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This map is illegal in India. By showing it to you, this video will be banned there. Just look at what's on it. Kashmir. The most dangerous place on earth. Kashmir. A valley tucked into the Himalayas. Orchards, saffron fields, houseboats drifting on mountain lakes. The Mughal emperor Jihinger said, "If there is a paradise on earth, it is this. This paradise is the most militarized place on earth. Army camps, checkpoints, bunkers, interrogation centers, and surveillance towers. Three nuclear powers converge on this valley.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars over it. Both claimed the entire region and criminalized those that deny their claim. They were bombing each other over this just last year. The death toll here is in the tens of thousands and yet Kashmir rarely makes the international headlines. Millions of people live here being shot at, disappeared, spied on, threatened with the Israeli model. This is Kashmir. This is what India doesn't want you to see. It's 1947. For nearly two centuries, the British Empire owned the hundreds of millions of people living here. Their colony, the British Raj, was enormous. They ran most of it directly,
but they ruled nearly half of it through 562 princely states. These were native princes who pledged loyalty and loot to the British crown in exchange for running their own internal affairs. But now the British were leaving fast. Men like Gandhi, Nou, Jenna, and Bose had spent decades pushing them out. The original plan was to hand over power by June 1948. Then in March of 1947, the British viceroy, Lord Mountbatton, cut the timeline by a full year to August 1947. 10 weeks. That's how long they had to decolonize the Raj. Hundreds of languages, dozens of religions, ancient kingdoms, and ethnic groups with little in common except for the fact
that the British had conquered them all and drawn a border around them. In the end, the British agreed to divide their colony in two. A Muslim state, Pakistan, and India. A nominally secular state with a clear Hindu majority. Pakistan wasn't even one continuous country. West Pakistan here, East Pakistan here, over a thousand kilometers of India in between. The great symbol of the British Empire came down for the last time to be replaced by the banner of the new Indian government. The British Empire left on the 15th of August, 1947. They revealed the borders of these brand
new countries 2 days later. Millions soon found themselves on the wrong side of hastily drawn borders, launching the largest migration in human history. The violence killed 1 million people. Tens of millions more lost everything. Most of the 562 princely states were assigned to either state fairly easily. There were only three outliers. Tiny Junigar had a Muslim prince with a majority Hindu population. The prince chose Pakistan despite not bordering it. India cut off all supplies, sent troops to the border and forced a vote. Janagar joined India. Hyderabbad also had
a Muslim prince with an 85% Hindu population and was famously rich. The prince chose independence. India invaded, tens of thousands of people were killed and Hyderabbad was annexed to India. Then there was the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. 4 million people lived here. It was larger than East Pakistan. Sharing a strategic border with Afghanistan, China and it was close to the Soviet Union. The subcontinent's largest rivers flowed through Kashmir. Whoever controlled this state controlled the water supply. The princely state was about 77% Muslim and mostly surrounded by
Pakistan. Its major roads and trade links all went through Pakistan. So most people assumed it would go to Pakistan. But the prince of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Harry Singh was Hindu and he couldn't decide. To understand what happens next, you need to understand Harry Singh's kingdom. Originally Kashmir meant just this valley, a lush bowl wedged between two giant mountain ranges. Kashmir was for most of its history remarkably independent. For a thousand years, it was one of the great centers of Buddhist civilization on the Silk Road, welcoming Indian, Chinese, Greek,
Central Asian, and especially Iranian merchants and scholars. It produced such beautiful Persian literature that at times it was called Little Iran. About 1,000 years ago, Iranian Muslim missionaries began converting the Buddhist and Hindu population to Islam. Soon Kashmir was home to two groups, a Muslim majority and a minority of Hindus called Kashmiri Pandits. But they shared a single culture, a single language and a single identity, Kashmiri. Then came the conquerors. In 1586, the Mughal Empire conquered the Kashmir Sultanate, ending Kashmiri independence. Then the
Afghans took over and then the Sikh Empire conquered this area. By the mid-9th century, Britain had colonized most of South Asia. In 1846, the British defeated the Sikh Empire, took some of their territory, and decided they didn't want to govern these remote mountain kingdoms themselves. So they sold them to a Hindu warlord Gulab Singh for 7.5 million rupees and 12 goats. Dozens of different peoples, Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits in the Kashmir valley, Dogra Hindus, Punjabi and Bahiri Muslims in Jamu, Shia Muslims and Cargill, Ladaki Buddhists in the east and dozens of other
ethnic groups in the mountains in the north were cobbled together into a single entity spread across 222,000 km. the brand new princely state of Jamu and Kashmir or Kashmir for short. Kashmiris had been sold without their consent like cattle and these are the exact borders being fought over today. For Kashmiris, the largest group in this new princely state, Gulab Singh was an outsider. His dynasty, the Dogras were Hindus from Jamu with no roots in Kashmir. Singh declared himself the owner of all land in the valley. Muslims became renters overnight,
forbidden from owning property. To divide and rule, the dog handed the Kashmiri Pandits, the valley's small Hindu minority, exclusive access to government jobs, education, and made them the tax collectors. They would run the Dogra bureaucracy. The vast Muslim majority, mostly farmers, were forced to pay extremely high taxes that pushed them into permanent debt to Hindu land owners. The Muslims were subjected to a system of forced labor called beggar. If a road needed building, if a noble's luggage needed carrying, Muslims did it. They were the property of the Dogra state.
