SETTLER COLONIAL PROJECT
It was a dark, chilly night. The words were colder still. A horde of outwardly respectable, yet diabolical savants were huddled together – bundled up in their hate. Attentively, they took in every ugly, dishonest and vicious remark of the Indian Consul General in New York, Sandeep Chakraborty. He stood in the center of this seething swarm, in an high-end, upscale neighbourhood, where the wealthy feast on the impoverished worse than savages in the wild. He stood timidly, slightly crouched, and spoke with deceptively meek mannerisms – almost pleading. There is no tyranny worse than by cowards. The crowd, emboldened by delusions of grandeur, supremacist imaginary and a concocted history of wrongdoing, sat in trance. “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,” Chakravorty said. With sinister smirks – as if taking sick, twisted pleasure in calls for ethnic cleansing, they ‘applauded’ his icy scheme. These ill-meaning, blood-thirsty paramours of trickery were ready to do his bidding. And, in this, something truly unholy was afoot. With hushed tones they whispered death as if it were sweet nothings. Finally, they thought – a ‘Final Solution’ to rid the disputed territory of Kashmir (Kashmir) of its indigenous inhabitants and repopulate it with Hindus.
What is so revolting about the Indian diplomat’s language is not that it is so utterly undiplomatic. Nor, that it was blurted in superficially polite company. Rather, that it was brazenly spoken at all. The Indian Consul General represents a billion people. He is chosen to be their voice of reason, sanity and balance. If this person, with his position, privilege and pedigree, so callously calls for a forced demographic change, than imagine the likelihood of such horror. In fact, if such a person so recklessly spews this venom, it only deepens the impending nature of the very atrocities that he calls for. His call for action: for imitating the catastrophe committed against the Palestinian people; for duplicating what the ‘Israelis’ have done; is bone-chillingly terrifying.
With the Indian consul general’s gruesome rhetoric, one ought to consider India‘s settler-colonial project. The fascist Indian state and its unilateral, illegal and undemocratic revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy by abrogating article 370 and alteration of Kashmir’s Domicile Law to allow demographic flooding is tantamount to a war crime and against International Law. Condemned worldwide, the United Nations and reputable NGO’s such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have all strongly chastised India
