SRINAGAR: Farmers in India-occupied Kashmir say a major government infrastructure drive is taking their deeply cherished land, fearing it spearheads a push to “Hinduise” the Muslim-majority region.

Musadiq Hussain said police “destroyed” his rice crop when a large chunk of his smallholding was expropriated to make way for a four-lane, 60-kilometre highway around Srinagar.

“It has affected my sense of who I am and my self-respect,” said 41-year-old Hussain, adding he can no longer grow enough rice and vegetables to feed his family.

“I feel like my mind is shrinking, just like my land.” Hussain’s land was taken in 2018, but the process has intensified in recent years.

The road, along with other highways and railways, is also swallowing swathes of orchards prized for their almonds, apples and other fruit.

Goldie Osuri, a scholar at a British university, describes the expropriation of land as a “settler colonial land grab’, a phrase used for Israel’s occupation of West Bank

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which imposed direct rule in 2019, says the multi-billion-dollar drive is bringing a “new era of peace” and “unprecedented development”.

New Delhi says it will boost trade and tourism, while also bolstering military access across the occupied territory and to “strategic zones” with Pakistan and China.

`Settler colonial land grab’

The law bars construction within 500 metres on either side of the highway around Srinagar.

But last year, Indian authorities unveiled plans to build more than 20 “satellite townships” along the route, with a map showing high-rise developments it called a “Pearl in the Paradise”.

Kashmiri political parties are demanding to know who the housing is for, accusing New Delhi of aiming to change occupied Kashmir’s demographic makeup to create a Hindu majority — something the authorities do not comment on.

Goldie Osuri, who studies Indian policies at Britain’s University of Warwick, uses a phrase often associated with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to describe the situation: a settler colonial land grab.

“Kashmiri farmers… are being dispossessed of their land and livelihood in the name of Indian development as ‘a gift’ for Kashmir,” Osuri said. She called the project a bid to “Hinduise Kashmir at the expense of Kashmiri Muslims”.

After New Delhi ended occupied Kashmir’s constitutionally enshrined special status in 2019, land laws also changed. That allowed all Indians to buy land in the region for the first time.

Thousands of acres of “state lands” were added to registers to attract outside businesses. “This is a land grab in plain sight,” said Waheedur Rehman Para, a member of the local assembly.

Many say that has undermined previous land reforms that granted ownership or farming rights to hundreds of thousands of people. It worries Kashmiri leaders.

“We want this land to remain ours,” Modi critic Omar Abdullah, occupied Kashmir’s chief minister, told a rally last month. “Without it, what do we truly possess?”

But Siddiq Wahid, a historian at India’s Shiv Nadar University, said the region’s political parties showed “no intent to unite, only to pull each other down”.

“In this lazy politics lies the chief worry for us all,” he said.

‘Where will we go?’

More than half a million Indian soldiers are stationed in India-occupied Kashmir.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since 1989 in the territory of some 12 million people. Police have also seized land and properties, including orchards, commercial buildings and homes, accusing the owners of links to anti-India fighters.

The exact figures for the total area requisitioned are not public. Landowners say that the compensation offered is sometimes too low, and some are suing the government.

In December, authorities ordered the transfer of more than 600 acres of orchards for a new university campus for the Nati­onal Institute of Techn­ology.

Header image: This picture taken on Jan 15, 2025, shows Kashmiri farmer Musadiq Hussain, speaking during an interview with AFP, at his paddy field near an under-construction highway in Budgam district in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. — AFP/File

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2025