Image Credit: Andrew Rusk from Toronto, Canada/Wikimedia

Eminent intellectual Noam Chomsky has said Kashmir is a prison as he noted symptoms of fascism in India under the ruling BJP government.

“Well, I mean, the whole institutional structure of India, plus the great mass of the Hindu population, is evidently very supportive of the undermining of Kashmiri autonomy and opening up to Indian settlement,” he said in an interview posted by Counter Currents.

“Kashmir is a prison right now, but its supported in India. I don’t think people know what is happening,” the linguist and MIT professor told Karthik Ramanathan, an Indian origin, California-based technology expert.

Chomsky also pointed out the Press in India has been muzzled.

“One thing that’s happened is the press has been pretty much muzzled. They are very uncritical.”

Chomsky spoke almost six months after nationalist Indian prime minister Narendra Modi revoked the autonomous status of the disputed Kashmir territory on August 5, 2019. Since then the region has been subjected a clampdown with Internet blackout and suspension of basic democratic freedoms.

The change in the status of the UN-recognized disputed territory has soared tensions between Pakistan and India, who partly control the region.

Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan has also previously described Kashmir as the biggest open air prison.

The renowned author recalled the backlash he faced at the hands of BJP supporters when he talked about Indian repression in Kashmir and was advised to have police protection.

“I was giving talks in India about 16 years I guess.. And I happened to mention in one talk, the Indian repression in Kashmir after the fraudulent 1987 elections.

“The next day, I was giving a talk somewhere else, there was a big BJP demonstration and the rest of the time I was there, the people who were organizing my talk insisted I have police protection.”

He said India today has symptoms of fascism like concentration camps although New Delhi does not control big businesses like the German Nazis did.

“What we are seeing is the symptoms of fascism without the fascist ideology. Fascism meant something. It meant a powerful state, under the control of the Nazi or fascist party, which controlled everything. It even controlled business. We are not seeing that in India. The state does not control big business.”