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By MAZDOOR INUILAB, India and MEJNATKASHTAREEK, Pakistan

The abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution [on Aug. 5, 2019] was celebrated by the Modi government as a great nationalist victory. This amendment, which ended Kashmir’s limited autonomy, was presented as the change that would bring lasting peace to Kashmir, prosperity would soon follow. Instead, it turned Kashmir overnight into a giant prison, with thousands being arbitrarily arrested, and thrown into prisons, internet and mobile communication suspended, and entry into the state severely restricted.

Eventually, Kashmir’s existence as a separate state was erased, Ladakh was cut out of the state, and the two new states born from this separation were turned into Union territories, now directly under the administration of the national capital. It is important to remember this context, because the resentment that grew from these actions, led directly to the developments this year.

On the 22nd of April a terror attack took place in Kashmir’s Pahalgam district, where 26 tourists were killed by militants of ‘The Resistance Front’. The attack on innocent civilians shocked India, and became fuel for the right-wing Hindutva government and its pliant media to cry for war. Since then, India began a series of escalatory steps against Pakistan, beginning with the suspension of the Indus water treaty, the sudden stoppage of river water from its dams on the Chenab river. Pakistan responded by shutting its airspace to Indian planes, to which India retaliated by doing the same. Both sides braced for military attacks which would inevitably follow from this.

In the wee hours of the night on May 7, the Indian air force, navy and army coordinated an attack covering nine targets deep within Pakistan, claiming that these were terrorist bases. The attack conducted by India’s new Rafale jets, caused widespread destruction and inflicted dozens of civilian losses on Pakistan. Whether at all any terrorists were killed in these attacks will remain a mystery, but since then the Indian media’s boasts have not ceased, claiming that 900 ‘terrorists’ were killed. This was followed by indiscriminate shelling by Pakistan, causing yet more loss of lives. The 26 who were killed in the terror strike received round the clock coverage from Indian media, but the poor farmers whose lives were lost in the border skirmishes have been reduced to faceless numbers, unworthy of prime time coverage.

While Pakistani officials and the official press jump with joy over the alleged downing of five Indian fighter jets, the Indian media are giving round the clock triumphant coverage of the air strikes into Pakistan. The civilians killed by India’s strikes receive no sympathy from the Indian press, and the Indian government tries everything to dehumanize the average Pakistani. At the same time, mock civil defence drills were conducted to normalize a state of war.

For the four days that followed India’s air strikes on Pakistani soil, both sides continued an intense exchange of missile barrages and artillery shelling costing dozens of lives in India and Pakistan. By the 11th of May, Pakistan had deployed its army to the border, ready for ground operations, just as India was getting ready for greater military actions. Suddenly, on the 11th of May, everything went quiet, as Trump declared that he had supposedly negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. Till now, this shaky ceasefire has held, with one violation from the Pakistani side resulting in shelling in the Indian occupied Kashmir border. This ceasefire has momentarily stopped the possibility of escalation into outright war, and we are brought back to the situation which persisted on the immediate aftermath of India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Water Treaty.

It is no exaggeration to say that South Asia is perhaps at the most dangerous point yet, in its recent history, as two nuclear-armed nations toy with the possibility of conventional war. It is by no means certain that such a conventional war would remain limited to conventional means, and would not advance to an all-out nuclear war, which would likely destroy civilization as we know it, and may drag the whole world into a third world war.

The Kashmir conflict

To truly understand the conflict over Kashmir, we must go to the roots of the problem. The conflict is in fact one of the most toxic legacies of British colonialism in South Asia. Today, Kashmir has become the frontline not just of two powerful militaries facing off against each other, but the frontline of a conflict between two toxic reactionary ideological currents. On the one hand, we have reactionary Islamism enshrined in the militarized Pakistani state rooted in the two nation theory, and on the other side we have Hindutva, which has taken the reins of power in India. It is important to understand how this situation came about.