A British official wrote in 1870 that the vast majority of Kashmiris were living virtually in a state of slavery. By 1930, Gulab Singh's dynasty were one of the richest families in Asia while less than 1% of Kashmiri Muslims could read or write. In 1931, Kashmiri Muslims protested the Dogra state and the police opened fire, killing 21 protesters. Out of that moment, a young man named Shik Abdullah, a Kashmiri Muslim, college educated in Lahore, saw the system his people lived under. The Muslim peasant in debt to a Hindu landlord, the pandit clerk, collecting taxes for a dog
prince and he saw a system that robbed the vast majority of Kashmiris. He founded a new party, the National Conference, secular, open to Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims. He drafted a manifesto for a new Kashmir, land to the farmers who worked it, abolition of forced labor and landlords, free education and rights for women and workers. Very few non-Muslims joined the party, but it rapidly became the most popular force in Kashmir. In 1946, as the rest of the Raj fought the British in Kashmir, the freedom movement was against the dog. The Maharaja had Abdullah and thousands of
others thrown in prison. So it's 1947. Harry Singh still hasn't decided. What he actually wanted was independence to keep his throne and his privileges. Joining Pakistan meant subordinating himself to a Muslim government. Joining India meant handing power over to the Indian National Congress and its prime minister Nou who were openly allied with Shik Abdullah and the national conference the very movement that had spent years trying to remove Singh. The majority of Kashmiris wanted an independent Kashmir without a dogra ruler. In August of 1947 the Maharaja increased
taxes on Muslims in Punch in Jamu. The people of Punch were mostly Muslims, but they weren't ethnic Kashmiris. They were Punjabi and Bahiri speakers with close ties to what is now Pakistan. They resisted the tax increase. The Maharaja had them shot which sparked a pro-Pakistan rebellion that spread across Punch. The rebels took over most of the district and declared an Azad or free Jamu and Kashmir government. As the rebellion spread, the Maharaja got desperate. He knew he couldn't hold the Kashmir valley or the west or the north of the princely state, but he might be able to hold Jamu,
the Dogra homeland. The problem for Singh was that Jamu was 70% Muslim. In October and November of 1947, the Dogra army began disarming Jamu's Muslim peasants. Then they joined forces with Hindu nationalists, specifically an organization called the RSS. The RSS is a right-wing Hindu nationalist group. Its leader openly admired Hitler and praised the Nazi purging of Jews as a model for India. Reports began trickling in from Jamu. Muslims there were in flight having been terrorized and in places cut up by six and Hindus at the instigation of the Maharajas officials.
