Mar Yousuf K.
“Do not think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them until a Day when eyes will stare in horror.”
— Qur’ān 14:42
Kashmir is not a territorial ambiguity or a diplomatic inconvenience; it is a living wound of empire, repression, and remembrance caught in the talons of a protracted colonial conflict that began not just in 1947, but with the imperial manipulations that preceded it. For centuries, Kashmir was ruled by a succession of foreign powers (first the Mughals, then Afghans, Sikhs, and Dogras) each leaving behind layers of exploitation. The most pivotal rupture, however, came in the 19th century when the British, after defeating the Sikhs in the First Anglo-Sikh War, sold Kashmir to Gulab Singh under the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar. This transaction (a princely state exchanged like property for 7.5 million rupees) laid the foundation for a future where Kashmiri lives would continue to be bartered without consent.
Fast forward to 1947. At the time of the Indo-Pak Partition, Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region ruled by a Hindu monarch, found itself in limbo. Maharaja Hari Singh initially opted for independence, but an uprising in Poonch led by ex-soldiers and civilians against Dogra repression, combined with a tribal incursion from Pakistan, led him to seek India’s military help. In return, he signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947. The accession was conditional and temporary, contingent on a plebiscite to determine the will of the Kashmiri people – a commitment India later reneged on. The United Nations, recognising the dispute, passed multiple resolutions urging a fair referendum, but those calls were ignored as India entrenched its military and political hold.
In the decades that followed, what was promised as autonomy was slowly eviscerated. Article 370, which enshrined Kashmir’s special status in the Indian Constitution, became a legal mirage, amended and undermined repeatedly. In 1953, the popular Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah was unceremoniously dismissed and jailed after expressing doubts about the accession’s finality. By the late 1980s, widespread disillusionment, rigged elections, and deepening repression catalysed a mass uprising.
As Kashmir’s call for self-determination became loud and unmistakable, so did the architecture of occupation, and a thousand small betrayals layered over each other culminated in the seismic rupture of August 5, 2019, when Kashmir’s special constitutional status was unilaterally revoked. With that revocation came the bifurcation of the state into two union territories, the jailing of teenage boys and seasoned political leaders, the deployment of thousands of additional troops, and the longest communications blackout ever imposed by a democracy – 213 days of digital darkness. The move, celebrated in the corridors of New Delhi, was seen in Srinagar as nothing short of annexation.
Kashmir is now the most militarised region in the world. Over 650,000 troops, protected by laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), patrol its streets, villages, and minds. Impunity reigns. Since the late 1980s, more than 100,000 people have been killed, thousands disappeared, and over 700 mass graves discovered. Journalists are harassed, poets are jailed, and protest is rebranded as “terrorism.” Yet the most poignant attacks are not always carried out with rifles. Some are inflicted on the soul.
The Jama Masjid of Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest and most iconic mosque, is regularly sealed shut on Fridays (the day of communal prayer). Sermons that once addressed political and spiritual realities are now silenced under the guise of “security.” Likewise, Eidgah, the open ground that has long hosted the largest Eid prayers in the Valley, is increasingly denied to the people on Eid itself. On the most sacred days, when communities should be embracing in remembrance of Allah, they are instead met with barricades and barbed wire. These closures are not accidental, they are strategic. They aim to atomise a people whose strength has always been in their togetherness, whose resilience has always been rooted in prayer.
But the war on Kashmiri spirit has taken even darker forms. In recent years, addiction has emerged as a new front of occupation. According to government data, nearly 70,000 youth are addicted to substances like heroin, opioids, and synthetic drugs. While surveillance drones track every protester, drug shipments mysteriously slip through the same checkpoints. Former Kashmir Inspector General of Police, SM Sahai, chillingly admitted that allowing drugs into Kashmir was “a matter of policy.” This is chemical pacification: a form of warfare designed not to kill but to sedate, to dismantle communities from within, and to drain the revolutionary potential of the young before they even speak.
It is in this violent landscape that resistance becomes sacred. For Kashmiris, Islam is not merely faith, it is the last bastion of dignity. From daily dhikr whispered through curfews to fasts kept under lockdown, worship in Kashmir has become a form of defiance. “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and properties [in exchange] for Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah and are killed…” [ 9:111]. Salah behind shuttered gates, dhikr amid army raids, or reciting Qur’ānic verses in interrogation cells – these are not just acts of devotion, they are declarations of survival.
At the heart of this sanctified resistance stands Maqbool Bhat, revolutionary and founder of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). He envisioned neither annexation by Pakistan nor subjugation to India, but an independent Kashmir, sovereign and self-defined. Known reverently as Baba-e-Qaum (Father of the Nation), his execution galvanised a generation, and his writings and speeches continue to animate slogans, murals, and martyr commemorations across the Valley. After years in Pakistani and Indian prisons, he was executed by India in 1984, becoming the first Kashmiri to be hanged by the Indian state. His body remains buried within Tihar Jail, a macabre symbol of a conflict that still refuses to die. Today, Bhat lives on not only in slogans and graffiti but in the consciousness of every Kashmiri who chooses not to forget.
And forgetting is precisely what the state demands. Kashmir’s history is being erased from schoolbooks. Shrines are being sanitised into tourist spots. The Kashmiri language is pushed out of public discourse. Children born post-2000 have grown up knowing curfews better than cricket, and checkpoints better than classrooms. More than 45% of the population exhibits symptoms of PTSD, yet even mourning is policed. Internet shutdowns (over 300 since 2012) are deployed not in response to violence, but in anticipation of memory. During funerals. Anniversaries. Martyrdom days. The occupying power knows what it fears most: the ability to remember, to testify, to document. For what is colonisation if not an attempt to erase the past, the truth? And what is resistance if not the act of remembering it, with courage and clarity?
Mar Yousuf K. is a writer exploring how politics and faith shape life in Occupied Kashmir and beyond, with contributions to local publications and community platforms.