By 1930s, Britain’s hold over India had weakened to the point where it needed to delegate more powers to Indians to continue its rule. The British increasingly relied on the services of large reactionary communal organizations to counter the influence of secular parties. Foremost among these reactionary organizations was the Muslim League and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. While the Congress Party protested India being dragged into another world war, there were no plans for a nationwide mobilization, like the past ‘satyagrahas’. Events would force them to mobilize a general mobilization in 1942, under the Quit India movement.

Over the course of the 1940s, India underwent a pre-revolutionary mobilization, first with the Quit India Movement, then the Naval uprising and youth uprising in 1946. However, with the Congress Party outlawed and its leadership jailed, the British government gave [support to] compliant reactionary organizations like the RSS and the Muslim League, supported by the Deobandi sect. Together they succeeded in polarising India along communal religious lines of Hindu and Muslim. Events culminated in the partition riot of 1946, beginning with Calcutta. Soon, violence spread across the Gangetic Plains and reached Punjab, where the worst killings took place.

The fires of communal hatred eventually reached the princely state of Kashmir. Though having a largely Muslim population, Kashmir was ruled by the Dogra Hindus since the second Anglo-Sikh wars of 1849. The Dogras were harsh against their subjects, and Hari Singh would be no exception.

Much like the rest of the sub-continent, Kashmir saw agitation by peasants, workers, and particularly share croppers. In the period between 1946 and 1947, the Kashmiri monarchy embarked on a programme of genocide against the largely Muslim Gujjar peasantry. This was not simply because of their religion, but as a reaction against the growing power of peasants and workers in the princely state. The power of the monarchy was threatened, and it responded violently in the context of partition.

Little known is the fact that the RSS was actively involved in this genocide of Muslims in Kashmir, which likely cost the lives of 200,000. India and Pakistan both staked their claim to Kashmir. For Pakistan, it was Kashmir’s Muslim majority character that made it ‘natural’ to join Pakistan. For India, the fact that Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu monarch was emphasized. However, Maharaja Hari Singh chose neutrality and independence.

Pakistan decided to strike first, mobilizing a force of tribal militia to conquer Kashmir from the king. The violence of the monarchy against Muslims was reciprocated by the Pakistan-backed Islamic militias, who killed thousands of Hindus in Poonch and Mirpur. Seeing his forces disintegrate against the onslaught of the tribal militia, the Maharaja finally petitioned to accede to India in late 1947. Thus, not three months into its independence, India and Pakistan were locked in their first war, over Kashmir.

The Indo-Pakistan wars

India and Pakistan have fought four wars until now. Of these, three wars were fought over Kashmir, the first in 1947, the second in 1965, and the third in 1999.

The annexation of Kashmir was not something that happened in a vacuum. The partition had left India dislocated, but with the peninsular provinces and the heartland intact. Most of the industries of the British Raj, the large urban centres, and most military assets, went to India. Pakistan had two resourceful provinces in East Bengal, and West Punjab, and a strategic port in Karachi, but these were not enough for a fledgling republic like Pakistan to match against India.

As of 1947, the only area for expansion for these two young and hungry capitalist nations were the princely states. At the height of the Raj, about one-third of the territories of the Raj were comprised of 500 princely states, some which were large and resourceful, like Kashmir and Hyderabad, and others which were as big as a small town, like Satara. On the eve of independence the princely states were besieged by peasant rebellions and the threat of outright military annexation, either by India or Pakistan. The only realistic choice was accession to one or the other. Yet, Hyderabad and Kashmir sought to stay independent.

With India having taken most princely states, Pakistan was left with only two options for expansion.

To its west was the state of Kalat, and to the northeast was Kashmir. Having lost vital states—like Junagarh, which was ruled by a Muslim nawab, the Muslim majority islands of Lakshadwip, and every princely state in the East—Jinnah believed he could not afford to lose Kashmir too. This state sat on the headwaters of the Indus River, vital for Pakistan’s agriculture, it provided a land border with China, and could become a link to Central Asia, thus vital for Pakistan’s future trade. For India, Kashmir would be valuable for its resources, its location, and its use as a leverage against Pakistan.