Mahatma Gandhi recorded the Hindus and Siks of Jammu and those who had gone there from outside killed Muslims. The Maharaja of Kashmir is responsible for what is happening there. The Maharaj's forces and the RSS militias slaughtered 100,000 Muslims. Hundreds of thousands more fled to the newly formed Azad Kashmir. Jamu now had a Hindu majority. Hearing about the massacres, thousands of armed Ptondons from Pakistan who were in many cases related to the Muslims in punch crossed the border into the princely state to free their Muslim brothers. The Pton many of them armed
by Pakistan quickly turned the population against them by looting and killing. Faced with thousands of armed fighters, Maharaja Hari Singh panicked, fled and asked India for help. India agreed to send troops to help Singh if he brought the entire princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into India. India's prime minister Neu was aware that Singh had no legitimacy. His family bought the people. They ruled by force and they were rejected by the people. Nou noted no major section of the population supports him. Singh had no right to decide Kashmir's future but he did anyway. Singh
signed on the 26th of October 1947 and handed the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir over to India. Indian troops were airlifted to Shinagar where they pushed the Pakistanbacked fighters back. Then Pakistan directly entered the fighting starting the first IndiaPakistan war. The security council called upon both parties to terminate hostilities in Kashmir and appointed a commission to work with the two new states toward a peaceful settlement of the dispute. The fighting stopped in 1948 with a UN mediated ceasefire that left Kashmir divided along a ceasefire line now called the
line of control. India had won the rich Kashmir valley. They now ruled over the vast majority of ethnic Kashmiris. They also got Jamu and Ladak. Pakistan held Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, the land held by the Punch rebels. Both countries claimed the entire former princely state. But in reality there was now an India occupied Kashmir and a Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Because the areas controlled by Pakistan rebelled against the dog and joined Pakistan by choice. Their control over these areas are much less contested than India's side. As part of the ceasefire terms, the UN
Security Council passed a resolution calling for a free and impartial plebite, a vote by the people of the princely state to choose India or Pakistan. Nou told the Kashmiris that their being in India was temporary and only until the vote could take place. Kashmir would sit inside India but apart from it guaranteed by article 370 of India's new constitution which gave Kashmir a degree of self-ruule with its own laws and flag. India would only control defense and foreign affairs. India to this day has refused to hold the plebite. In the first elections they held in Kashmir in 1951, any
candidate that was pro- plebite was barred from running. Harry Singh was quickly banished from Jammu and Kashmir. Shik Abdullah who was personal friends with Nou didn't want to join either state. In April of 1946, he told the British that the Kashmiri nation had a right to independence. But he feared that Pakistan would be a state dominated by landlords who would crush his plans to uplift the landless poor. So if he had to join one state, he preferred India. Neu made shik Abdullah chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Hoping to kill anti-India sentiment and bring Kashmir fully
into the country by choosing a popular leader. Abdullah moved fast using the powers of article 370. He broke up the land class overnight and redistributed land to the peasants who farmed it. He wiped out generations of debt and he built new schools and hospitals. He was the first indigenous ruler Kashmir had seen in 350 years among the valley's poor. He became a hero. But Abdullah had made powerful enemies. the pandit bureaucrats, the landlords whose slaves had been taken away, the Hindu nationalists that hated Muslims. Together, they demanded Nou destroy article 370 and get rid
of Abdullah. This just made Abdullah furious and he started to call for the plebite again, but now with a third option, independence. In August of 1953, Nou organized a coup and he had Abdullah arrested. Kashmir erupted. Thousands were detained and Indian troops opened fire on demonstrators, killing at least 60 people. Abdullah spent most of the next 20 years in prison. Nou declared the plebesite was now beside the point and anyone campaigning for it was imprisoned. India replaced Abdullah with a puppet government that hollowed out article 370 applying more and more Indian
