Kashmir is never going to be Madhya Pradesh, but it also doesn’t have to be what it is right now (and indeed it wasn’t before the 1980s).

Hindus on this blog never cease to amaze. The same slimy imperial apologetics used by the British against them, they are now parroting about the Kashmiris. I’m not sure if this is a lack of self-awareness, or a lack of shamelessness. Probably both.

The issue with Kashmir is straightforward. They are a people that have never wanted to be part of India, that have nevertheless been forced to be part of India at gunpoint. This already makes them unique in comparison to every other state currently in India (who at worst have alternated between periods of contentment and wanting independence).

Kashmir is a lot less alien than Mizoram (which is Christian, and speaks a language not even in the Indo-European family), and the latter has found its place in India.

There is nothing magical or essential about Kashmir. There are foreign forces amplifying certain tendencies there. That’s it.

A sample of their alienation from Pakistan

https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/documents/papers/excerpts_of_sheikh_abdullah's_february_5_1948_speech.htm

“I had thought all along that the world had got rid of Hitlers and Goebbels, but, from what has happened and what is happening in my poor country, I am convinced that they have only transmigrated their souls into Pakistan…”

National Conference with Sheikh Abdulla as their leader were solidly pro-India and anti-Pakistan. Congress supported Sheikh in all his anti-Prince civil rights movement. Sheikh Abdullah spoke in the UN as Indian representative and asked Pakistan to lay it’s hands off Kashmir. The major political force in Kashmir was with India

I don’t think Gandhi won Indian Independence tbh.
The Brits *had* to give up India
Maybe Kashmir is as alien to India as India is to Britain?

That is what the Valley Sunnis feel / their alienation is absolutely shocking..

A century ago; the Brits were saying the same thing about Gandhi..

You are a fair person, but is this really a fair comparison?

Think about how Britain came to be in possession of India. And then think about how and why Kashmir is a part of India (and partly of Pakistan.) Did Indians go sailing around the world to capture and colonize the Vale?

What Gandhi was fighting for, for most of his political career, was not even independence. It was simple rights, for Indians to be treated on an equal footing with whites in their own homeland. Rights which Kashmiris already possess, and have possessed since 1947.

That said, if Kashmiri secessionism abandons its current militancy and Islamism, and instead takes up Gandhianism, I can definitely see it having a much more profound effect on the Indian public. But with Pakistan and the ISI napping on Kashmiris’ heels, this is unlikely to happen.

A century ago; the Brits were saying the same thing about Gandhi..

Right, they want independence. I want an Aston Martin and a date with Margot Robbie. It’s all right to want things, but you have to make your peace with the situation at hand, a situation where Kashmiri independence is a nonstarter.

You realise that Hindus have been worshipping phallic structures (Siva Linga) since time immemorial.

Another pathetic attempt to rewrite history to fit a pro-islam agenda.

Aryan’s iconoclasm of Indus valley linga can not be equated with ‘Hindu’ iconoclasm, because mainstream Hinduism is a mix of Vedic and Indus religious practices, including the worship of phallic structures.

Hindu iconoclasm towards Buddhism is a fact however.