With the events around the partition, the king’s actions against Muslim peasantry, and his desire to stay independent and neutral, the stage was set for the first India-Pakistan war. The Pakistani army intervened indirectly, with tribal militias organizing an assault on the king’s feeble forces, swiftly driving him out of the Gilgit region, and threatening Srinagar itself. The situation only stabilized in favour of the Kashmir’s monarchy, when the Indian army intervened.

Over the rest of the year the two armies fought each other to a stalemate. This war was marked by British commanders leading the armies of both countries, which at the time were still loosely tied to Britain as two independent dominions. The soldiers and victims of the war were Indian, but the command and material were British. The insulting symbolism of this war has been largely forgotten.

The stalemate at the military front, led to the stalemate at the political front, where neither India nor Pakistan could find a common ground to resolve the dispute. India’s Prime Minister Nehru sought to take the matter to the United Nations in the hopes of resolving the dispute. This was not to be, and the UN resolution on Kashmir, which mandated the holding of a popular referendum to decide Kashmir’s future, has since become a dead letter.

The frontlines of the war remain largely intact today, eventually becoming the border between India and Pakistan, following territories both sides grabbed over the course of the war. This was the end of the first India-Pakistan war, and the first war over Kashmir, it would not be the last.

Encouraged by India’s poor showing in the 1962 war with China, Pakistan then under a military dictatorship, attempted to settle the Kashmir issue through military means once more. Operation Gibraltar was conceived by the Pakistani military to oust Indian occupation forces by sparking a revolt in Kashmir. This plan failed spectacularly, but prompted the Indian government to respond militarily. The 1965 Indo-Pakistan war ensued, the second time that India and Pakistan would fight over Kashmir.

The Pakistani army modernized with the help of the United States, and the Indian army, which had just begun its own modernization programme, would clash across the plains of Punjab and the mountains of Kashmir. This war would see one of the largest tank battles since the Second World War. Despite gains by India, the war ended in a stalemate, and a ceasefire negotiated with the help of the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The war was costly, ending a period of economic growth in Pakistan, and plummeting the growth of India’s economy that year. The cost of the Kashmir war was borne by everyone in South Asia. This war also saw the first time that the United States of America put its stamp on the Kashmir dispute.

The war achieved no resolution politically, but did change the military situation in India’s favour and revealed a major weakness in Pakistan’s military capabilities. Exhausted by the fighting, Pakistan was left with only two weeks of ammunition before a ceasefire was declared. India’s military modernization would continue, together with deepening of its relations with the Soviet Union. At the same time, Pakistan entered a period of political and economic crisis which would culminate in the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971. The annihilation of the Pakistani navy, air force, and the crippling of its army left India as the undisputed military and political hegemon of the region.

The war resulted in the Simla Agreement of 1972, which sought to regulate how India and Pakistan would approach the question of Kashmir, seeking to convert the ceasefire line of 1971 to an international border. This agreement was placed on suspension following the military escalation in May of 2025.

The military dominance secured in 1971 helped secure Indian hegemony over South Asia. Not long after the victory in the 1971 war, India acquired nuclear weaponry, and tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974, putting India in the group of a handful of nations with the ability to develop nuclear warheads. This changed the dynamic of South Asian wars forever, and from here on out, Pakistan would scramble to acquire the same technology. The future wars in South Asia would be fought under the nuclear umbrella.

The year 1999 would mark the beginning of what has been the modern era of the Kashmir conflict. Two important events took place preceding the Kargil war—the beginning of the insurgency in Kashmir in 1989, and Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1998.

