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Nov 02, 2026
Major General Harsha Kakar

Pakistan Can Only Dream of Kashmir

India marks 27th October as Infantry Day in honour of the first infantry battalion (1 SIKH) landing in Srinagar to push back Pakistan’s raiders. Pakistan, on the other hand, marks the day as ‘Black Day,’ basically because that was the day they lost Kashmir. Shehbaz’s tweet this year, displaying his nation’s anguish, mentions, “Seventy-nine years ago, Indian forces landed in Srinagar, marking the beginning of a tragic chapter in the history of Jammu and Kashmir, one that continues to cast its long shadow over the region to this day.” Pak embassies are directed to hold discussions and events on this date highlighting resolution of the Kashmir dispute. In other words, Islamabad cries, but none responds. Having realised the futility of this exercise, the budget for it has been slashed. The world also knows that while Kashmiris in India are free, it is their brethren in POJK who are facing starvation, bullets and suppression. I only wish Shehbaz would have highlighted the wrong decision of the then government to push raiders and tribesmen into Kashmir on 22nd Oct 1947, under Operation Gulmarg, killing, raping, looting and plundering, resulting in it losing the territory forever. The Pak army continues to excel in this field even today, as is evident in POJK, Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It was Operation Gulmarg which triggered the signing of the Instrument of Accession by Maharaja Hari Singh. Among the most infamous incidents of the invasion by the raiders were the Muzaffarabad, Domel, Bulgam, Mirpur and Baramulla massacres, wherein tens of thousands of non-Muslims were killed, mutilated, raped, women kidnapped or forced into mass suicide to preserve their honour. In memory of those who suffered at the hands of Pak raiders, India marks 22nd Oct, the day the invasion commenced, as Black Day. Currently, while Kashmir is at peace, with tourism increasing by the day, POJK is in turmoil, with the agitation continuing for over six months, despite mounting casualties, continued blockade of food and medical supplies and no access to communication amidst a media blackout. Conservative reports mention that over a hundred have been killed in firing by Pak forces, with thousands injured or missing. Thousands of police and security personnel remain deployed in POJK. The scenario is only getting worse as students join protests over the killing of children by Pak security forces. Latest reports indicate that Pakistan is planning another genocide. The message to Pakistan from its own population is clear. They no longer seek to be a part of a state which has suppressed and denied them even basic facilities while exploiting its resources. The Kashmiris in POJK look across the border and watch a changing J and K with hospitals, medical colleges, educational institutions, connectivity and all essential amenities, while they have nothing. The condition is the same in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only state which is cared for is Punjab. Pakistan’s fake support for Kashmiris is visible in the number of days a year it marks to remember the blunder it made by invading it in 1947. In terms, 05 Jan every year is marked as the ‘Right to Self-determination’ Day. This was the day in 1949 when the UN Security Council supposedly committed to holding a UN-supervised plebiscite in J and K. It ignores the fact that it was its refusal to adhere to the terms of the resolution which ensured it was never held. The Shimla Pact and the Lahore Declaration have now made it redundant. Crying for it after having discarded it means nothing. 05 February every year is the annual day of solidarity with Kashmir or ‘Youm-e-Yakhjehti-e-Kashmir'. The day has no special significance to any incident or event. It was decided by Nawaz Sharif in 1990 and has been in vogue since. It is a national holiday. On this day, rallies are organised while political leaders release statements to display solidarity with Kashmiris, meaning little. Another fake day. July 8, the day Burhan Wani, a known terrorist operating in J and K, was killed in 2016, is marked as Kashmir Resistance Day. Once again, there are rallies, speeches and marches in POJK. In India, no one is even bothered. In 2018, Pakistan released a stamp honouring Burhan Wani, hoping to incite violence in Kashmir, but nothing happened. The day is slowly losing steam in Pakistan. Pakistan remembers 13th July as Kashmir Martyrs’ Day, which is in honour of 21 protestors killed by J and K state forces in 1931. This was the only common day marked on both sides of the LOC till 2019. It stopped being a public holiday in J and K from 2019. Pakistan marks 19th July as the Youm-e-Illhaq-e-Pakistan (accession to Pakistan) day. It was on this day in 1947 that Pakistan claims that the ‘All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference’ passed a resolution acceding to it. This event is marked by rallies only in POJK. It has, over the years, lost steam. There is hardly any mention of it in Pakistan’s press. Pakistan terms 05 August, the day India abrogated Article 370, as ‘Youm-e-Istehsal’ (the day of exploitation). The Indian decision to abrogate the article surprised Pakistan, and it had no answer but to downgrade diplomatic ties and add yet another day to its calendar, displaying frustration and anger at its failures. In 2019, the year Article 370 was abrogated, Pakistan even termed India’s Independence Day as a ‘Black Day.’ Failing to garner international support for the restoration of Article 370, it remains another day in their Kashmir calendar. While there has been no official name given, Pakistan marks the death anniversary of Syed Ali Geelani on 01 Sept every year with rallies in POJK. Geelani, the former chairman of the APHC (All Party Hurriyat Conference), died at the age of 91 in 2021. He had been conferred with Pakistan’s highest award, Nishan-e-Pakistan, and flags flew at half-mast across Pakistan on his death in 2021. Imran Khan, the then PM of Pakistan, announced that Geelani’s death anniversary would be marked as a ‘day of freedom.’ However, nothing much has happened in recent years. The anti-India, pro-Kashmir days in Pakistan’s official calendar only highlight the repentance and the absurdity of launching Operation Gulmarg in 1947. Even if it adds a few more days to their Kashmir calendar, it would not make a difference to either India or the world. Kashmir will and always remain a part of India.

Oct 31, 2026
Viren S Doshi

Hinduism vs. Hindutva - Leftist Insidious Campaign to Criminalise Hindu Defence

How the Communist Leftist Jihadi Nexus tries to equate Hindutva with Terrorism For centuries, the civilisational continuum of the Indian subcontinent — rooted in the Vedas, Upanishads, Darshanas, Epics, Ashrams, Yagnas, Gurukuls, Temples, Festivals, and a pluralistic Dharma — endured successive brutal invasions without forging lasting political, bearing humongous costs. Hindus resisted in regional and local formations: Janapads, Rajput coalitions, Vijayanagara, Marathas, Sikh misls, tribal resistance and countless other efforts. Survival itself was the achievement amid temple destructions, forced conversions, jizya, and demographic shifts recorded in contemporary chronicles. Partition in 1947 delivered a truncated homeland after catastrophic violence, just a year before the Jewish people secured Israel. In the century since and especially post-independence, sections of Hindus began organising with national, cultural and political consciousness - not for conquest but for cohesion and defence of their civilisational space. That effort is labelled as Hindutva by the Leftist Jihadi nexus, though Hindutva is more a generic term for Hinduness and less a cultural-political identity. Those who systematically oppose Hindutva rarely limit themselves to policy critique. Their rhetoric treats Hindu self-assertion as the core problem. In practice, sustained opposition to Hindutva frequently functions as opposition to the political agency of Hindus and the national and public legitimacy of Hinduism itself as the lines thin out. Historical Pattern of Fragmentation and the Late Awakening Over 2,500 years, the subcontinent faced Greek, Scythian, Hun, Arab, Turkic, Afghan, and Mughal invasions followed by European / British colonial rule. Local resistance was real yet remained regional. There was no sustained pan-Hindu political doctrine treating the entire civilisational area as one strategic theatre requiring permanent institutional defence since the unifying mission of Chanakya. The result was not complete erasure — Hindu society proved resilient through decentralised structures right up to families and philosophical depth — but repeated loss of political control, accompanied by documented violence and transformation of sacred geography. The twentieth century altered the equation. Reform movements, the freedom struggle, and the trauma of tragic partition crystallised the recognition that cultural survival in the age of nation-states required organisation. Hindutva emerged as cultural nationalism: the idea that India’s civilisational core is Hindu in the broad sense—encompassing philosophical traditions, sacred geography, and demographic majority—while remaining open to those who accept that framework. It was never a project of invading others. It was an attempt to end the historical pattern of disunity that “invited” predation by Barbaric, Jihadi and Colonial invaders. Hindutva - The Essence Though Hindutva or Hinduness is a generic word that distinguishes the inclusiveness of Hindus as a common virtue or a shared quality, it attracted interpretation as Defensive Hindu Cohesion as distinct from Hinduism - the ideology that it seeks to protect through unity. Under the Hindutva umbrella, all myriads of Hindu denominations were pinned to a stellar identity as a people and as a nation to defend the Hinduness that all of them have in them as a virtue - inclusiveness. Hinduness became the term for inclusiveness that is within all denominations as a common factor on one hand, and for unity on the other hand to defend