The state of Jammu and Kashmir covers an area of 84,471 square miles. Of this area India occupies 49,560 square miles and Pakistan controls the rest. The state, lying between 32°-17´ and 36°-58´ North latitude and 73°-6´ and 80°-30´ East longitude is surrounded by China, Tibet, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. There is no doubt that it is of great strategic importance because it has survived despite the many threats from Soviet and Chinese Communist expansionism. Mahnaz Ispahani, an expert in South Asian geopolitics, stated that "with the partition of the sub-continent, Kashmir itself became of even greater strategic value than in imperial times."

The 20th century dawned and the world witnessed struggles against autocracy, feudalism and colonialism. The winds of these revolutions crossed the peaks of the Himalayas and touched Kashmir. Repressed for years, the Kashmiri people were already frustrated. In the year 1924, these sentiments came to the fore in the form of a memorandum, which was presented to Lord Reading, Viceroy of India, upon his arrival in Kashmir.

In 1931, the people's dissatisfaction with the condition under which they lived erupted and soon took the form of a popular movement. This movement resulted in the end of feudal rule in 1947. But this, in and of itself, did not bring freedom to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact from 1947 onwards a new chapter of slavery was added to the history of this state. The British Empires closed its show in the subcontinent and sailed lock, stocked and barreled, back to England; but with the end of the British Raj came a period of neo-colonial rule.

It was 9.00 a.m. on October 27, 1947, when Indian troops officially started landing at the Srinagar airfield. In the words of British historian Alastair Lamb, "From their arrival on October 27, 1947 to the present day, Indian troops continued to occupy a larger proportion of the state of Jammu and Kashmir despite the increasingly manifest opposition of the majority of the population to their presence." To give legality to the invasion of a sovereign country, India adopted various methods. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was designated as a princely state within the British Indian Empire. With the lapsing of the British paramountcy in the princely states, the state of Jammu and Kashmir became independent by "default." This gave the Maharaja the option of joining either of the two countries. This was a requirement under the rules of the British transfer of power in the Indian subcontinent or what is called the Indian Independence Act.

The Act was enthusiastically welcomed by Quaid-I-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In his words, "constitutionally and legally the Indian states will be independent sovereign states on termination of paramountcy and they will be free to decide for themselves to adopt any course they like. It is open to them to join the Hindustan Constituent Assembly or the Pakistan Constituent Assembly or remain independent." Jinnah's stand was in accordance with the law. But Congress' leadership was averse to the idea and to them lapsed paramountcy meant reversion to Independent status. The devotees of Congress felt jittery over the granting of independent status to any of the princely states. Professor Gowher Rizvi, MacArthur Fell, professor of International Relations at Oxford University, put it this way: "The states were compelled to accede to one or the other dominion in accordance with the broad principles of Partition itself: Muslim majority states located in territories contiguous with Pakistan would accede to Pakistan and the rest would go to India . . . in these circumstances Kashmir too would easily be disposed of. Over seventy-five percent of the population was Muslim (according to the 1942 census, of a total population of 40,021,616, Muslims accounted for 31,000,000 and Hindus 809,000 approximately) the state was adjacent to Pakistan and irrespective of the wish of the ruler, the state would be integrated with Pakistan."

When the Maharaja requested a standstill agreement from Pakistan, it agreed. But India rejected his request outright. India adopted various tactics to lend credibility to its invasion of Kashmir. On January 1, 1948, India took the issue to the United Nations. The UN adopted two resolutions, on August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949. These resolutions granted the right to self-determination through a plebiscite, to be held under the supervision of a UN-appointed plebiscite administrator. Both India and Pakistan accepted this resolution.

Mahatma Gandhi said, ". . . the will of Kashmiris is the supreme law in Kashmir." Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in Parliament, "From the very beginning it has been our declared wish that the people of Kashmir should themselves decide their future. We will continue to adhere to our policy whatever happens. In a pursuance of our policy, we agreed to hold a plebiscite provided the condition necessary for its peaceful conduct were fulfilled." Nehru reiterated this stand on a number of occasions. He once reminded the president, Dr. Rajinder Prasad, "We are committed to abide by the decision of the people of Kashmir, whatever it might be. We are committed secondly to a plebiscite. If the people of Kashmir decide to remove or do away with their old ruler, we must accept that decision in view of our repeated assurances to that effect. If they want to leave India, that also we have to accept because of our assurance. We could of course want this done in the proper way and having due regard to constitutional proprieties."

Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, volume 18, April 1-July 15, 1952. Ed. S. Gopal: "Plebiscite was not a foreign phenomenon to the process of India's partition. The fact of the matter, however, was that the plebiscite policy had been established long before the Kashmir crises erupted in October 1947. It was an inherent part of the process by which the British Indian Empire was partitioned between two successor Dominions."