By 1987 Indian control over its occupied part of Kashmir had been largely secured. The national conference, which was once the main fighting organization of the Kashmiris had capitulated completely to the Congress party led India. The elections that year were heavily rigged to ensure [victory for] India’s pliant collaborators; the National Conference under Farooq Abdullah would win. This would not be the first time elections were rigged to ensure a favourable election to Indian interests, but this would be the first time that such rigging would lead to a large popular armed insurgency, led at first by the secular Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

The Indian response to the uprising in January that year was heavy handed. Operation Brass Tacks saw the deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops to Kashmir; vicious repression ensued which costed dozens of civilian lives. This simply added fuel to the fire. By 1990 Pakistan backed Islamist groups with battle hardened veterans of the Soviet Afghan war entered the scene, and changed the character of the insurgency from one that was chiefly nationalist to one that became increasingly dominated by Islamist reactionaries. The insurgency caused an exodus of Kashmri pandits, and gave the Hindutva reactionaries in India a permanent weapon to demonize Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Muslims more generally.

The efforts of the Indian state failed to crush the insurgency in Kashmir. At the same time, India underwent a period of political and economic chaos as the Congress Party’s hegemony crumbled, and a balance of payments crisis compelled India to take IMF loans and open its economy. The then fledgling BJP government had been in power one year when the Pakistan army under General Musharraf drew up plans to settle the Kashmir question by military means. The result of this planning was operation Badr. The objective was to take the strategic town of Kargil in the Ladakh district, outflank Indian positions in Siachen, and force the Indians to negotiate a settlement on Pakistan’s terms.

The Pakistan army undertook this operation under the guise of militants being equipped largely with small arms, no aerial backup or heavy artillery, fighting entrenched Indian positions at unfathomable heights near the Siachen glacier. The war costed nearly 600 Indian lives and allegedly up to 5000 Pakistani soldiers’ lives. Yet, worse could have happened.

Towards the end of the war, Pakistan began deploying nuclear warheads to forward positions, threatening their use on India. Against this, India prepared at least five nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles as part of its overwhelming second-strike doctrine. None in India or Pakistan knew at the time how close the two states had come to a nuclear conflict. It would be the first time since the end of the cold war that the threat of a nuclear conflict had reared its head.

This threat of nuclear war remains, as India and Pakistan stare down at another potential war.

The effects of the rise of India

From independence to 1971 marked the rise of India’s political and military power over the region. By the early 1970s, India had secured military hegemony over South Asia. With the acquisition of nuclear weaponry in 1974 India brought in the nuclear angle to its conflict with Pakistan. From the 1980s, India’s economic growth started to take off. The collapse of Indian state capitalism and the Congress system did not break the country or weaken it, but created conditions to expand more rapidly than ever. The rise of Indian capitalism has allowed it to convert political and military hegemony into economic hegemony in the region.

Pakistan has been locked in competition with India since its birth, whether it was the scramble for the Princely States territories, or the mutually destructive military race with India. While India had the vast resources of its hinterland and established industrial centers like Bombay and Calcutta, Pakistan had to compensate by the more ruthless exploitation of East Bengal, Balochistan, and its share of Kashmir. The competition eventually compelled it to invest in the second military modernization in the 1980s, culminating in the acquisition of nuclear weaponry in 1998.

The same year, the newly elected BJP government conducted India’s second nuclear test in Pokhran. This marked a turn in the long standing conflict between India and Pakistan, with India’s then existing military hegemony ended, and all out nuclear war becoming a very real possibility. It was in these conditions that the Kargil war was fought.

India’s victory in the war did not result in immediate peace, with Pakistan continuing its strategy of trying to destabilize India through state-sponsored Islamic reactionary organizations. The first decade of the 21st century was marked by terror attacks across the country, but with particular intensity in Kashmir. This strategy failed to destabilize India or thwart it’s rising economic power. The gulf between India and Pakistan only grew over this period, with India’s GDP rising from five times that of Pakistan, to 11 times that of Pakistan today.

The Islamist terror attacks did, however, give the Indian capitalists an excuse to build a surveillance state, tighten its security forces, increase repression on Kashmir, and give the Hindutva reactionaries a platform to build their politics on. India’s economic power continued to grow, and with its hunger for resources, Indian corporations became a major force in Africa, South East Asia, and Europe. Of course, it was South Asia that was the main focus of Indian power; its continued military modernization went hand in hand with its push into the Indian hinterland, where India conducted a war against its own people for the benefit of mining capital and steel industry.

