Hindutva gives lie to India’s claims as secular state: AJK president

WASHINGTON: India’s reputation as a secular democracy has been eroded ever since the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into power in 2014, the Azad Jammu and Kashmir President, Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry, has said.

“Gone are the days when India used to be called the land of (Mahatama) Gandhi,” he told a public meeting in Washington on Sunday, while asserting that rising Hindutva fascism calls into question the country’s claims that it upholds secular values.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government has been pushing to change the secular and democratic fabric of India into that of a purely right-wing Hindu nation, it was pointed out.

Barrister Chaudhry said that Kashmiri diaspora in the US has played an important role in mobilizing global public opinion in favour of the rights of Kashmiri people, while highlighting that the rise of fascism was a clear threat to the minorities in India.

Kashmiri Americans, he said, were best suited to bring home to the Biden Administration the importance of playing a role in persuading India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue that would lead to the exercise by the Kashmiri people of their right to self-determination as guaranteed under 18 substantive United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Barrister Chaudhry expressed thanks to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) - the second largest forum after the United Nations - which has once again reiterated its principled stand on the Kashmir dispute and also appointed a special envoy on Kashmir.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman of the World Forum for Peace & Justice, said that Kashmir was at war that India cannot win — like Vietnam for the United States.

“Kashmir is living proof that the people will not compromise, far less abandon, their demand for self-determination which is their birthright and for which they have paid a price unparalleled in the history of South Asia,” Fai said.

“Today,” he added, “the challenge before us is that a new generation in Kashmir has emerged that doesn’t fear death”. “Their fearlessness has led to the powerful protests and the large demonstrations in recent years.”

Several other Kashmiri activists also addressed the gathering.