Why did India take the issue to the United Nations? There was no sincerity of purpose nor did it have the intention of allowing the people of Kashmir to exercise their right to self-determination. Pervez Iqbal Cheema, Professor and Chairman of the Department of International Studies at Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, expressed the following perspective: "The simple answer seems to be the initial Indian attempts were to enforce a military solution in Kashmir, but failed to throw tribesmen out of Kashmir territory and to annihilate the Acadia Kashmir forces. It was the failure of the Indian army to enforce a quick military solution because of the strong resistance of the Azad Kashmir forces which prompted India to take the case to the United Nations. This could be one of the reasons, I believe, that India wanted to buy time to consolidate its position in Kashmir and then follow its plan of annexation."

To forge ahead with its plan of annexation, to be defiant in the face of the intensity of the UN resolution, and to back-track from its commitment of granting the rights to self-determination, India has enacted the modern drama of forcing a process of "rigged elections and sham democracy," in the words of a senior Indian journalist, Tavleen Singh, upon the Kashmiri people.

The first elections were held in September 1951 and 73 or 75 members of this Assembly ran uncontested. The electorate boycotted the whole affair. The assembly was to " . . . determine the future shape and affiliation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir." India's intelligence Chief, Mr. B.N. Mullick, exposed the government's method of rigging the election: "Nomination papers of most of those who could form an opposition were rejected."

By no acceptable standard was the Constituent Assembly a representative body. Justice Mufti Bahudin Farooqi characterized the members as "nodding goats of Sheikh Abdullah." Most of the members of this Constituent Assembly were semi-literate. In the words of historian M.S. Pampori, "Most of this Constitution-making body was chosen if not from illiterates, then from semi-literates who could not understand even the definition of the Constitution, not to speak of its language and implications." Noted jurist of the Bombay High Court, A.G. Noorani, recently wrote in The Statesman, that "Sheikh Abdullah rigged the polls with merciless efficiency, drawing grateful applause from Nehru. His advice to the Sheikh's successor, Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad, was not to refrain from rigging, but to leave just a few seats for the Opposition and thus provide a fig-leaf to cover the nudity of ravaged credibility. The advice was repeated later by one of Indira Gandhi's closest advisors . . . "

The words of Syed Mubarik Shah Naqshbandi, delivered at the State People's Convention at Srinagar in 1968, are as relevant today as they were then. He said, " . . . the resolutions passed by the Security Council had vested the people of J&K with the right to a plebiscite, and these resolutions could not be abrogated except by an agreement between India, Pakistan, and the people of Jammu and Kashmir." India, which had taken the issue to the UN, has never moved for amending or dropping the resolutions of 1948 and 1949. Therefore India is fully aware that the Constituent Assembly has no authority to ratify the accession of the state to India, as it has attempted to do. Indeed, on March 30, 1951, the UN Security Council confirmed this and emphasized the irrelevance of the Constituent Assembly in deciding the future of Kashmir.

It is absolutely clear that there is no moral or legal leg upon which the State Constitution can stand much less upon which the elections from 1951 can be justified. Indeed, the 1951 elections, as well as the recent ones, are a naked attempt to hoodwink international opinion and divert attention from the primary issue and that is: settling the status of Kashmir in accordance with the resolutions passed by the United Nations.

Even senior members of the Indian intelligentsia have ridiculed these elections as fraudulent. G.M. Sadiq, a member of Bakhshi Gulam Mohammed's cabinet, stated that "In the recent by-elections to the Charar-I-Sharif Assembly Constituency the ruling party managed, despite the withdrawal of opposition candidates, to pull in over 90 percent of the votes. These undemocratic practices permeate even election to the local bodies. In the elections held in November 1957 to the Town Area communities of the six towns in the valley, 78 nomination papers out of 81 belonging to the opposition were rejected on the flimsiest grounds." The elections during the time of G.M. Sadiq were no different from those held during the Abdullah or Bakhshi rule. Commissioner Abdul Khaliq in fact declared all 16 candidates of the Sadiq Congress elected as they were unopposed.

In the 1977 elections, the National Conference party won 48 seats in a house of 76. The Janata Party, which ruled in New Delhi, won 13 seats; Congress 12, and the Jamaat-I-Islami won one. The National Conference ferociously contested the Government of India's official stand on Kashmir, stating that the issue of accession had yet to be settled. In scores of speeches, Sheikh Abdullah and his lieutenants pronounced that "This election was in fact an anti-India vote."