With India’s hold over Indian Occupied Kashmir stabilizing again, the state was opened up for investments in hydel power, and infrastructure. For a time, relations improved between India and Pakistan, but there was no resolution in sight. As the world economic crisis in 2008 hit India, the Congress Party, which seemed poised to rebuild its hegemony over India, collapsed. A wave of strikes, protests, and mobilizations between 2010 and 2014 brought down the grand old party of India once more, and it seems in a permanent way.

Indian capital shifted its preference from the secular Congress Party, to the Hindutva BJP. Indian capital had been expanding both internally and externally, and they chose a party that promised to deliver ‘growth’ at any cost. The BJP got to work strengthening surveillance, increasing repressive security laws, undermining the parliament and democracy, eventually culminating in the abrogation of Article 370, destroying the last vestiges of autonomy in Indian Occupied Kashmir.

This opened up a new chapter in the Kashmir conflict, and brought India and Pakistan back on the path of open conflict. This development did not happen out of the blue, nor did the coming of the BJP.

The material conditions that gave rise to the BJP and the emergence of Hindutva ideological dominance in India are rooted in the rise of Indian capitalism. The engine of Indian capitalism is the ruthless proletarianization of its vast population, the more thorough exploitation of the resources of the Indian hinterland, together with constant sophistication of it’s military machine.

The rise of Indian capitalism brings it into competition with other imperialistic forces in the region and beyond, chiefly that of China and U.S. imperialism. The political and military contest against the United States had been largely resolved in India’s favour in the 1970s, first with the independence of Bangladesh and the destruction of the Pakistani armed forces, and second with the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Indo-U.S. competition therefore takes a backseat to India’s contest with China. Despite China having a massive advantage over India in economic and military power, India remains a force that can challenge China. This takes the most overt form in its conflict with Pakistan over the control of Kashmir.

Pakistan had historically been a U.S. ally in the region, a pivot against the Soviet Union, then as a strategic base for influence in South Asia and Central Asia. Now, with the United States burying its hatchet with India, Pakistan is compelled to rely almost exclusively on China. Today, Pakistan’s rulers have turned their country into an extension of Chinese military power. China is invested in containing or limiting India’s rise, and Pakistan seeks to ensure that Indian absolute hegemony would be undone.

In retaliation, not only is India building up its military power, becoming the largest arms importer in the world, it is building alliances with China’s rivals, particularly Japan, Vietnam and the USA. The conflict over Kashmir is no longer limited to South Asia alone, nor is it a matter that will be limited to India and Pakistan. This is a flashpoint of a much wider conflict involving the emerging superpower of China and an emerging imperialist power in India.

How the conflict can escalate

(Ongoing escalation, and their impact, and hypothetical scenario of what is likely to happen, the possibilities of a world war, the U.S. role in Kashmir.)

The mutual military attacks between India and Pakistan did not escalate to an all-out war. A ceasefire was declared, which brought fighting to a halt, allegedly mediated by Trump and his cabinet. The ceasefire comes after a large-scale aerial battle between India and Pakistan, followed by massive missile strikes by the former on Pakistani army and air force bases. It is possible that both forces were readying their nuclear arsenal, and were about to deploy ground troops to the border.

We are fortunate that the worst did not come to pass, but there is no reason to be complacent of the present scenario. The chain of events from the terror attack on the 26th of April and the escalatory attacks on May 7th show us a preview of how a war could potentially start. Historical conflicts between India and Pakistan show a pattern of how external powers may act, either to prolong the conflict or expand it.

The military response to a terror attack was not new. The BJP government had conducted air strikes in Balakot in 2019. This was in response to an attack on Indian paramilitary CRPF in Pulwama by militants of the Jaish–e–Mohammed, which killed dozens of Indian troops. The Indian air strikes were met with Pakistani retaliation, which resulted in the downing of an obsolete Indian aircraft and the capture of a pilot, who was subsequently returned back. By all metrics, the Indian air strikes were a military and tactical failure but were a great political success for the BJP, who used this to showcase strength, and to mobilize their reactionary base. The propaganda around the air strikes helped the BJP secure a super-majority in parliament.

