Once a picture-perfect location, Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) has been transformed into a battleground, whereas in India Jai Shri Ram has become the battle cry for the establishment of a Hindu nationalist state. To say that an ideological restructuring is taking place would sufficiently explain the changes that have been taking place in a concatenation of events, starting with the Citizenship Amendment Act in India and the revocation of Article 370 and 35A in IIOJK. 
The internet is filled to the brim with imagery of self-appointed vigilantes calling for lynching in India; sometimes the provocation is merely being a Muslim. They become the victims of indiscriminate attacks for transporting or consuming beef or simply being in the company of Hindu women, whereas in contrast, the Hindu supremacists are never held accountable for spreading hatred.
From December 17-19, 2021, a religious event organized at Haridwar became one such place where speakers spewed hate and incited religious violence. The speakers shamelessly talked about reducing the Muslim population through killing and that if they had 100 soldiers, they could kill 20 million Muslims.
The Jews in Nazi Germany were referred to as rats; similarly, the BJP leadership refers to Muslims as termites who are eating away at the country’s resources, denying Hindus what rightfully belongs to them. As David Livingstone writes in his book, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others, the phenomenon is not unique to dehumanization, “Thinking sets the agenda for action, and thinking of humans as less than human paves the way for atrocity. The Nazis were explicit about the status of their victims. They were Untermenschen — subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together.”
It is also no secret that in IIOJK, under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, soldiers and paramilitary forces enjoy complete immunity from persecution, whereas the Kashmiri citizens are booked and jailed for up to two years under the Public Safety Act. As a result of these draconian laws, years of abuses involving torture, gun battles and enforced disappearances have put a large number of Kashmiris in mass graves, which India is reluctant to open.
In November 2020, international experts on genocidal violence had warned that India was preparing for a genocide of 200 million Muslims in India during a panel discussion titled “Ten Stages of Genocide and India’s Muslims”. It was pointed out that the persecution of Muslims in Assam and IIOJK was a prelude to their massacre. Under the ten stages, the next stage would be extermination, which in other words, is genocide. Recently Dr. Gregory Stanton, the President of Genocide Watch, said that the gathering of Hindus in the north Indian city of Haridwar was “exactly aimed at inciting the genocide of Muslims”.
In another instance, the judges at Russell Tribunal looking into the war crimes being committed in IIOJK have called for seeing the Kashmir dispute in the context of settler colonialism, genocide and crimes against humanity as serious incidents of rape as a weapon of war, unlawful arrests, brutality and mass blinding came to the surface through live testimonies, reports and other evidence.
The Kashmiris have been disempowered through an offensive that attacked the identity, lands, jobs and now political representation. Laced with ideological overtones of Hindutva driven BJP, the fast-tracking of delimitation exercise despite the freeze in the rest of India till the year 2026 and proposals for the redistribution of assembly seats is seen as undermining and disenfranchisement of the majority community of IIOJK. The move is another in a series to rip the identity of Kashmiris, leaving them permanently subjugated and numerically irrelevant by placing Hindus in a position of power.
Apart from the political designs, the cultural onslaught has become ever more prominent during the BJP regime. In 1889, Urdu was adopted as the official language of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir by a Dogra ruler, which was carried forward by the state’s constituent assembly while adopting the constitution, but in 2020, after a bill for the inclusion of Hindi, among other languages in the list of official languages in IIOJK, Urdu is no longer the only official language of the region after 131 years.
It is needless to reiterate that the atrocities, genocide, and settler colonialism being carried out in India warrants attention of the world community while there is still time to save the Kashmiri identity and the people from extermination.

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