The revolt within: Why Pakistan-administered Jammu & Kashmir is restless again
Public unrest in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir has intensified due to grievances over electricity tariffs, wheat subsidies, and governance. The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee is facing a government crackdown, leading to violent clashes and multiple casualties.
Why it matters
The instability in this disputed region highlights deep-seated political tensions and the potential for further regional volatility between local populations and the Pakistani state.
Nearly two decades ago, a person from Pakistan’s Punjab asked me, curiously, why people in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir appeared so antipathetic towards Punjabis, even though, as he put it, “we almost spoke a similar language.” Perhaps he assumed that someone who also had one side of the family that had migrated from the region during the 1947 Partition riots and who could converse in that language might offer a more detached assessment. Coincidentally, I was then researching my book — Across the LoC — on the region. What stayed with me was not merely the question itself, but the deeper tensions it hinted at questions of identity, representation and the uneasy relationship between the region and Pakistan’s political centre. Nearly two decades later, those unresolved sentiments appear to be resurfacing in a new form.
The article provides a historical and political context to the unrest without overtly favoring the state or the protesters.
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