In 1983, another sham election was held in Jammu and Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah returned to power with active help from various levels of the Government of India. In 1988, Parliamentary elections were held in Kashmir. Only two percent of the electorate turned out to vote.

In the post 1989 period, the people's movement for the right to self-determination assumed new dimensions. After exhausting all peaceful options to make India honour its word, a section of Kashmiri youth took up arms against India's illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir. These young men nursed the sapling of Kashmir's freedom struggle with their warm blood. Thousands of them attained martyrdom; thousands were maimed and disabled. The youth in particular, along with countless thousands made immense sacrifices to attain the cherished goal of freedom. According to a conservative estimate, more than fifty thousand people have been killed by Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989.

It was as if Kashmir had been transformed into a vast cemetery. Under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr. Paula R. Newberg wrote: "Srinagar, once known for shimmering lakes, ornate house boats, and majestic Himalayan peaks, is now a city of cemeteries. Along its meandering lanes and riverbanks, Kashmiris bury their dead and mark their calendars by atrocities that kill their children . . . Since 1989, the number of dead has reached tens of thousands, the exact number unknown. Mostly boys and men, they have died for their religious beliefs, their political beliefs or because they were in the way. The circumstances of birth have become the accidents of death."

To perpetuate its occupation of Kashmir, the Indian Government has deployed more than half a million soldiers and a quarter of a million paramilitary forces. In 1993, the London-based Observer indicated that the army/civilian ratio was as high as one to eight. The Observer . . . "It is difficult to count uniformed men in Kashmir. Indian newspapers occasionally print government figures that indicate as few as 150,000; but officials in Kashmir, foreign diplomats and journalists have always assumed that this is the number of regular army only in or near the valley. Paramilitary troops account for 100,000 to 400,000 more men, depending on seasons, political events and the seriousness of military engagements. Even though the most visible of the security forces in urban areas parade in full light of day, those in hills are harder to find. By the beginning of 1995, over 400,000 troops were reportedly deployed in Kashmir, including eight army divisions and other independent brigades across the state."

Jane's Intelligence Review reports that "at least fifty-six of 148 battalions of Border Security Forces - each including one thousand men - are engaged in Kashmir. Thirty-nine in the valley and seven in Doda District are involved in counter-insurgency operations. Ten along the line of control are involved in border security operations." Indian sources suggest that more BSF battalions have been deployed in the last year. The Central Reserve Police Force has the second largest presence. It was substantially increased in the summer of 1994 to as many as eighteen battalions each of the Territorial Army, the National Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the National Security Guards and the Jammu and Kashmir Armed Police. Since the summer of 1994, between three and thirty battalions of Rashtriya rifles, trained by the Army, were on duty a week later in Srinagar and Udhampur Doda Consistencies. If one looks at the number of security forces in one constituency and number of voters, the ratio is nearly one to one. Nowhere else in the world have elections been marshaled in this manner.

Not satisfied with the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and paramilitary personnel to subjugate the people of Kashmir, India introduced bands of renegades--hard-core criminals and hoodlums--to add to the miseries that already characterizes daily life in Kashmir. These renegades who operate under the direct command of the Indian army and Border Security Forces have been programmed to kill freedom-lovers, eliminate journalists, knife political activists and butcher human rights activists. They have killed thousands of people, plundered thousands of houses, raped hundreds of women and looted the natural wealth of Kashmir. One such famous renegade is Kuka Parray, who has had a change of career: once a smuggler of Kashmir's timber resources, he now leads a band of thugs under the banner of India.

Veteran journalist A.G. Noorani called these renegades the "vigilantes hired to kill." He wrote, "The technique of state sponsored terrorism was tried out not only in Punjab but also in the Northeast. The experiment in Kashmir is on a far larger and more ruinous scale." With regard to the coalition between the army and the renegades he wrote, " . . . it is no longer a state secret to be admitted in private. It is a public scandal." Mr. Bairaj Puri said that this is " . . . not an outside import into the valley but entirely conceived and produced by New Delhi."

In its report on "India's Secret Army in Kashmir" (May of 1996) Human Rights Watch/Asia states, "Officials in Kashmir routinely claim that the detainee was killed in an 'encounter' with the security forces . . . Security legislation has increased the likelihood of such abuses by authorizing the security forces to shoot to kill and to destroy civilian property. Under these laws, the security forces are protected from persecution for human rights violations . . . There is no question that civil and security officials in Kashmir are aware of the widespread use of torture. Petitions pending before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court provide ample documentation, including medical evidence, of the systematic use of torture."

To stage the drama of a political process, these armed gangsters were made to launch parties and to participate in the sham elections. The role conceived by the army and other intelligence agencies for these renegades even ruffled the feathers of pro-India politicians.

