INDIA has criminalised the politics of another Muslim leader, and converted her dissent into a national security issue. Asiya Andrabi, who founded the rights group Dukhtaran-i-Millat in occupied Kashmir, has been sentenced to life imprisonment together with two other women. Prosecutors accused the three of conspiring to participate in militant activities. Condemning the ruling on X, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that “The sentencing raises serious concerns regarding due process, judicial independence and adherence to international human rights obligations”, and that Pakistan saw the verdict as “part of a broader pattern of politically motivated prosecutions”. The judgement exposes the silencing of Muslims in India-held Kashmir as well as the inability of Indian liberals to accept and defend defiance from conservative Muslim women.

The move to undo the regulated autonomy of the held valley in 2019 has been weaponised to erase Muslim identity and history. Recently, a university panel endorsed the removal of subjects involving Jinnah, Allama Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan from the MA Political Science syllabus. Last year, Human Rights Watch recorded Hindu mob attacks in India, following the Pahalgam incident, in which Kashmiri labourers and students were victimised across the country. The assaults were denounced by UN experts as “arbitrary arrests and detentions, suspicious deaths in custody, torture … lynchings”. Such truths not only reveal how brutal and bigoted India has become but also confirm a hierarchy of resistance at play — only voices with secular sanction, unlike Ms Andrabi, are humanised. If India continues to use violent methods in occupied Kashmir, and attempts to alter its demographic profile, public hostilities will escalate. Globally, the human rights situation is difficult for India to defend, with a large number of activists even within the country criticising the BJP-led government’s atrocities. It is time for the world to put pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tread a rational path.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2026

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