Modi has forcibly integrated Kashmir with India but erased Kashmiris

This story is part of ‘Modi’s India from the Edges’, a special Himal series presenting Southasian regional perspectives on Narendra Modi’s decade in power and possible return as prime minister in the 2024 Indian election. To read the series and support Himal’s work on it, click here. 

Since 1947, when Kashmir acceded to India, the distance between New Delhi and Kashmiris has been marked by mutual suspicion and a large trust deficit. Over decades, New Delhi eroded Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy and manipulated its local politics. New Delhi has also viewed Kashmir only through the prism of security, resulting in an ultra-nationalist gaze on the region. In India-administered Kashmir, this has crystallised into a deeply embedded sense of betrayal linked to the historical dispute over the territory. But despite  the unhealed wounds and the apprehensions of forced demographic change in India’s only Muslim-majority territory, Kashmiris felt, from time to time, hope for the possibility of a settlement of the Kashmir dispute.