vivek beri 577 days ago

The Kashmir problem has both an internal and external dimension. The internal political dimension is essentially in two parts:

a. The problem posed by the challenge of Islamism/political Islam to the civilizational nation state that India is. This is not a problem faced by India alone and many political models are trying to find a solution. China is trying totalitarian methods, Britshits are trying co-option and a surveillance state, France is trying laicite, Russia is trying 7.62x39, the US is trying dhs assimilation. I am not sure what India is trying, but it is in India, particularly in Kashmir, where the Islamist challenge is most well developed politically and socially.

It is deeply worrying, that there appears to be NO political and social approach that I can identify, in India. On the one hand, Bajrang Dal wants to beat patriotism into Islamists, on the other hand we have the likes of MS ayyar, NS Siddhu, Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam Yadav.. The only person in Indian political history who firmly used state power to keep Islamism in check was Sardar Patel, and the only person who saw political Islam for what it was was Baba Saheb Ambedkar. Perhaps it is time to get back to a politics informed by their points of view.

b. The problem of conflict termination. If conflict is measured by the amount of violence, India appeared to have won the conflict in the period from 2007-13, when violence in Kashmir was at an all time low. How can this conflict be ended? There is no marshal