Yes considering all the news we see about Hong Kong. It is surprising that Kashmir isn't covered despite being in worse situation for more than a year, over a similar issue.
HK used to be more stable and is a highly visible global node that is well connected, exports cultural products, and is home to foreign offices for a lot of companies. It’s very easy to cover HK given that, say, the NYT has been there for the past few decades and has staffers who have directly observed changes throughout that time.
My impression of Kashmir is that the situation hasn’t been positive for a very long time, and all the other factors are either less true or don’t apply.
Also, in Kashmir's case, the lines become blurry because on one hand you have excesses from the Indian state, and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines.
It is quite a controversial topic and when someone looking from outside can't even gauge the recent issue at hand correctly[1], you can't expect them to have the context of Kashmir issue.
why are things blurry?
you are saying
>and on the other hand you have a bloody armed insurgent movement which sometimes is just separatist and sometimes also coloured on religious lines.
kashmir has been fighting against both india and pakistan on many fronts ever since this issue began. the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years.
so what 30 years ago pakistan convinced and managed to turn thousands of kashmiris as pawns in a proxy war with india. that doesnt mean kashmir is with pakistan, on the contrary, people in pakistan occupied kashmir protest against their oppression daily.
why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?
I apologise for any mistake I make here as my knowledge of Indian history is not very fresh.
> the state of kashmir has been essentially fighting war of independence against foreign oppressive rule for the past 500 years.
But what constitutes foreign rule. If I move before 500 years, we have Mauryas or Karkotas ruling Kashmir with Srinagar being an important city to them, which are pan North Indian empires.
> why do you think just because someone picked a gun that they have muddied the waters and only way out is to surrender because you cannot do an armed struggle?
Well, I think once a struggle turns violent, the issue becomes emotive on both sides as there is blood shed. For people in Kashmir, it has been since 1947, wounds of which keep opening up again. For people in rest of India, the narrative and the blood of the people from RoI which has been spent in keeping Kashmir has been huge as well.
No one would want to back down, the armed insurgent movement is never going to succeed.
My second point was, some of the groups are motivated on religious lines and want a country based on a religion which makes it extremely hard for others to sympathise for them.
I am not too aware about the reason for this. Most of the states have been divided on linguistic lines. Punjab and Haryana have different dominant languages. It also might have been administrative like it was for a lot of states.
Weaken them by making a state where electoral prospects are just decided by them? That is just counter intuitive. If you don't divide the state, they aren't in the majority anymore but it does increase the administrative burden.
Also, you are talking about the same person who gave away land in other states, even the Himalayan ones to the community. They had very limited presence there before.
If you read the history of the religion and subcontinent, there is no reason he would even want to weaken them as well. Leaving the small separatist voices aside, the vast majority is so intermingled with the dominant religion in North India, that there is no reason to do this.
Anyway, it seems you are even less aware about this topic than most people are. I am not sure where you are getting your information from, but reading from your charged language I can only ask you to not fall for hyperbole and look at things pragmatically.
They wanted all of Punjab to be theirs, no? Not sharing a capital with Haryana. I would think they were settling, if they got a more compact state. What I will say is that Sikhs I met in USA were not happy with say splitting Chandigarh.
>Punjab and Haryana have different dominant languages
A lot of Punjabi-speaking Hindus "chose" Hindi for that to be true IIRC.
> I would think they were settling, if they got a more compact state.
It is not like any land exchange happened. Sure, some resources got divided but I wouldn't see it as settling. If you read analysis about management of big states, even now a lot of analysts believe some of the other big states should be split up.
> What I will say is that Sikhs I met in USA were not happy with say splitting Chandigarh.
Well, that's not representative of them, no? I have also met people who are not happy with that decision and also people who are indifferent to it.
> A lot of Punjabi-speaking Hindus "chose" Hindi for that to be true IIRC.
Not really, look at any language census from before as well in the districts that became the new state.
But the linguistic issue is not just limited to that state. Look at the northern Himalayan states and look at what has happened to their languages. Hindi has just subsumed their languages with its words and now most people speak Hindi only. This situation is made worse because of the necessity of English as a language, their own mother tongue kind of becomes third in the priority list.
>an estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred.
yes. you are right. i do remember displacement but it does not hold a candle to 1947 jammu massacres.
what do you think? who are more important? 100k deaths or 219?
SO you're justifying 1990 killings and displacement of Pandits as a revenge for 1947? From the same Wikipedia article you linked also has a similar justification then for 1947 Jamu vilence:
> the Jammu province which was contiguous to Punjab, experienced mass migration that led to violent inter-religious activity. Large numbers of Hindus and Sikhs from Rawalpindi and Sialkot started arriving since March 1947, bringing "harrowing stories of Muslim atrocities in West Punjab". According to scholar Ilyas Chattha, this provoked counter-violence on Jammu Muslims, which had "many parallels with that in Sialkot". He writes, "the Kashmiri Muslims were to pay a heavy price in September–October 1947 for the earlier violence of West Punjab."
Additionally, Pandits have been on the receiving end - once a majority of the Kashmiri population about 600 years ago. Seven times at least they've been forced to exit, countless killed or forcefully converted to Islam https://www.quora.com/What-atrocities-were-committed-on-Kash...
But despite all this, Pandits have never opted for taking arms in hands and become terrorist killing civilians.
what is wrong with you.... i am explaining how there are even bigger attrocities committed on either side. besides, pandits in kashmir are ethnically different from jammu dogras, ones who committed 1947 massacres so why would you even think i'd justify something. this is the kind of vile thinking that is of no direct consequence to you that is causing immeasurable harm to kashmiris