The May 7 air strikes were designed to be similar to Balakot, but on a much larger scale, attacking alleged terrorist infrastructure along the border. Whether or not any of their targets had military value, the Indian air force launched an overwhelming air and missile attack on Pakistan, which was again met with retaliation from the Pakistan air force. This retaliation resulted in at least one advanced Indian Rafael fighter jet downed allegedly by a Chinese built JC-10 fighter jet. The escalation did not stop there. Over the next four days, both sides manoeuvred their troops; India continued intense missile and artillery attacks along the border, and dozens of civilians on either side were killed.

This escalation was unprecedented. Not since the Kargil war has the possibility of war in the sub-continent come as close as it did in the first two weeks of May this year. This could happened precisely because of the political conditions in both India and Pakistan today, with a Hindutva reactionary government in India, and the military in charge of Pakistan. India’s ruling BJP seeks a way to reverse their waning hegemony over Indian politics by using military aggression to mobilize their reactionary base. This succeeded initially, but petered out once a ceasefire was announced. It is almost certain that they would try this again.

On the other hand, the Pakistani military sought to legitimize its deeply unpopular rule. The military escalation by the BJP essentially handed them a political victory on a platter. The threat of war could make the Pakistani army point to the external enemy to distract from domestic problems, a failing economy, and the strengthening Baloch Liberation Movement.

As unexpected as the military escalation was, equally unexpected was the sudden announcement of a ceasefire. It is highly unlikely that Trump or his cabinet had a major role to play in this, it was the Saudis who kept up mediation efforts throughout the crisis.

Ultimately, a ceasefire was accepted, but the terms or conditions remain a mystery. The reality is that India had very little reason to accept any ceasefire, despite Pakistan and China’s calls for de-escalation. It is likely that the next round of military escalation, which is all but inevitable if the BJP gets another term, will not end until all-out war, with large scale ground operations becoming inevitable.

The greatest likelihood for such an operation may be around March or May of 2026, when the Bihar and West Bengal elections take place, or in 2029 when the national elections take place. If the Balakot fiasco is anything to go by, the BJP will attempt to showcase strength by making a target of Pakistan. So far, the Indian military has been a pliant partner in the political manoeuvrings of the BJP, going along with any escalatory attack they have devised.

The Pakistani army won’t stand down. In the face of an Indian air strike, or incursion, they will respond with greater force, just as they did during the Balakot strike and on May 7. It is essential for the Pakistan army to show that it can protect its citizens, even if they can’t, and even if their policies directly contribute to a conflict in the first place.

For the Pakistani army, war is a political gift, even if it becomes an economic nightmare. While India would be advantaged by a long-term attrition war, Pakistan’s armed forces desire a quick and relatively cheap conflict, with limited aims and limited wins, which they could then spin as a victory for the domestic audience. An attrition war would benefit India’s ruling party, which could then utilize the war to dismantle more democratic spaces within the country, and clamp down harder on protests and dissidence.

As explained above, the war in Kashmir is one front in a larger theatre of inter-imperialist competition, between India and China on the one hand, and between China and the United States on the other. India is increasingly aligning itself with the U.S.-led bloc within Asia, while also remaining aligned with Russia and Iran, all in an effort to surround and contain China’s rise. Likewise, China is investing heavily in Pakistan as the pivot against India.

A war with Pakistan can then expand into a larger war across the Asian continent, bringing in the superpowers of China and the USA. Even if it does not expand to this extent, it is still quite possible that the war between India and Pakistan becomes a war between India and China, one that will be incredibly destructive for the people of Asia as a whole, and particularly so for South Asia.

The threat of nuclear war and world war is very real. The dynamics of superpowers contending through proxies or allies in South Asia happened once before in 1971; it can happen again. Only this time, both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and massive conventional armies.