that quality from becoming extinct due to continuing onslaughts. In its classical formulations and the practice of its major institutions, Hindutva emphasises cultural unity, self-respect, and the right of the Hindu majority to shape the public culture of its civilisational homeland without perpetual apology. Inclusiveness is treated as a virtue of Hindu civilisation itself—its historical absorption of diverse practices—yet that inclusiveness is not infinite license for demographic or ideological erasure. When leftist Jihadi opponents reduce Hindutva to “hate” or “fascism,” they collapse a defensive cultural nationalism into caricature. They rarely apply the same reduction to Islamic or Sub-Islamic regional (Palestine-like) or even Communist transnational ideologies that insist on demographic majorities, and on vital sites, or and on historical memory. Despite their openly blatant and violent calls and actions. Because they are all in cahoots against Hindu, Christian, Jew and other such religious or cultural or nationalist identities, including that of Arabs. Despite the majority of Arabs being Muslims. Even after Independence, India witnessed communal violence, conversions through inducement or force in certain regions, and demographic shifts in border areas and urban pockets. Hindu refugees from Pakistan and later Bangladesh received uneven attention. Temple rights and educational content about historical invasions often faced resistance. “Hindutva” unity politics gained traction because sections of the Hindu public concluded that abstract secularism, as practised, frequently meant special pleading for one side, leading to erasure of the lone Hindu nationhood. The Leftist Front in the US: Dismantling Global Hindutva This contest against Hindutva has long since gone global. In September 2021, a three-day online conference titled “Dismantling Global Hindutva: Multidisciplinary Perspectives” was organised and co-sponsored by departments and centres at dozens of universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and others. The explicit framing was not scholarly analysis of a political movement, but its outright “dismantling”. Panels examined Hindutva’s supposed fascist dimensions, its “alignment” with caste, gender politics, and digital propaganda and ironically even with white supremacy. Organisers and supporters insisted they targeted only Hindutva politics, not Hinduism - the Dharma. In practice, the conference and its surrounding ecosystem treated organised Hindu assertion as an existential threat requiring academic and activist mobilisation. Audrey Truschke, professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, has been one of the most visible academic voices in this campaign. She has repeatedly described Hindutva as a hateful political ideology advocating Hindu supremacy. She has compared early Hindutva thinkers’ admiration for certain aspects of interwar European politics to Nazism. She has helped develop resources such as the “Hindutva Harassment Field Manual” through the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective. She has framed Hindutva as both an “American” problem and a transnational global threat. She claims to have researched U.S.-based Hindu organisations she labels far-right. Entire leftist Jihadi Woke ecosystem in the US and across the globe has since gone berserk, “Dismantling Hindutva”. Subsequently, she faced intense backlash from all Hindu groups who stated that her work and public comments—such as characterisations of Hindu texts and deities—cross into denigration of the Hinduism / Hindu religion, apart from portraying Hindutva as a terrorist front. Truschke and allied academics viciously positioned themselves as “defenders of academic freedom” against “Hindutva trolls.” Hindu advocacy organisations countered that the conference and the leftist or woke rhetoric and related activism systematically conflate Hinduism with its political expressions, deny or relativise historical violence against Hindus, and create a hostile environment for Hindu students and scholars and Hindus in general who reject the framing, and it was seen that this led to not only Hindumisia and Hinduphobia but also to actual attacks on Hindus and Hindu Faith Centres. RSS - The Target of the Red Green Nexus Parallel efforts target the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its overseas affiliates. U.S. leftist academics, activists, and “progressive” Democrat lawmakers have long described the RSS as a paramilitary or supremacist organisation. The so-called fact sheets, reports, and public campaigns call for scrutiny of RSS-linked groups operating in America, portray them as exporters of hate, and urge universities, politicians, and civil society to distance themselves. In recent years, this has included protests against RSS-related events, calls for elected officials to reject donations linked to Sangh-affiliated entities, and framing of Hindu cultural organisations as vectors of “Hindu supremacy.” The language routinely places the RSS and Hindutva in the same moral category as authoritarian or extremist