Let us look at it from the government’s own yardstick, which is security. Will it achieve anything for Kashmiri Pandits, in whose name it continues to communalise a deep human rights problem? Ask yourself a simple question: Is India strategically more secure in Kashmir after the chest-thumping Balakot operation? The answer is: No. After all, the government is itself saying that the footprint of cross-border terrorism has not gone down. All indications are it is likely to increase as summer approaches. You cannot solve Kashmir without a Pakistan policy. Symbolic legal victories notwithstanding, we don’t have one. We made Pakistan’s job easier, not harder. But more ominously, China is also now pressuring India in the Ladakh sector... The COVID lockdown may have been precipitated by a virus. But the intellectual, political, constitutional, strategic and moral lockdown with which we are imprisoning Kashmir will produce more violence. It is also a harbinger of the future of the rest of India.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 'Covid lockdown is seen as a cover for Jammu and Kashmir', Indian Express Â