The impact of the war on the working masses on both sides

(Greater surveillance, clampdown on democratic rights, greater oppression on Kashmiris, Balochis, Tribes of Central India, minorities.)

The air strikes and artillery shelling across the border caused the deaths of about 70 civilians on either side. Within both India and Pakistan, panic over the sudden threat of war caused speculators to start hoarding essentials. The impact over Pakistan was greater as a result of shutting out Pakistani airspace. The indirect impact of India shutting the normal flow of water to the Indus Valley basin is yet to be seen, but the disruption caused by war was only a mild preview of what impact a full-blown war would have.

In the immediate aftermath of the April 26th attack, a massive crackdown in Kashmir resulted in over 1500 people arrested, dozens of homes blown up by the army, and sporadic attacks on Kashmiri Muslims within India. In Pakistan, the military took this emergency to implement the Pakistan Army Act which allowed military tribunals to try civilians. Both countries imposed a sweeping censorship over social media.

Away from the eyes of the media and the public, India stepped up it’s operations against Naxalites in Central India, which resulted in massacres of Naxalite cadres and the killing of the general secretary of the CPI (Maoist). At the same time, Pakistan stepped up its repression of Balochis who had been intensifying their agitation for Baloch independence.

The picture that appears makes it clear that the threat of war will be used by the reactionary capitalist regimes on both sides to justifying increasing repression. The Hindutva forces mobilized in support of the BJP and the impending war with Pakistan. Though we did not reach an all-out war, it is clear that had the war actually gone through, it would be used to justify the worst repressive measures in both countries.

Antiwar sentiments in India did not materialize into a large-scale mobilization against the BJP’s reactionary war propaganda. On the contrary, every opposition party, including the Stalinist CPI(M) and their allies, came out in support of the BJP government. There was no question of security failures, there was no question on the obvious human rights violations that happened in the course of the crackdown. There was no question of the dozens of civilian deaths that India inflicted, and inflicted by Pakistan in retaliation.

Equally clear is the class division of the deaths, the deaths of upper-middle-class tourists in the Pahalgam attack made headlines, but the deaths of dozens of peasants and workers who lived along the Indo-Pakistan border were practically erased from the media narrative. Workers’ and peasants’ deaths were treated like collateral damage.

The escalation and sudden ceasefire resulted in a political victory for the Pakistani army, even if it required an emergency loan of nearly $3 billion, deepening imperialist exploitation of the country. The army continues to pose as the saviour of Pakistan, even as it sold their country, and the future of Pakistan’s workers and peasants, to fight their war.

India and particularly the BJP came off worse politically, but had little impact economically. The escalation has given an opportunity for the BJP government to step up repression, intensify reactionary propaganda and continue the politics of divide and rule.

Where we stand

Revolutionary socialists must see this war for what it is, a reactionary war for the control over Kashmir. A war which has nothing but benefits for the ruling class, and nothing but misery and repression for workers and peasants. In this, Indian and Pakistani workers face a similar enemy, the one at home who would take their country to war, and fight their geo-political games over the graves of workers and peasants. Neither in India nor in Pakistan should there be any trust in the armed forces, who are nothing but glorified killers of the capitalist state. They are not there to ‘protect us’, they are there to protect capital.

Both India and Pakistan fight wars to deepen or expand their occupation over oppressed people, be they Balochi, Chhattisgarhi Adivasi, or Kashmiris. Relentless propaganda teaches us from our childhood to salute the troops, to worship them as heroes, not realizing that the same guns that point to the ‘enemy across the border’ will be turned towards us when the ruling class is threatened. It is why we not only oppose the war between India and Pakistan; we oppose the very basis of it!

We stand for Kashmiri self-determination, up to independence!

We stand in solidarity with the oppressed people of Balochistan and the Adivasis in Central India!

We stand opposed to the armed forces of India and Pakistan!

Down with the Hindutva BJP!

Down with the Pakistan Army!

Photo: Protesters on Aug. 5, the anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370, demand restoration of autonomy for Kashmir. (Tauseef Mustafa / AFP)