NO TO WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN

NO TO WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN. WE STAND WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE REGION DEMANDING PEACE, DE-ESCALATION AND DIPLOMACY, NOT MORE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Once again, the people of Kashmir, on both sides of the border, are bearing the brunt of India/Pakistan hostilities, with civilian deaths including children, and destruction of homes and places of worship.

Rather than identifying those responsible for the Pahalgam attack, taking accountability for its own extensive lapses in security which made such an attack possible, or answering the many questions being asked including by the victims’ families, India has launched what it has named Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in the early hours of May 7.

While this was stated by the Government of India and Indian Armed Forces to be a ‘calibrated’ attack on terror-training camps, civilians have been killed in Punjab Province, and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. And there are already reports of retaliatory shelling by Pakistan targeting Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir which have also killed civilians.

With both India and Pakistan being nuclear-armed powers, it is all the more essential that immediate moves are taken to de-escalate the tensions and avoid yet another war between India and Pakistan, in which only the people of India, Pakistan and Kashmir will suffer.

The Modi regime is clearly seeking to bolster its domestic popularity ahead of elections in various states by whipping up a climate of hyper-nationalist warmongering. We should remember the weaponization of the Pulwama attack before the 2019 general elections. In the wake of Pahalgam, the Hindu supremacist groups associated with the government started a campaign of persecution and violence on Kashmiris and Muslims in India. Now the Government of India has announced an extensive exercise of mock drills to prepare for war in more than two hundred centres across the country. The last time mock drills happened on such a big scale was in 1971 when India and Pakistan were actually involved in a major war. All anti-fascist forces must make sure that these mock drills are not weaponised to generate further violence against minorities and dissenters.

The name Operation Sindoor is claimed to be invoking ‘justice’ for the women who have lost their husbands in the terror attack in Pahalgam. But justice for the victim families means respecting their voices, their call for maintaining peace and harmony, and their concerns about the multiple lapses and anomalies that enabled the heinous attack. Action must be taken against the troll army and influential political voices who are indulging in hate-mongering against courageous women like Himanshi Narwal and Shaila Negi who have spoken out against targeting of Muslims and Kashmiris. As an activist from the All-India Progressive Women’s Association comments on the name ‘Operation Sindoor’: “Did you even hesitate before weaponising women’s bodies to justify war? Did you pause before reviving one of the oldest jingoistic tropes—reinforcing sindoor a symbol of patriarchal control, to sensualise, glorify, and normalise violence and destruction? Of course you didn’t. Because it serves your agenda: to sustain war, trigger jingoism, deflect accountability, and silence dissent. Just like you’ve done before—circulating animated images of mourning women to stoke hate. And the moment one of them speaks for peace, stands against hate, you try to silence her. Because her voice threatens your violence…. Bombing without exhausting diplomatic options is not justice. Using women’s grief is not justice. War, destruction and bloodshed are not justice”.

The heightened tensions are also being used to intensify the attacks on any form of dissent or even the asking of questions, by labelling it ‘anti-national’, as seen in the fabricated charges against Bhojpuri folk singer Neha Singh Rathore, Lucknow University professor and political satirist Madri Kakoti (Dr Medusa) political satirist Shamita Yadav (The Ranting Gola), digital news channel 4PM network and now the ‘disappearance’ of the YouTube channel of journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai. All these spurious charges must be dropped.

Today we released a recording on our Youtube channel of our webinar held on Saturday 3 May in which we seek answers to burning questions being raised about the Pahalgam attack, map the context in Kashmir, India and Pakistan, hear about the violence unleashed in Kashmir and on Kashmiris in India in the wake of the attacks, explore how solidarities with Kashmiris can be built in India and the diaspora in the context of intensified hate and warmongering by the Modi government and the Hindu supremacist networks, and consider the sharing of strategies and resources between India and Israel and the parallels and differences between the experiences of Kashmir and Palestine. We note that in the wake of the launch of ‘Operation Sindoor’ while most foreign governments have called for de-escalation at least in their public statements, the Israeli ambassador to India has only stated that it supports ‘India’s right to self-defence’, while UK PM Keir Starmer has remained silent, even while gloating over his recent trade-deal with India.