From Farooq Abdullah to Taj Mohuddin, these politicians made fervent demands to the government of India to disarm the renegade forces. Commenting on the role of the renegades in the sham elections of May 1996, Taj Mohuddin, a Congress party candidate, said "the Election Commission has shut its eyes. I have lost my faith in the set-up. He even threatened self-immolation if the Government did not disarm the renegades." Janata Dal candidate from Anantnag Maqbool Dar also made repeated demands that they be disarmed, even after he was inducted as a State Minister of Home Affairs in New Delhi. Only after agencies sponsoring these elements prevailed upon him did he backtrack on this demand.

The lack of credibility of these elections--held under the shadow of guns, both with the army and these hired killers under the government's wing--has been exposed by politicians pushing the interests of New Delhi in Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah, who has earned the dubious distinction of defending India's policy of arson, rape, plunder and killing in many international forum also pronounced these elections as "Farcical and rigged." Gulam Rasool Kar, another Indian protégé in Kashmir, and president of the National Conference, demanded repolling in seventy booths. Indian Home Minister, Mr. Inderjit Gupta, while talking to the press in August of 1996, and as reported by the BBC India Service, said " . . . in Jammu and Kashmir all elections held to date were rigged to serve the interests of successive Congress governments."

The May 1996 elections in Jammu and Kashmir were not only farcical but were also a blemish on the concept of democracy. It was an election without voters or candidates. To enact the drama of elections, the Indian government had to invent candidates as well. This was done with the help of its intelligence agencies. Most of the candidates were armed mercenaries, working in conjunction with Indian security forces. Even politicians who have been holding a brief in Kashmir for India disassociated themselves from these sham elections. The state Janata Dal leader had expressed concern over the party high command decision to field party candidates. In an interview with The Kashmir Times, 4^th April 1996, it was reported that he had already communicated to the party high command that the atmosphere was not conducive to hold elections and participate in them. Another politician holding a brief for India in Kashmir, Congress party candidate Mian Bashir Ahmad, told The Kashmir Times, 6^th April 1996: "The coming elections will be marred by large scale rigging and there was every likelihood that the electorate would not be allowed to exercise their right of franchise freely and fairly." He added, "the situation was not conducive for the holding of elections." Even the National Conference, which plays India's card in Kashmir, stayed away from these polls.

How can one claim to have democractic elections without the people's participation? It was said by the people to have been "a big joke." The government of India failed to even rope in employees and was forced to import election staff from outside the state. On 14^th April, The Sunday Times of India published that "About 46,000 employees will be deployed on election duty at 6,190 polling stations spread across six constituencies. The majority of these employees will be central government staff from Delhi. These employees would be handling 4.4 million voters in 14 districts of the state. The Union Home Ministry and the DOPT are coordinating election duty of the employees. Each polling booth will be manned by five persons which includes one Urdu speaker. The government will provide a personal security of at least two persons to each of the employees . . . A circular by the Department of Personnel and Ttraining (DOPT) to the employees who are short listed by the Union Government for Kashmir duty will be given one month's basic salary . . . before their trip to the troubled state." They were also given insurance of Rupee five hundred thousand.

The All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) boycotted these sham elections. The adverse attitude of the general public towards these elections was pointed out by The Hindustan Times on 15^th April 1996: "Unnoticed by casual onlookers, parliamentary candidates enjoy bullet-proof cars . . . escort vehicles piloting them up and down Kashmir is indeed a luxury for them. But that is hardly enthusing the people in the Valley. They continue to remain indifferent."

At election time, the government imposed a virtual ban on the publication of newspapers in the Kashmir valley. First, all the newspaper editors were summoned by the State Home Department, and were asked to strictly follow the code of conduct drawn up by the Government. This was followed by the issuance of a circular which imposed a restriction on the reporting of facts. In order to make newsmen tow the Government line, journalists were kidnapped and turned into hostages by the mercenaries working under direct command of the Indian Defence Ministry. Reporters working from New Delhi who ventured to file reports in violation of the restrictions earned the wrath of the Government: many received threatening phone calls from the State Information Department. Essentially, the Government's objective was to prevent the message of the APHC from reaching the people.

The entire state had been converted into a battle ground, with barracks, army and other forces dotting every nook and corner of Kashmir. It made free expression impossible. The holding of public rallies and meetings remain banned.

In order to educate people about the implications of the farcical elections, the APHC launched a mass contact programme by going door to door. To prevent this, Indian authorities made attempts on the lives of the APHC leaders. On May 9, in Sopore, the leaders were fired upon. In Narabal, a land mine was detonated near where some leaders had gathered. This left only one option for expressing dissent against the atrocities and elections. They began to observe shut-downs, wheel jams, and hartals (strikes).

