity. The state prioritized the preservation of its central ruling elite over the actual people, ultimately leading to the violent birth of Bangladesh. Similarly, in the context of Kashmir, both regional state apparatuses have historically treated the territory not as a community of citizens with self-determination, but as a hyper-militarized buffer zone. The rights of the local population are routinely suspended under emergency clauses, security regulations, and administrative crackdowns. Kashmir becomes a national security theater where the state justifies its authoritarian measures by pointing to a existential enemy, much like Oceania’s perpetual, shifting wars with Eurasia and Eastasia. The System Has Collapsed Minister Naqvi cautions that the system is broken and warns against civil unrest. The message carries an implicit subtext: the civilian government is simply the expendable skin of the state. The real state must be shielded from public wrath. Public dissent erupts over inflation, human rights abuses, or rigged mandates. However, the state’s reaction is not to adapt to the popular will, but to enforce compliance through force. The plea for political parties to sit together is less about democratic reconciliation and more an invitation to absorb the blame for a crisis created by the underlying apparatus. Ultimately, Orwell’s warning in 1984 was not merely about surveillance or censorship. Instead it was about the total erasure of individual agency in service of an unaccountable entity.  The region remains bound to protecting a shadowy establishment at the expense of its people.  

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    Echoes of 1971 in Pakistan’s Kashmir policy

    ByJustpaste.in

    History rarely repeats itself in exact terms, but it frequently rhymes through patterns of power, dissent and state responses. In Pakistan, analysts and political observers are increasingly highlighting the parallels between historical missteps. It is specifically the events leading up to the loss of East Pakistan in 1971 and the contemporary public grievances in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The Cost of Ignoring Electoral Mandates In 1970, General Yahya Khan permitted general elections across Pakistan. The Awami League in East Pakistan secured a decisive democratic victory by winning 162 out of 300 national seats. However, rather than facilitating a peaceful transfer of power, military leaders stalled negotiations in Dhaka through early 1971. This breakdown in dialogue culminated in Operation Searchlight, a military crackdown targeting intellectuals, students, and Bengali civilians. The resulting violence triggered a massive refugee crisis. Approximately ten million people were sent to India. A war that ultimately led to the creation of Bangladesh. Pakistan’s own Hamoodur Rahman Commission concluded that political failure and operational excess by military leadership were central to the catastrophe. Despite these official findings, the report remained suppressed for decades, leaving fundamental lessons about the dangers of military overreach largely unexamined within state institutions.  Unrest in Pakistan-Controlled Kashmir Today, army leadership under General Asim Munir continues to champion strong nationalistic rhetoric regarding Kashmir. He has been asserting it as the nation’s core and a willingness to fight further conflicts over Indian-administered territory. Yet, a  different internal dynamic has been evolving since 2025 within the territories Pakistan actually controls. Local populations have mobilized in widespread demonstrations driven by clear economic and political grievances. Unmanageable costs for basic essential goods. Disproportionately high pricing for local power distribution. Legislative structures that assign disproportionate authority to mainland administrators rather than local residents. State institutions responded with heavy-handed measures rather than operating for meaningful negotiation. The organizing groups were banned, communication blackouts were implemented and arrests occurred. Security forces deployed live fire against demonstrators  and caused dozens of civilian casualties. The Danger of Ignoring Unheard Grievances The concern raised by historians is not that history will reproduce the exact outcome of 1971, but that the state is relying on the same flawed logic. State is again attempting to suppress domestic economic and political grievances through state force. When state policy prioritizes coercion over political engagement, it risks alienating populations. The lingering question for Pakistan’s establishment is whether the lessons of past governance failures will finally be integrated, or whether suppressed grievances will once again lead to deep institutional crises.  

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    Creative expression as survival in times of crisis

    ByJustpaste.in

    In times of severe military occupation, state violence, and political trauma, art and literature undergo a fundamental transformation. They shift from aesthetic expression to vital tools for survival, record-keeping, and resistance. When conventional channels of news, speech, and movement are heavily restricted or censored, art and literature fulfill critical functions within a society. Documenting Counter-Narratives and Resisting Erasure In occupied zones, official narratives often frame political conflict using terms like normalcy or integration. They sanitize structural violence and human suffering. Kashmiri writers, poets, and essayists use narrative to preserve collective memory against state-enforced amnesia. Through poetry, fiction, and memoirs, literature captures the psychological reality of curfews, enforced disappearances, communication blackouts. It reminds of the loss of autonomy, rendering the lived experience of civilians indelible. Fine arts, illustration, and graphic art record incidents and emotional states that photojournalism or state-approved media often cannot access or transmit.  Processing Collective and Intergenerational Trauma Art creates a necessary intellectual and emotional container for a traumatized populace. Concepts such as unheimlich (the uncanny, or feeling un-homed in one’s own land) or grief over exile and displacement find structural expression through creative metaphors. Poetic forms allow writers to articulate loss, mourning, and fear in ways that transcend direct prose. The work of iconic Kashmiri poets such as the late Agha Shahid Ali, whose poetry continues to resonate. It demonstrates how verse can turn localized grief into a universal cry for human dignity. Artists frequently turn to raw mediums like paint, installation, and physical textiles to project the interiority of living under siege, using symbolic motifs like barren land, barbed wire, cages, or domestic objects disrupted by violence. Evading Censorship Through Metaphor and Allegory When direct political discourse leads to state surveillance, detentions, or legal suppression, creative expression relies on metaphor, symbolism, and myth. Playwrights and novelists weave political critiques into historical, mythological, or surreal settings, allowing themes of oppression, tyranny, and liberation to be discussed safely. On the ground, quick visual mediums like graffiti, posters, and digital art become decentralized tools. The mediums act for mass communication and solidarity, circulating rapidly across networks even during communication rollbacks.  Transcending Boundaries and Building Global Solidarity Art and literature serve onnect the isolated region to the global diaspora and international human rights communities. On memorial dates like August 5 (observed as Youm-e-Istehsal or Black Day by Kashmiris and solidarity groups worldwide), exhibitions, literary readings, poster competitions, and performance art allow communities across the world to bear witness to the ongoing struggle. Art transforms passive sympathy into active political consciousness. It forces the global audiences to confront physical realities of occupation beyond distant headlines. In times of intense crisis, art does not exist as an escape from reality. Rather, it becomes the definitive site where human dignity, historical truth, and resistance are actively preserved.