movements while applying far softer standards to Islamist Jihadi networks or communist inhuman violence. The Most Dangerous Narrative: Equating Defence with Terrorism Here lies the deepest and vilest insidiousness. Openly racist outbursts against Hindus—street-level slurs, temple vandalism, or crude stereotypes—are ugly and must be condemned. They remain visible and therefore contestable. Far more corrosive (and collaborative) is the sophisticated narrative that portrays Hindutva itself as a form of terrorism or fascism equivalent to Islamist jihadism or the violence of communist insurgencies. This leftist-communist-jihadi nexus — academic radicals, “progressive” woke activists, and Islamist interlocutors who find common cause in opposing Hindu political consolidation — works to place Hindus who organise for self-defence on the same pedestal as those who celebrate Jihadi bloodthirsty genocidal “conquests”, practice targeted killings of the unarmed innocent, gang rapes on innocent women and girls or pursue “revolutionary” regime change terror through sheer vandalism. The effect is deliberate moral inversion. A community that spent centuries absorbing blows without a unified political response is told that the very act of organising to prevent further erosion constitutes the real danger. Defensive cultural nationalism is branded as aggression. Historical memory of invasions and Partition is dismissed as majoritarian grievance. Contemporary data on targeted violence against Hindus in certain regions is contextualised away or ignored or normalised. Meanwhile, the same discourse often soft-pedals or “understands” the theological and political sources of Islamist supremacism and remains selectively silent about the body counts of communist violence in India and elsewhere. By manufacturing the equation “Hindutva = terrorism,” the leftist campaign seeks to delegitimise the only modern instrument Hindus have developed for collective political survival. The leftists aim to keep Hinduism abstract, spiritualized, and politically inert—acceptable as yoga and festivals, unacceptable the moment Hinduism claims the same rights of cohesion and security as Hindutva or as a nation that other communities exercise without apology; effectively making it vulnerable as it has been for centuries. This is more dangerous than crude racism because it operates through universities, media, NGOs, and policy networks. It shapes the next generation of scholars, journalists, and officials. It provides “intellectual cover” for demographic and fanatic pressures while pathologising the normal response. It turns the language of human rights and anti-fascism into a weapon against the one civilisation that was historically the primary target of repeated conquest yet never developed an expansionist theological mandate of its own. Unity Without Expansionism - The Viable Path Hindu political unity remains unfinished and contested, ironically even among Hindus in India, in the US and elsewhere. Democratic competition in democracies ensures no single formation monopolises the vote. That internal diversity is a strength, but it gets turned into a liability when it recreates strategic blindness. The last hundred years mark the first sustained modern attempt to treat civilisational continuity as a political good. The project is defensive by historical necessity: a secure cultural majority in its own homeland, equal citizenship, and an end to the cycle in which disunity invited predation, while providing fallback for diaspora against predation in adopted lands. Those who insist Hinduism must remain forever non-political, forever apologetic, and forever fragmented are jeopardising the most successful pluralistic inclusive social order. Hinduism has been the most reformist, but they would still hype on caste, cow and cults to denigrate it. They are denying one civilisation’s right to coherent self-defence. The leftist academic campaign of Global Dismantling of Hindutva in the US and the world, the relentless targeting of the RSS, and the equation of Hindutva with terrorism form a coherent strategy: criminalise the defence so the defended remain vulnerable forever. Conclusion Exposing this vile strategy is not an attack on anyone. This refusal to accept that Hindus alone must choose between political powerlessness and moral illegitimacy must be exposed. Every major civilisation that navigated modernity claimed the right to cultural confidence, demographic awareness, institutional memory, and unapologetic defence of the space that made its existence and pluralism possible. Hindus are late to that recognition. The forces arrayed against them prefer they never complete it. But the way they have survived through millennia, they will definitely compete to attain their due space and due recognition in India, and in other democracies. Moreover, like-minded nationalist conservative counterparts in the US, Israel and other democracies, with Hindutva-led India together, will decimate the Communist Leftist Socialist Globalist Woke Jihadi Axis sooner. What will ensue would be the Right Global Order.