A paramilitary soldier standing guard in Srinagar on Jan 26, 2017 as separatists called for a general strike in the Indian-controlled Kashmir region on India's Republic Day. Credit: AP /Dar Yasin
On 26th January as India’s right-wing Hindu supremacist government celebrates Republic Day with a massive show of military might and ‘crack downs on anti- nationals’, large swathes of India’s population, in Kashmir, Manipur, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere will be placed under ‘high alert’. For them this celebration of India’s national pride most likely entails an added dose of repression.
In Kashmir, 2016 was a terrible year. Between July and November, the India's armed forces and police ruthlessly attacked a series of spontaneous protest demonstrations following the killing of a popular militant leader. Some 17,000 people were injured, at least 90 killed and hundreds (many of them children) blinded, some permanently, from plastic pellets fired directly at their eyes. Meanwhile, in Delhi, the twitter handle of Digital India, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship projects, was tweeting a poem promoting the killing of Kashmiris by the Indian Army.
