India’s latest objection to the depiction of Jammu and Kashmir on maps supported by the UN is yet another example of New Delhi’s growing audacity when it comes to international law. On Monday, Pakistan rejected India’s assertions regarding the map of the internationally disputed region, rightly pointing out that Delhi’s claims are “contrary to internationally recognised facts”. The controversy began after India’s Ministry of External Affairs objected to what it called the “inaccurate” or “misleading” depiction of occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on a world map supported by the UN. New Delhi insisted that the disputed region must instead be shown according to India’s “official map”. Islamabad’s response was unequivocal: unilateral actions and continued illegal occupation cannot change the internationally recognised disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir. The official UN maps, which identify Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory, remain the appropriate cartographic representation of its current legal status. Pakistan has also urged the international community to ensure that India immediately ends human rights violations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and fulfils its commitment to the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
It is difficult not to see India’s latest position as part of a broader effort by the Modi regime to manufacture an impression of normality in IIOJK. By insisting that the world simply adopt its ‘official map’, New Delhi appears to believe that changing the cartography can somehow change the political and legal reality. It cannot. An occupation does not become legitimate because the occupying power draws a different line on a map. Nor can India hide behind a nonchalant attitude towards the atrocities being committed in Occupied Kashmir. Just last week, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) strongly condemned what it described as an attempt by Indian authorities to falsely implicate its incarcerated chairman, Yasin Malik, in a 36-year-old murder case involving a Kashmiri Pandit woman. Malik has decided not to contest the trial further, saying he has no faith in the Indian judicial system. He has even asked the court to award him capital punishment. Malik’s case is a rather clear example of just how India treats Kashmiri political figures.
The same questions arise from the treatment of journalists. Two women journalists were detained and assaulted by Indian police while covering an event in south Delhi, with the journalists saying the assault intensified after officers learned that they were Muslim. This is hardly the picture of a confident democracy that respects dissent, press freedom and equality before the law. India’s record extends well beyond Kashmir. It has faced accusations and investigations over assassinations and alleged plots to assassinate dissenting voices on foreign soil, including in Canada and the US. It is also a nuclear-armed state that has shown alarming irresponsibility by initiating a war with Pakistan after falsely accusing Islamabad of responsibility for a terrorist attack in IIOJK without presenting an iota of proof. In Kashmir itself, the pattern is even more disturbing. For decades, India has systematically tortured, maimed and killed innocent people. Women have been raped, children killed, encounter killings have been routinely reported, and imprisoning dissident and independent voices has become a norm. Political leaders are co-opted while those who refuse to fall in line are punished. Kashmiris never enjoyed much political freedom under successive Indian governments. But after August 5, 2019, even the limited rights they possessed were further stripped away when New Delhi revoked the region’s special status. Under the Hindutva regime, even the mask of so-called secularism has increasingly fallen away. Yet New Delhi now wants the international community to accept its version of reality simply because it calls it the ‘official map’. International law does not work that way. India must understand that changing how Kashmir is drawn does not change what Kashmir is.
