Indian diplomat calls for adopting ‘Israel Model’ in Kashmir stirs controversy

New York (QNN)- At a private event on Saturday in New York City, Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s consul-general to the city, adressed Kashmiri Hindus and Indian nationals calling for the adoption of an “Israeli model” in Indian-administered Kashmir, which is reeling under a crippling military lockdown and internet blackout for nearly four months now.

An hour-long video featuring Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s Consul General in New York, has gone viral on social media.

Speaking to Kashmiri Hindus, known as Pandits, and Indian nationals at the event, organised to discuss Indian filmmaker Vivek Agnihorti’s forthcoming project on the forced displacement of Kashmiri Hindus in the early 1990s, Chakravorty asked those present to give the government some time to implement its plans in the valley.

“I believe the security situation will improve, it will allow the refugees to go back, and in your lifetime, you will be able to go back … and you will be able to find security, because we already have a model in the world,” said Chakravorty, referring to the exodus of tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus in 1989 after an armed rebellion against the Indian rule started in the Himalayan region.

“I don’t know why we don’t follow it. It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” he said, adding that the current Indian leadership is “determined” to do so.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan described Chakravorty’s remarks as an example of India’s “fascist mindset”.

“Shows the fascist mindset of the Indian govt’s RSS ideology that has continued the siege of IOJK for over 100 days, subjecting Kashmiris to the worst violation of their human rights while the powerful countries remain silent bec [sic] of their trading interests,” Khan posted on Twitter.

The event held in New York is one of a number of events held at the behest of India’s right-wing government in its attempt to wrestle back contol of the narrative in the face of the immense grassroots mobilisation against its actions in Kashmir.

It is also the latest incarnation of the Indian government’s goals of a settler-colonial policy for the valley, which Kashmiri academics and scholars have long warned is the ultimate ambitions of the Indian state.

On August 5, India’s Hindu nationalist government stripped Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status as had been guaranteed under Article 370 of the Indian constitution.

Last month, the country’s only Muslim-majority state was officially bifurcated into two “union territories” and put under the central government’s direct control.