laws to Kashmir that gave India sweeping powers to arrest protesters, install rulers and execute people that were considered to be pro-Pakistan. They kept the now tamed national conference in power through rigged elections. In 1962, India discovered that China had built a road through Laddax Axai Chin Plateau, territory India claimed based on a British claim on the area. China didn't care about British claims. India sent troops to the area. War broke out. China won, took Axai Chin, and declared a ceasefire. India and China's disputed border is now called the line of actual
control. Neu died in 1964. Just a few months later on the 16th of October 1964, China detonated its first nuclear weapon. There was now a nuclear power in Kashmir. Pakistan, China's ally, saw an opening. In 1965, they sent troops across the line of control. Convinced that Kashmiris would rise up and join them, Kashmiris were furious at India, but they did not want to join Pakistan. The second IndiaPakistan war ended exactly the same as the first. Thousands died. The line didn't move. In 1971, Bengali speaking East Pakistan, marginalized since independence by Pakistan's Punjabi dominated
elites, revolted. The Pakistani military launched a campaign of mass murder. Hundreds of thousands, some claim up to 3 million Bengalis were killed. The United States, who recruited Pakistan as an anti-communist ally in 1954, provided Pakistan with diplomatic cover and the massive supply of weapons it needed to carry out the mass killing. India now saw a chance to [__] their rival. They intervened in East Pakistan. They won the war, cracked Pakistan in half, and an independent Bangladesh was born. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974. Two nuclear powers were
now in Kashmir. Abdullah now 70 after two decades in prison saw Pakistan crippled a nuclear India and an international community with no interest. India offered him a chance not only of freedom but to become chief minister of Kashmir again if he dropped the demand for a vote and accepted that Kashmir was an integral part of India. Abdullah seeing no way out for Kashmir agreed in 1975. Abdullah's government brought in the public safety act in 1978 which allowed Indian forces to detain any Kashmiri for any reason for up to 2 years. Kashmiris watched as their hero
surrendered and then betrayed them. According to India, Kashmir is an integral part of India. The dispute is over. If you disagree, you will be jailed. Abdullah died in 1982. A generation of Kashmiris had grown up with Abdullah's reforms. They had been educated, entered professions, but found themselves living with rigged elections, Indianappointed governments, and a police state. For the 1987 elections, Kashmiris built a whole new movement, the MUF. They would try and take back democratic control. People canvased across the valley. There was genuine democratic
enthusiasm. The voter turnout was the highest in Kashmir's history. When the results were revealed, it was obvious that they had been rigged again. The deeply unpopular Indian puppet, the National Conference, took almost all the seats. Thousands of young Kashmiris who had believed in the democratic process were rounded up, imprisoned without charge and tortured. In 1988, Indian forces gunned down protesters. The rage in Kashmir at the time was summed up by a Kashmiri school teacher. You saw what happened in the assembly election. India will never let us enjoy even a
basic right like choosing our own representatives. Kashmir is occupied. Peace and dignity can only prevail through the barrel of a gun. The JKLF, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front based in Assad Kashmir had existed since 1977, preaching left-wing secular nationalism. They wanted independence for the entire former princely state. For that, Pakistan threw their founder in jail. The other founder of the JKLF, Makbul But was hanged by India in 1984. For years, the JKLF's call for armed struggle found no following in the valley, still dedicated to nonviolence.
But after 1987, young men began crossing into Pakistan looking for weapons and training. By 1989, the first militants came back. JKLF militants began bombing government sites and assassinating Indian officials. In December of 1989, they kidnapped the daughter of India's home minister and traded her for five imprisoned comrades. Thousands poured into the streets in Sinagar to celebrate their release. They chanted a freedom. Two Indian security forces, the border security force and the central reserve police run from New Delhi were unleashed on Kashmir. These forces were made up entirely of Indians, mostly non-Muslims.
