of India and Pakistan
The killing of 26 non-combatant civilians (most of them tourists) by some unidentified terrorists near Pahalgam in Kashmir valley on 22 April 2025 has resulted in escalation of tensions between the governments of India and Pakistan. The incident was calculated to undermine the resurgence of tourism industry which is one of the main sources of employment in the Valley and to provoke Islamophobia among the mass of the Indian people. No organisation has claimed responsibility for this attack and we are not likely to know who was actually responsible for it or which state connived at it. What is evident is that it was the common labouring Kashmiri people who came to the assistance of the survivors and helped them to safety, belying the theories of ethnic or religious hatred among them. Strangely enough the Indian armed forces, otherwise ubiquitous in the Valley, were not there to protect the civilian tourists.
Acts of terrorism whether enacted by those representing liberation movements or by state agencies only aid the states to arm themselves with unbridled powers, harass the labouring people and foster xenophobia among the masses. It harms the democratic or revolutionary causes they claim to represent. We the undersigned organisations, in line with Marxist-Leninism, unequivocally condemn all such acts. It is important to separate political violence by the masses against the ruling classes from such attacks on non-combatant people.
Predictably this incident has been used to disrupt all normal economic activities including tourism in Kashmir Valley, to conduct random searches and punitive action against the local population by the armed forces, punish the people at large for the act of terrorism done in their name. It has been used to attack Muslims and Kashmiris across India. This further feeds the strategy of promoting settler colonialism on the Israeli lines in the Valley advocated by the ruling party.
It has also led to serious warmongering rhetoric against Pakistan and penalising the common people of both the countries. The suspension of Indus water agreement and the threat of stopping water to Pakistan, the order to all Pakistani citizens on legitimate visit to relatives in India to return within a few days, the suspension of all postal communication and trade between the two countries and closing of the air space to Pakistan (all of which measures have been equally reciprocated by Pakistan, including holding in abeyance the Shimla Agreement) only hit the lives of ordinary people who have had nothing to do with the conflict between the two states. Targeting innocent civilians for the real or imagined crimes of the government is a deliberate xenophobic strategy.
In addition, both the governments, which incidentally control large nuclear arsenals, have been threating to go to war with each other. While most other states have urged scaling down of tensions, China has taken postures in support of Pakistan, threatening a wider regional confrontation in case of a war. Sabre rattling and war mongering even if it actually does not result in combat, creates fear and anxiety among the people living across the borders and generates hatred towards minority communities elsewhere.
All this deflects the public consciousness from the need to work toward a genuine democratic solution to the Kashmir problem and the damage done to it by the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution and the dismemberment of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
We call for restoration of normalcy in both the Valley and between India and Pakistan and return to multi-party negotiations to arrive at democratic solutions to problems which affect the labouring people of the entire South Asian region. However, democratic solutions require democratic states and such solutions cannot be achieved until the people of South Asia struggle to build democratic states in their own countries.
Pakistan Mazdoor
Mahaz
Revolutionary Democracy
Organisation
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