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Nearly 2 decades ago, a idiosyncratic from Pakistan’s Punjab asked me, curiously, wherefore radical successful Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir appeared truthful antipathetic towards Punjabis, adjacent though, arsenic helium enactment it, “we astir spoke a akin language.” Perhaps helium assumed that idiosyncratic who besides had 1 broadside of the household that had migrated from the portion during the 1947 Partition riots and who could converse successful that connection mightiness connection a much detached assessment. Coincidentally, I was past researching my publication — Across the LoC — connected the region. What stayed with maine was not simply the question itself, but the deeper tensions it hinted astatine questions of identity, practice and the uneasy narration betwixt the portion and Pakistan’s governmental centre. Nearly 2 decades later, those unresolved sentiments look to beryllium resurfacing successful a caller form.
The latest events suggest that the nationalist discontent simmering successful Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has erstwhile again entered a volatile and convulsive phase. Founded successful 2023, the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), which emerged past twelvemonth arsenic a almighty grassroots level mobilising astir energy tariffs, wheat subsidies and governance reforms, has renewed unit connected the determination medication implicit what it describes arsenic unfulfilled commitments made during earlier negotiations. Authorities person responded by moving to prohibition the organization, state it arsenic a violent enactment and detaining respective of its supporters up of a planned mobilisation. JAAC, however, maintains that unresolved concerns, peculiarly organization and electoral grievances, stay astatine the bosom of the movement.
