Lessons from Gaza: India cannot ignore security threats in Kashmir

In Kashmir, working for Le Figaro and other newspapers, the author noticed four similarities between the Muslims of Gaza and the Muslims of the Valley of Kashmir (don’t forget that Ladakh is mostly Buddhist and Jammu still has a thin majority of Hindus). The first one is that of the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim majority that is a mute spectator when Islamists target people. During various sojourns of the author in the Valley of Kashmir, he has met university professors, High Court retired judges, housewives, etc, who would tell him after some time (because he is a White man and a journalist) that their sympathy goes to the terrorists “because they are fighting for a just cause and because Muslims are persecuted, whether it is in Kashmir, in Palestine, in Chechnya, or in France”. The same thing is witnessed in Gaza, when thousands of its inhabitants came out to cheer the returning Hamas terrorists, some of them carrying the dead raped bodies of young girls on the backs of their trucks. Later, it came out that most Hamas tunnels, headquarters, and arms depots were built under hospitals, schools, and private homes, which means that they were done with the full knowledge and approval of the local population. The second is that Muslims in the Valley of Kashmir have always told the author (again, after some time, and because he was a Western journalist) that Islam is their first nationality, their first allegiance. The author remembers these people asking him, “So, you are coming from India?” They live in India and have Indian passports; they don’t mind when the Indian government gives them quotas and rations, and when Indian tourism brings untold riches to almost all of them. One also probably knows that Kashmir is—and has been—the most subsidised state in India. This is true too in Gaza: We know that those Palestinians who worked in Israel and even became friends with Israeli families, who sometimes treated them like their own, informed the Hamas terrorists about locations and targets. The third is Taqya. “We dissimulate our true beliefs, especially if we live in countries where we are in minority.” Or: “Okay with you, you’re a White man, we might tell you but to Indians, to the government, to Mr Modi, to the BJP, to the Congress, we will hide our convictions.” Also in Gaza, the Palestinians and even Hamas gained the sympathy of NGOs like Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), who closed their eyes to the fact that tunnels were built below the hospitals where they worked. The fourth is: “We are martyrs, persecuted, victims of human rights abuses.” In Kashmir, the author saw with his own eyes that terrorism was started in the name of Islam against the Indian government without any provocation. The first terrorist of the JKLF started killing Hindu leaders, surgeons, journalists, prominent personalities and attacking the army. Ultimately, it led to the violent chasing out of lakhs of Hindus, one of the biggest ethnic cleansings of the 20th century. But today, thanks to social media, Kashmiri Muslims are able to pose themselves as martyrs, being the victims of human rights abuses by the Indian Army or the Indian government. The same is true in Gaza: Its people have so much sympathy in the media, in the NGOs, even with the United Nations, because they twist facts, increase casualties, and post fake photos so that people forget the terrible, unforgivable, inhuman atrocities they committed on October 7 of this year. Finally, the Modi government would be mistaken if it thinks that because tourism is currently booming in the Valley of Kashmir, terrorism is over. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same mistake, and Israel was caught by surprise by one of the worst terrorist attacks, one whose barbarism, cruelty, and scope are unparalleled in modern history. Pakistan is always ready to get back at India by sponsoring terrorism, whether it is the Khalistani one or Kashmiri separatism, and India should be ready and prepared for any eventuality. The author is a French journalist and author of ‘A History of India as It Happened’ (Garudabooks.com). He is also building a museum of true Indian history in Pune. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.