India confronts serious challenges in the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley, as two recent events in the southern Pulwama District confirm. On 14 February, a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian security personnel. Apart from the number killed, this incident was significant as the bomber was a local ethnic Kashmiri and because the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. In early May, a measly 2.81 per cent of Pulwamans voted in India’s general elections, one of the lowest voters turnouts ever in the troubled electoral history of Indian Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Additionally, on 12 May, the President of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stated that, if re-elected, his party will scrap Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that (supposedly) grants special powers to Indian J&K. This will do nothing to appease already disenchanted Kashmiris.

The Kashmir dispute itself is now almost 72 years old. The anti-India uprising begun by Kashmiris in the Kashmir Valley in 1988 similarly shows no signs of abating. Seemingly, New Delhi has little idea about how to placate ‘its’ severely disgruntled Kashmiris. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to benefit from supporting militant groups operating in Kashmir: Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul Mujahideen. Concurrently, India and Pakistan are barely communicating.
What does the future hold? This roundtable will contemplate ‘Whither Kashmir?’

Dr Christopher Snedden is a politico-strategic analyst and security practitioner specialising in South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Russia. He has worked professionally on South Asian matters with the Australian Government, for Australian universities, and in his own consultancy, ASIA CALLING. From May 2014 to March 2019, he was a Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, Hawaii. He has been involved analysing Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) affairs and the Kashmir dispute since 1984. His publications include the groundbreaking book, The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir (Hurst and Co., London, 2012; republished in India by HarperCollins in 2013 as Kashmir: The Unwritten History and Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris (Hurst and Co., London, 2015). Currently, he is completing another book titled Independent Kashmir?