Peter Oborne

India’s land grab

Britain must offer more than empty phrases of condemnation

Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator until cruelly sacked to make way for Boris Johnson, never wasted ideas. He liked to reuse them. Often. Every summer he would write the same column attacking the silly season.

August, Mr Johnson maintained, was not silly at all. The first world war started in August. The Nazi-Soviet pact was signed in August. Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland in August. Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait also in the horror month of August. Once again August has vindicated Mr Johnson — and not only because of Brexit. Darkness has descended on the former princely state of (British-controlled) Kashmir. Meanwhile freedom is dying in the former British colony of Hong Kong.

These two events are reported as if unconnected. Yet they are part of a global pattern: centralising states crushing minorities while liberals impotently wring their hands. Narendra Modi’s India is following the model of authoritarian populism pioneered by Putin’s Russia, Netanyahu’s Israel (West Bank, Gaza), Erdogan’s Turkey, Trump’s America, Duterte’s Philippines and Xi’s China (Tibet, East Turkestan, now Hong Kong).

While the Hong Kong tragedy is played out on live television, 14 million under-siege Kashmiris suffer a communications blackout. Well over half a million Indian troops are on their streets. Armoured cars and jeeps are outside every row of shops and at the end of every road. Researching this article I made repeated attempts to contact Kashmiri friends. One of them is a poet, the other a local journalist. It was as if they had vanished off the face of the earth.

Finally one of my friends escaped from Kashmir to send me this email: ‘Nearly eight million Kashmiris are literally the prisoners in their own land. More than 3,000 Kashmiris have been arrested, detained or kept in preventive custody.

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