On the 21st of January 1990, the Central Reserve Police opened fire on Kashmir protesters on the Guacadal Bridge, killing 50 people. In those last few days of January 1990, Indian security forces killed 300 unarmed Kashmiri protesters. The valley became a battlefield. For the 125,000 Kashmiri pandits, about 4% of the valley's population, this was terrifying. Over 80% of central government employees in Kashmir were Hindu. While the JKLF killed hundreds of Muslims and secular supporters of the Indian state, or simply those that were against their armed struggle, when the
JKLF attacked government targets, that meant in many cases killing pandits. In September of 1989, the JKLF killed the president of the Hindu nationalist BJP's Kashmir unit. In November, they killed a Pandit judge who hanged the JKF's founder in 1984. By mid 1990, between 30 and 80 pandits had been killed. The Indian forces in the area did nothing to protect them. Over a few weeks in early 1990, 100,000 pandits fled the valley. They ended up in refugee camps in Jammu, abandoned by the Indian state. Many thought that they would return after just a few months,
but the worst violence was yet to hit the valley and would continue for over a decade. Pandits lost their homes. The valley lost piece of itself. When a prominent cleric was killed in May of 1990, 200,000 Kashmiris attended his funeral. Indian forces again opened fire on the mourners. 55 people were killed. To crush the insurgency, India brought back a law from British colonial rule, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The law allowed soldiers to detain anyone and they could shoot the kill without facing trial. It was total legal immunity. For Kashmiris, it meant that a soldier
could do anything to you and nothing would happen to him. Cordon and search operations swept the valley. Nearly every Kashmiri has experienced one of these. These men had been dragged from their beds in the early hours so their houses could be searched. So they came here, they surrounded the whole village. All the villagers were forced to leave their houses and go and sit outside. They were kept outside for 3 days apparently by the security forces. The security forces then searched through the whole village. Suspected militants were taken away for questioning,
torture and execution. Women were raped. This was collective punishment designed to terrorize the population into submission. The army agreed that they did enter the village of Kunan Pushpura on the night of the 23rd of February. They say they questioned people and found some arms. But these people have given human rights investigators a more harrowing account of what took place. They say the men of the village were taken from their homes and tortured and that at least 53 women left alone with their children were gang raped. 53 women gave statements to human rights
investigators. The youngest was 13, the oldest 80. This woman was pregnant at the time of the incident. She says that 3 days after she was raped and beaten, her child was born with a broken arm. Indian security forces immune from consequences consistently used rap as a weapon of war against Kashmiris. Thousands of Kashmiris were sent to torture centers. Their names still infamous today. Papa 1, Papa 2, cargo. Victim's feet were saw off. They were waterboarded. Heavy rollers crushed their limbs. Over 60,000 people were dragged into these dungeons.
None of them were convicted of a crime. Thousands of men were simply disappeared by the military. Their families were never told what happened to them. Indian security forces killed unarmed Kashmiris and staged their deaths to look like combat in what is known as a fake encounter, dropping the body near the line of control with weapons placed next to it. Kashmir women had to systematically destroy their family photo albums. During crackdowns, Indian soldiers searched for incriminating photos of men. A picture with known militants or in Pakistan or even of a
young man wearing a Pakistani cricket jersey meant detention, interrogation and death. As tales of atrocities abound, Kashmiri nationalism grows. There are no friends of India in Kunan Pushpora. But India isn't just facing an armed insurgency in Kashmir. It's facing an uprising. The people of Sinaga, the capital of the valley, have shown time and time again that they don't want to stay in India. So long as the uprising continues, the threat of a fourth war in the subcontinent will remain. Through the 1980s, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan formed an
anti-communist block. They built a pipeline. American weapons, Saudi money and ideology, Pakistani intelligence. All of it funneled to Islamist fighters in Afghanistan to try and break the Soviet army. This alliance made Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, the most powerful force in the country. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Pakistan began redirecting weapons into Kashmir to any militants willing to use them. But Pakistan hated the JKLF. This was a secular left-wing independence movement that considered both India and Pakistan to be occupying
powers. An independent Kashmir run by the JKLF was the last thing Pakistani elites wanted. By 1991, they stopped all aid to the JKLF and began arming a rival group, Hisbul Mujahedin, a Kashmiri Islamist organization that wanted union with Pakistan. The ISI began sponsoring splinter groups and the Hisbbo Mujahedin to kill JKLF members. The JKLF under attack from Pakistan, Hisbbo Mujahedin and India collapsed. In 1994, they ended their armed struggle and entered politics. Hisbel Mujahedin became the dominant and most well-armed group. While their proPakistan goals
