Kashmir and Manufacturing Consent in Real Time

In the last two days alone, over 1,500 Kashmiris have been arrested by Indian forces across the occupied Kashmiri territories as a form of collective punishment for the attack against Indian tourists.

Kashmir is the most heavily militarized region on earth.

Over the past three and a half decades, nearly 100,000 Kashmiris have been killed by Indian occupation forces, while approximately 10,000 have been forcibly disappeared. The Kashmiri Muslim population continues to endure systematic violence, including sexual assault, abductions, and torture—deliberate instruments of war deployed to subjugate and silence. Meanwhile, Indian forces operate with near-total impunity, shielded by draconian laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which grants them sweeping powers and legal immunity.

In August 2019, the Indian government unilaterally abrogated Articles 35A and 370 of its constitution—provisions that had granted Jammu and Kashmir a measure of semi-autonomy. Though India had long failed to uphold its promises of genuine autonomy, these constitutional articles had at least enabled Kashmiris to safeguard their Muslim-majority character by restricting residency rights—such as the ability to purchase land or hold government employment—to permanent residents of the region. Since then, India has pursued a sweeping settler-colonial agenda aimed at entrenching Hindu supremacy in Kashmir. Through a series of calculated legal and administrative changes, the state seeks to facilitate the influx of Indian Hindu settlers, alter the region’s demography, and dilute its Muslim identity. This project is not only an assault on the cultural and religious fabric of Kashmir but also a deliberate attempt to silence calls for self-determination.

India’s settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir have taken a material form through widespread land grabs and the forced eviction of local residents.

Over 178,000 acres in the Kashmir Valley and more than 25,000 acres in Jammu have been earmarked for state appropriation—an alarming expansion that threatens to economically disempower and geographically uproot the Indigenous population. Under newly enacted laws, the Indian government now possesses sweeping authority to seize land for military installations, settler colonies, highways, railways, and industrial corridors, all without the consent of the people who have lived there for generations.

Tourism has become a strategic tool in India’s attempt to normalize its occupation of Kashmir. By aggressively promoting an image of peace, development, and investment, the Indian state seeks to construct a façade of “normalcy” that obscures the realities of military repression and settler-colonial expansion. Central to this illusion is the systematic silencing of Kashmiri civil society, journalism, and academia—voices that might otherwise challenge the state’s narrative and expose the ongoing violence and dispossession. The repression of these vital spaces ensures that the spectacle of normalcy remains uncontested, allowing occupation to be rebranded as progress.

In this moment, we are witnessing a deliberate effort by the Indian right to manufacture consent for intensified colonial violence in Kashmir. Calls for brutal retaliation by the occupying forces are growing louder, amplified by a media landscape that dehumanizes the Kashmiri people through familiar, insidious language—labeling them “terrorists,” “barbarians,” and “inhumane.” These rhetorical strategies are not new; they echo the language of empire used to justify domination and erasure.

Disturbingly, many Indian commentators are explicitly invoking Israel’s assault on Gaza as a model for how Kashmir should be “handled,” drawing a direct parallel between two settler-colonial regimes and using the imagery of devastation to legitimize further brutalization.

India’s occupation of Kashmir is emboldened by its deepening alliance with Israel—a relationship rooted not only in shared ideology, but in robust diplomatic, military, and economic ties. **The two nations have forged a strategic partnership that spans their **intelligence agencies, surveillance industries, and defense sectors.

Israel is now India’s largest supplier of arms, providing drones, missile systems, radar, sensors, and advanced electro-optic technologies that enable and intensify the repression of Kashmir.

The occupation of Kashmir is not an isolated injustice—it is part of a global architecture of settler-colonialism, surveillance, and militarized control. Enabled by foreign powers and legitimized through propaganda, India’s actions in Kashmir mirror other colonial projects that seek to erase indigenous identities and suppress demands for self-determination.

Kashmir is the most heavily militarized region on earth.

India’s settler-colonial ambitions in Kashmir have taken a material form through widespread land grabs and the forced eviction of local residents.

Disturbingly, many Indian commentators are explicitly invoking Israel’s assault on Gaza as a model for how Kashmir should be “handled,” drawing a direct parallel between two settler-colonial regimes and using the imagery of devastation to legitimize further brutalization.

Israel is now India’s largest supplier of arms, providing drones, missile systems, radar, sensors, and advanced electro-optic technologies that enable and intensify the repression of Kashmir.

From Kashmir to Palestine, occupation is a crime.