Immense violence started in Kashmir back in 1989 when India pulled off something like this the last time. It started dying out by 1995-96 as India adopted a more democratic and less militaristic approach to Kashmir (Vajpayee's Kashmiriyat, Insaniyat, Jamburiyat) right until the current Government came in and started going back to the militaristic approach by quelling protests by brute-force. This move is not going to go well in Kashmir and the Government knows it. People are going to revolt and that is why the valley has been completely locked down. This is not about saving lives. If that was the case the forces wouldn't shoot protestors every years in Kashmir. This is about suppressing the voices of those who object.

India had made a lot of progress democratically in Kashmir and had actually won over a lot of Kashmiris. A lot of them either supported or tolerated Indian rule as long as their daily lives went on peacefully. With this move, they've lost all popular support they had in the valley. All pro-Indian Kashmiris I know personally are feeling betrayed and regretting that they supporting Indian rule in Kashmir.

Even elected pro-India politicians have been jailed and their voices suppressed. IMO this is going to result in people losing their belief in Indian democracy. Over the next few years, I expect number of militants in the Kashmir valley to grow rapidly. I think the valley will go back to where it was in early 90s. I hope it doesn't come to that but I don't see this playing out any other way unfortunately.

Showing military might is not the solution.

This time things will be different. Any militant movement needs money to grow - traditionally money (made using selling drugs) came from ISI [3]. Pakistan narrowly avoided FATF sanctions [1] (now in grey list but can be moved to black list this October) Now Pakistan's economy is tanking [2] and it clearly knows military options are not workable. No foreign governments except for China support them. Only option left is disinformation campaign aided by leftist media. [1] https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/watchdog-pakistan-co.... [2] https://herald.dawn.com/news/1398616 [3] https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4b6fe2d2d.pdf

This is BS. Pakistani jihadis are not overcome with any kind words. The isolation of Kashmir was the problem and the government has taken the solution that the majority of the country agrees with.

The only people complaining are English language media who Modi has never cared about.

Calm down. Too much emotion here. Current government position was always a possibility and is the main reason why Kashmir remained isolationist.

Does majority of the state agree with the decision?

If the majority of the state wants Sharia law, that will still not happen. India is a country of 1.3 billion with at least 10 different languages. There are so many sub cultures in India that the people of India do not think a few Kashmiri separatists deserve independence. It will never happen.

The state is called Jammu and Kashmir and it is part of India's cultural heritage. Integration efforts may take time, but the alternatives are not an option for India. There are many pockets of Muslim majority around India, Kashmir will be no different. Despite the border with Pakistan.

You fight ideas with ideas.

C'mon, stop bringing Pakistan into this. India has mismanaged Kashmir so badly that the majority of the population wants to leave India -- and not to join Pakistan, mind you, but to be independent.

Pakistan is a big part of problem here by supporting militants and terrorists. Material, money and training support. Let’s not absolve Pakistan here. They invaded independent Kashmir in 1947 and Kashmir had to let go its independence to get support from India against Pakistan’s war.

They never invaded. Locals rebelled against the ruler for being independent. And asked to become part Pakistan. Army came in upon request from locals.

Nah, tribals were armed by Pakistan. Tribals from Pakhtun invaded Kashmir. Locals actually helped repel the tribal attacks. Let’s not overlook stated facts.

Like you said, let's not overlook the facts. The fact is, India and Pakistan had visa on arrival up until 1974. The fact is, people from both sides of the border could still get naturalised citizens across the border up until early 70s. The fact is, both India and Pakistan did exactly the same things. Just look at the accession of Junagadh and Hyderabad estate into India. India got away with it because both the states were land locked and Pakistan couldn't help. If accession of Kashmir's raja is right, so was the declarations by nawab of junagadh and hyderabad. The fact is, the 1947 war ended with UN intervention which demanded plebiscite for kashmir. India had agreed, but so far failed to conduct that. Not only that, India doesn't even allow UN observers, while Pakistan do. I can throw in a lot of facts in here.

Hyderabad was a land locked pocket, and one of the conditions of partition was states aligning with Pakistan to be contiguous. How is Hyderabad contiguous to Pakistan? Junagadh claimed to be contiguous to Pakistan through bullshit reasoning of sea. So viability of these pockets was not feasible. India took over Goa the same way too. But Pakistan invaded Balochistan and Kashmir and forcibly occupied these territories, so it is not 'exactly the same things'. BTW, Pakistan did try to send weapons to Hyderabad through America.

First condition of plebiscite is withdrawal of Pakistani forces from occupied territories, 73 years and still waiting. India doesn't allow UN observers because they have outlived their utility, as LoC has been codified between Pakistan and India through Simla Agreement in 1971.

The exact pre-conditions for the UN mandated plebiscite are impossible to meet. Anyway, the UN resolution is superseded by the Shimla Agreement.

haha .. if you can see the irony in your comment.

So a resourceless Pakistan miraculously recovered from the bloody partition in mere three months to not only plan an insurgency, but also had the resources to execute it. Go Pakistan then? right?

Please do not post flamewar comments to HN, and especially not nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Go learn your own history, Pakistan has given their highest bravery awards to these tribal invaders. Resourceless doesn't mean bereft of guns. British Army resources were divided among India and Pakistan.

You broke the site guidelines frequently and egregiously in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules while posting here, regardless of how wrong or bad you think other comments are? And please don't use HN for nationalistic flamewar.

lol. Pakistan was meant to get 1/3rd, never go that.

If Pakistan is not part of problem then why is it so much agitated by internal affairs of India? Let's be clear here the call for 'Gajawa E Hind' (which means complete destruction of Kafirs in India and establishment of a Islamic rule) runs in most of the Pakistanis, though they can't do anything for this, the emotions are clear. On the other hand Pakistan is a military autocracy. Without enemity with India and a cause for fighting, their existence and dominance is threatened. For them the conflict is their oxygen.

Ofcourse, why blame Pakistan? Pakistan has only invaded the region few times and has made several inflitration attempts. Nothing more.

Huh what? Are you even aware of the history? Being independent has been their goal from day 1; that's the reason for the conflict. It's not because India has "mismanaged" Kashmir.

Staying away from hindu extremist dictatorship has been their goal and why they never conformed.

There was Hindu extremist dictatorship in 1947 when the conflict started? They originally wanted a separate country because they felt they are ethnically and culturally different to Indians. It didn’t become a religion issue until the 80s.

On what basis do you imagine that any resistance or disinformation campaign by Pakistan and other interests would die down soon enough within days or weeks and make the central government allow bringing back Internet and mobile connectivity? It seems like it can never come back unless the concentration of armed forces increases manifold and punishments doled out as lessons for anything that looks like an infringement.

To me it seems like the situation cannot go back to how it was a month ago for a long time (several months, at the minimum).