NEW DELHI: Kashmiri leaders from pro-India parties on Thursday urged the Indian prime minister to restore the region’s special constitutional autonomy and engage in dialogue with Pakistan during their first meeting with Narendra Modi since New Delhi stripped Kashmir of its autonomy and jailed many of its leaders in a crackdown in 2019.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, which both claim it in full and rule it in part. The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought two of their three wars over control of Kashmir.
In August 2019, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government abolished Article 370 of the Constitution and ended Kashmir’s autonomy, splitting it into two federal territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir — and placing its entire population under lockdown and a communication blackout. In a series of administrative changes that followed, India removed protections on land and jobs for the local population, which many likened to attempts at demographically altering the region.
Leaders of fourteen pro-India political parties were invited for Thursday’s meeting in New Delhi. Many of them, including Kashmir’s former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, had been under house arrest for months after the 2019 crackdown.
“People of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) feel very humiliated after what happened on August 5, 2019,” Mufti told reporters. “The way Article 370 was removed from the Constitution — unconstitutionally, illegally and immorally — this is not acceptable to the people of Kashmir, and we will struggle for the restoration of Article 370 because this is the question of our identity.”
In this handout photograph taken on June 24, 2021 and released by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB), India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (bottom C) poses for a picture with various political leaders from Jammu and Kashmir, in New Delhi. (AFP/PIB)
While he did not comment on the restoration of Kashmir’s autonomy, Home Minister Amit Shah confirmed that the restoration of its statehood — with a state being of higher administrative importance than federal territory — was discussed at the meeting with Modi.
“The future of Jammu and Kashmir was discussed, and the delimitation exercise and peaceful elections are important milestones in restoring statehood as promised in parliament,” he said in a tweet after the meeting.
India’s main opposition Congress party demanded that the territory’s statehood be “restored at the earliest.”
Congress leader and former Kashmir chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media: “The prime minister and home minister had made a promise that the government would restore statehood.”
Thursday’s meeting, where pro-India Kashmiri leaders said New Delhi should engage in talks with Pakistan for the sake of Kashmir’s economic conditions, took place in the backdrop of the reaffirmation of a 2003 cease-fire accord between India and Pakistan in February.
“I complimented the PM on the cease-fire with Pakistan and told him to hold talks with Pakistan for peace in Kashmir,” Mufti said. “New Delhi should talk with Islamabad for the resumption of the stalled trade between both parts of Kashmir because many people’s lives are involved in this.”
Omar Abdullah, another former chief minister of Kashmir and leader of the region’s oldest political party, the National Conference (NC), also supported talks with Pakistan.
“We can change friends but not neighbors,” he said. “Pakistan is our close neighbor and we should use the back channel to address the existing tensions between the two nations.”
