India’s right-wing prime minister has held a crucial meeting with pro-India politicians from disputed Kashmir for the first time since New Delhi stripped the region’s semi-autonomy, annexed it and jailed many of them in a crackdown.
Experts say the meeting on Thursday was meant to ward off mounting criticism at home and abroad after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in August 2019 downgraded the region’s status, split it into two federal territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir — and removed inherited protections on land and jobs for the local population. Since then, Indian authorities have imposed a slew of administrative changes through new laws, often drafted by bureaucrats, that triggered resentment and anger as many likened the moves to the beginning of settler colonialism. Modi has called the changes overdue and necessary to foster economic development and fully integrate Kashmir with India.
Bitterly contested region Muslim-majority Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, which both claim it in its entirety. Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. India has stationed more than 500,000 soldiers in the region, the highest concentration of troops anywhere in the world. Modi chaired the meeting in New Delhi attended by the Himalayan region’s 14 unionist leaders, including Modi’s own party members. India’s powerful Home Minister, Amit Shah, and New Delhi’s administrator in the volatile region, Manoj Sinha, also attended the meeting.
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