Zionism Enables Indian Violence in Kashmir

Protesters hold a banner in Indian-administrated Srinagar, Kashmir. MUZAMIL MATTOO

On April 22, gunmen killed 25 tourists and one local tour guide, mostly Hindus, in Indian-administered Pahalgam, Kashmir. The Indian government swore revenge, quickly escalated violence against Kashmiris, and entered into conflict with Pakistan. India attacked not only Pakistan-administered Kashmir* but also sovereign Pakistani territory, making unsubstantiated claims that Pakistan was housing “terrorist infrastructure” where attacks were “planned and directed.” This sequence of events was one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the region since the partition of India in 1947, when India and Pakistan both claimed ownership of majority-Muslim Kashmir.

While the ceasefire deal brokered by Trump has averted all-out war, the “Line of Control” dividing Kashmir between Pakistan and India remains heavily militarized. Meanwhile, in Indian-occupied Kashmir, Kashmiri Muslims still face military and extralegal violence. This violence is an integral part of the Indian government’s Hindu nationalist settler-colonial project in Kashmir, which aims to erase Muslim identity and history in the region by pushing for Hindu tourism and settlement.

The aftermath of the Pahalgam attack exposed troubling parallels between India and Israel. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party see the Zionist project as a helpful political model, and since the BJP came to power, India has become a much closer ally to Israel. Experts have warned that the same language Israeli politicians deploy to excuse the genocide in Gaza is also used to justify the subjugation of Kashmiris. Immediately after the Pahalgam attack, some Indians called for an Israel-like solution. On the right-wing news program Republic World, anchor Arnab Goswami declared that “22 of April is to India what 7 October was to the Israelis.” During his show, a guest added, “We demand we turn Pakistan into Gaza.” S.P. Vaid, former director general of police of the then-state of Jammu and Kashmir, told the Hindi newspaper Jagran that “we must respond like Israel.”

Indian mainstream media and social media were overwhelmingly supportive of India’s escalations. “Democracies rising against Islamic terrorism 👏,” read one comment on a video of Israeli and Indian flags being waved at a pro-India rally in the United Kingdom. In both the Kashmiri and Palestinian contexts, the label of “terrorism” excuses violence, repression, and land encroachment by the settler state in the name of “protecting” settlers; it erases Kashmiris and Palestinians as peoples who deserve dignity and autonomy, promulgating the narrative that resistance is wrong. After Pahalgam, even liberal and leftist Indian circles bought fully into the “terrorism” narrative while either dismissing or ignoring the glaring parallels between Palestine and Kashmir. From the Hindu nationalist right to the communist left, the vast majority of Indians refuse to recognize the subjugation of Kashmir for what it is: the deprivation of a people’s right to self-determination. The mythical terrorist-civilian dichotomy is undoubtedly easier to stomach than reckoning with the reality faced by Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir. But the fact remains that whenever violence between India and Pakistan escalates, it is Kashmiris who die and suffer the most, just as Palestinians do from Israeli occupation and genocide.

Without justice in Kashmir, which would require dismantling the Hindu nationalist movement inspired by and tied to the Zionist project, the subcontinent will never know peace. Accordingly, we must all learn to recognize and reject fascist and supremacist logics. We cannot tolerate any form of the tired “counterterrorism” narrative as justification for oppression. Nor can we afford to delude ourselves that other repressive regimes will never repurpose the tactics of Israel's crimes against Palestine — they already are.

*Indian-Occupied Kashmir is referred to as Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian government, and had some autonomy as a state until the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019; Pakistan-administered Kashmir is often called Azad Kashmir, azad meaning “free.” This is not to imply that those in Azad Kashmir are free of all political repression or to exonerate the Pakistani government of all injustices; there is plenty of internal repression in Pakistan, including disappearances of dissidents, particularly in its eastern province of Balochistan. However, unlike in Indian-Occupied Kashmir, Kashmiris in Azad Kashmir do not face targeted repression and erasure. Of course, as demonstrated this past spring, Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control are vulnerable to military violence.

Timeline:

Since Partition (1947): Kashmir sits divided and disputed between India, Pakistan, and China. On the Indian-occupied side — referred to by the Indian government as the territory of Jammu and Kashmir — Kashmiris live under military occupation and surveillance. Especially in recent years, India has incentivized Hindu tourism and settlement as one of its main strategies to assert Hindu identity on the region and erase its rich, Islamic, indigenous Kashmiri history and culture, simultaneously enforcing economic dependence on the occupation.
2019: Indian Parliament passes the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, stripping the state of its semi-autonomous special status and splitting it into two “union territories.” This legislation is commonly cited as a turning point, and since 2019, India’s settler project in Kashmir has only intensified.
April 22, 2025: An attack in Pahalgam, Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK) kills 25 adult male tourists and one Kashmiri man. An armed group called The Resistance Front (TRF) refutes its initial claim of responsibility, citing a cyberattack. Many point out that India has used false flag operations in the past to escalate fighting. Since Pahalgam, India has baselessly claimed that the Pakistani government had ties to the attack.
April 23, 2025: India suspends the Indus Water Treaty, citing “national security” concerns. This threatens Pakistan’s access to vital water resources — a move hauntingly reminiscent of the Zionist regime’s restrictions on Gaza’s water access. Kashmiris in IOK and across India face a sharp increase in violence — in the form of increased military activity, arrests, extralegal violence, rape threats, and online harassment — over the following days to weeks.
May 6-7, 2025: India attacks civilian areas in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan proper through a combination of ground operations, drones, and air strikes. The attacks kill thirty-six people, including a 3-year-old. India claims its “Operation Sindoor” targeted “terrorist infrastructure,” providing no evidence. In response, the Pakistani military shoots down Indian military planes and drones. Pakistani cross-border fire kills 21 people in IOK.
May 10, 2025: Donald Trump announces a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. While the deal averts all-out war between the two nuclear powers and stops the bombings, it does nothing to protect Kashmiris from subjugation.
July 29, 2025: India assassinates three individuals in purported connection to April’s Pahalgam attack in a joint military, paramilitary, and police operation in Srinagar, IOK. Kashmiris continue to face a lack of due process and continued military occupation. IOK is still the most militarized region in the world, with one Indian soldier stationed for every ten civilians.