were not as popular as the independence movement, Hisbbo Mujahedin became the only way to resist Indian occupation because they had the guns. By 1995, the insurgency was at its height. Indian security forces were on the defensive. AK-47 wielding militants consistently ambushed them. India began recruiting former militants. They armed them, they paid them, and they set them loose on Kashmiris. Men walking through the bazaar and AK-47 casually draped across their
shoulder. Each one of these men was once a dreaded militant. Today they make up the valley's largest group of surrendered militants, the JKwan, armed men who switched sides and now work for the state. Kashmiris call them Iguanis, renegades. Internationally, this type of group is known as a death squad. They knew the valley. They knew the militant hideouts. They became infamous for stealing, torturing, and killing all under the protection of the Indian army. The renegades and the Hisbbo Mujahadin fought each other to a standstill over the rest of the 1990s. Pakistan
fractured the Kashmiri resistance in order to control it, which they never really did anyway. In the end, they just helped India, who could simply call Kashmir resistance Pakistani terror, and they never had to face a unified resistance group powerful enough to force a settlement. In May of 1998, India detonated five nuclear devices in the Thar Desert. In response, Pakistan detonated six nuclear devices, revealing to the world that they too were a nuclear power, the third in Kashmir. By flooding Kashmir with soldiers, shielding them from accountability and unleashing death squads on the population, India managed to crush the insurgency
without addressing a single Kashmiri grievance. India pushed the arm struggle into Pakistan, giving them the control they always wanted. By the late 1990s, indigenous Kashmir organizations like the JKLF and the Hisbbo Mujahadin were sidelined. Pakistan's ISI began arming groups like Lashgar E Tiba and Jesish E Muhammad made up almost entirely of Pakistani nationals usually poor rural Punjabis shaped by a panislamist ideology exported from Saudi Arabia rather than Kashmiri nationalism. These groups did not live with the Kashmir population like the Hisbbo Mujahadin or the JKLF
did. They were under Pakistani control and were willing to attack targets outside of Kashmir. By the mid200s, the insurgency had died out. Around 100,000 people were killed. The vast majority of them civilians. Indian forces left over 6,500 unmarked mass graves in Kashmir. And they created over 90,000 orphans. 8 to 10,000 people are still disappeared. Their families are still searching for them. The occupation didn't end, however. Up to 700,000 Indian soldiers still occupy Kashmir, one for every 20 people. In the Kashmir Valley, where the forces are mostly concentrated,
the ratio is far higher. Across the valley, prisons, army camps, checkpoints, bunkers, interrogation centers, and Israeli drones make Kashmir an everyday prison for the people of the valley. In 2010, three bodies were exumed from unmarked graves. India insisted that they were foreign militants killed crossing the line of control. An investigation revealed that they were local Kashmir boys lured to an army base, murdered, and then dumped at the border to create a fake encounter. For years, the army had been offering cash rewards for every militant killed.
Soldiers just killed civilians, called them militants, and collected the bounties. Kashmir erupted. Guns had failed to freedom. So Kashmiris turned to mass protest. Stone throwers faced off against the world's largest military occupation. Protesters swarmed military installations chanting go India go back. Women protesting on the streets condemned India stating what kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers. On the 11th of June 2010, security forces fired a tear gas canister at a 17-year-old boy walking home from school. It struck his head,
killing him. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris marched at his funeral. The protests grew larger. Between June and October of 2010, Indian forces killed over 120 Kashmiri men, women, and children. Among them was an 8-year-old boy named Shamir Ahmad Rah. Indian forces beat him to death. In July of 2016, Kashmir erupted again. India's answer this time was pellet guns. Indian forces fired 1.3 million metal pellets at Kashmiris in 2016. Hundreds of people were permanently blinded, including multiple children as young as 4 years old. Indian security forces purposely fired the
pellets towards faces in order to permanently maim Kashmiris. 100 protesters were killed and 15,000 were injured. In 2014, Narendra Modi came to power in India. A lifetime member of the RSS. Before becoming prime minister of India, Modi was mostly famous for overseeing a pogram in the state of Gujarat that killed over a thousand Muslims. His party, the BJP, believes that India must be a Hindu nation, that Muslims and Christians are at best confused Hindus and at worst invaders that must be expelled. For decades, the Hindu nationalists demanded Article
370 be revoked. On the night of August 4th, 2019, every phone line and internet connection in Kashmir went dead. A complete blackout across the valley. A curfew locked millions of people in their homes. Public assembly was outlawed. 900,000 heavily armed security forces fanned out across the region. The next morning, India revoked article 370 without any consultation with Kashmiris. Jamu and Kashmir were divided into two territories. Jammu and Kashmir and the DAC. They were no longer states but simply territories to be administered directly from New Delhi.