When the APHC called a strike, the response was overwhelming. The Kashmir Times (22^nd May 1996) reported, "the city wore a deserted look with people preferring to remain indoors. All the shops, business establishments, government and semi-government offices besides banks were closed. Transport was off the roads."

On 23^rd May 1996, polling was held in Anantnag and Baramulla. The Kashmir Times described it as a "Tamasha," a joke. Sabina Inderjit of The Times of India wrote, "A polling station about 20 km. from here . . . wore a deserted look with no civilians about except a group of security personnel . . . A short drive ahead, hordes of people were seen trekking on the highway, under the watchful eyes of the army . . . a group from Hatiwara village in Anantnag alleged: The army came at 5 a.m. and threatened us that if we did not vote, we would be killed and our house burnt down." The case was the same at Bijbihara, Pampore, and Pulwama. "Arthur Max of The Associated Press, described the scene: "[Baramulla] Indian Army troops herded Kashmiris to the polls yesterday for the rebellious state's first elections in seven years, forcing Kashmiris to participate in an Indian government election they want no part of . . . soldiers roused villagers and townspeople from their homes soon after dawn and escorted them to the polling stations . . . in nearby Sopore, hundreds of people gathered in a square and shouted independence slogans, defying orders to vote . . . At Delina . . . a half dozen soldiers herded a line of men towards a polling station. Wearing camouflage helmets, the soldiers blew whistles and waved sticks to keep the men moving."

Resident Mohammad Shafi said, "the army came early in the morning and dragged people from their houses. But we gathered all the men, women, boys and girls to come here, we will not vote. We do not want to be with India. They have destroyed our lives. We want only freedom."

Reporting from Baramulla, John F. Burns wrote for The New York Times, 24^th May 1996: "Indian troops moved into villages and urban neighborhoods, across the vale of Kashmir at dawn today (23^rd May 1996) herded the villagers from their beds to vote . . . but after widespread allegations that tens of thousands of troops were deployed to force Muslims to vote at a gunpoint, the message India wanted to send to the world appeared likely to be lost or at least heavily muffled." His headline read. "A showcase election in a Muslim state becomes a show of force by New Delhi." The Washington Post carried a picture of women shouting anti-India slogans outside the polling place. Similar reports were carried in newspapers all over the world.

Indian authorities at New Delhi, their agents at Srinagar, and Indian diplomats unnerved with these reports started a campaign against newsmen from various parts of the world and called these reports "exaggerations." But Indian mediamen were telling the same story. Ajith Pillai of The Outlook reported, " . . . in village after village this correspondent visited, the story was the same. Crowds of people squatted outside polling stations like herds of sheep." Ritu Sarin of The Indian Express reported, "Three persons were killed when BSF jawans and armed renegades opened fire in a crowded market. Two among the dead were brothers: Yusuf Altaf (15) and Tahi Altaf (14). Their shattered father sat in a room full of mourners . . . He said that even if his two sons had not been killed, nobody in his neighborhood would have cast their vote on 30^th May." He announced, "If there is death on one side, and a ballot box on the other, we would choose death."

In the month of September, India has started the process all over again, having called for state assembly elections in Kashmir. The outcome has been no different than it was in May.

For centuries Kashmiris have lived under suppression and subjugation. The worst hit by this has been the Kashmiri Muslim. In the words of the Muslim Conference leader, the late Chowdhary Ghulam Abbas, "The condition of Muslims in all respects was very bad . . . Poverty, penury, helplessness and humiliation was their destiny. They earned livelihoods from menial jobs." A Kashmiri Muslim was all along discriminated against by Hindus, who were in a minority, but were always hand in glove with the ruling Hindu elite. Sir Walter Lawrence, who was appointed as the settlement Commissioner by Maharaja Ranbir Singh writes in his book, The valley of Kashmir, "in recent times there were very few Pundits who were not in receipt of pay from the state, and the number of offices was legion." But though this generosity in the matter of office establishment was an enormous boon to the Pundit class, it was a curse and a misfortune to the Muslims of Kashmir; for " . . . the Pundit does not value a post for its pay, but rather for its perquisite." The laws were discriminatory against Muslims, and there was no aspect of life for which Muslims were untaxed. William Moorcraft writes about Dogra rule: "The murder of a native by a Sikh is punishable by a fine to the government from sixteen to twenty rupees . . . [from this amount] four rupees were paid to the family of the deceased if he was a Hindu and two rupees if he was a Mohammedan."