political leaders, journalists, lawyers, former chief ministers, children, many of them were severely tortured. India did all this under a communications blackout that lasted over 500 days. The longest communications shutdown in history. Kashmir suffered in total darkness. Article 370 had been hollowed out for years. The autonomy it provided Kashmir was long dead. But one part of it, article 35A, protected Kashmir land rights, making it so only residents of Kashmir could vote, buy land and get government jobs in Kashmir. With that now gone, Indian citizens can now vote,
buy land, settle in and apply for government jobs in Kashmir. Any future voting in Kashmir will now be influenced by these millions of new voters. The BJP's dream of a Hindu Kashmir was being built. A BJP politician celebrated that Hindus could now get fair Kashmiri girls. An Indian console general at a gathering of Kashmiri pandits said India should follow the Israeli model in reference to Israel forcibly removing the Muslim majority population of Palestine. He said that if the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it. Contracts for Kashmir's
massive supplies of lithium, boxite and forests were put up for sale while Kashmiris were still under blackout. They were bought up by Indians. Indian bulldozers now destroy Kashmiri homes. Tens of thousands of Kashmiris have been displaced. India ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for journalists has become a global leader in mass surveillance. Much of it tested first on Kashmiris. Israel's Pegasus spywear has been used on thousands of Kashmiri phones, letting the government spy on them anywhere. Indian officials accused of torture are
flown out to the US to train with the FBI on surveillance. Kashmiris have to live knowing that they are constantly surveiled. Kashmiris that resist Indian occupation are deemed antinationals, terrorists and Pakistani agents despite the fact that independence is still the most popular demand in the valley. Kashmir academics, journalists, activists and lawyers have been imprisoned under anti-terrorism laws. Social media users have been dragged into the cargo torture center for online posts. When India revoked article 370, it issued new maps claiming Chinese controlled Axai Chin
as its own. 8 months later, Chinese and Indian soldiers were killing each other in the mountains with nailstudded clubs. 20 Indians and four Chinese soldiers died. It was the sharpest spike in tensions between these two nuclear powers in decades. Mod's India is now an important US ally in their buildup against China which means it is protected from international scrutiny. Kashmir is kept out of the headlines. Modi insisted tourists and settlers pour into Kashmir. The tourists see the massive military presence as a positive as safety while the residents live with the arrests,
the tensions, mass killings and surveillance. Modi insisted that Kashmir was now normal. In April of 2025, gunman walked into a wooded valley called Palagam, a popular tourist destination in Kashmir and shot dead 25 Indian Hindu tourists and a Kashmiri Muslim guide. It was the deadliest attack on Indian civilians in Kashmir in decades. Despite over 700,000 Indian soldiers stationed in the area, none were nearby. Indian security officials claimed that the Pakistani group Lashkar Etiba was behind the attack despite not presenting any evidence.
Two weeks later, it launched missile strikes at Pakistan at what it claimed was terrorist infrastructure. Indian missiles hit mosques, killing two three-year-old girls and a 16-year-old girl. Pakistan then bombed India. Kashmir bore the brunt of these back and forth bombings with approximately 50 civilians killed on both sides. Tens of thousands were displaced and residential areas were reduced to rubble. India unleashed a new frenzy of arrests, house demolitions and military patrols on Kashmiris. On the 10th of May, Donald Trump unilaterally announced
a ceasefire. Pakistan accepted mediation. India who insists that Kashmir is an internal issue remained quiet. Unwilling to accept outside mediation but also unwilling to alienate Trump. Modi stated the fighting had only paused. The brutal occupation hasn't paused. Kashmiris are still being arrested and killed. Land is still being seized. The Indian military is still immune from any legal consequences. Kashmiris are an ancient people that have lived under foreign rule for 500 years. Sold by the British, promised a vote that was never held, terrorized for decades
by the Indian state, armed and abandoned by Pakistan, ignored by the international community. Kashmiris are not some security threat to be managed. They are people who have been telling anyone willing to listen for over 70 years that they want to decide their own future. Stories like Kashmir are exactly why I make these videos. They're complicated and they're ignored until a predictable crisis forces them into the headlines. The world makes a lot more sense when you understand it before a crisis hits before you're bombarded by an event totally deprived of
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