The monograph urges a policy re-positioning by aggregating key geopolitical parameters concerning PoK which potentially impinge on India’s vital territorial and security interests.
Since 1947, the protracted issue of Kashmir has predominantly underpinned the subcontinent’s security discourse having dictated the trajectory of unsettling ties between India and Pakistan. As old as India’s independence from British rule and the consequent creation of Pakistan in 1947, the Kashmir issue is rooted in the indecisive phase preceding Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) formal accession to India.
India will have to keep a close watch on the developments within PoK and highlight the Pakistani strategy of promoting terror in Kashmir and expose its policies towards both the regions within PoK
India must avoid policy incoherence and inconsistency on PoK that has spanned decades, and navigate a course that helps reshape the domestic as well as external discourses on PoK and pursue Indian claims in a firm, consistent manner.
The political reality in PoK is that ‘azadi’ is a chimera, and substantive control of the area is shared between terrorist organisations such as the LeT and HM and the political elite of Islamabad. However, a narrative has been fed in the Kashmir Valley that Pakistan is a more favourable option than India.
Ceding PoK as part of a settlement does not comport with India’s national and strategic interests, especially in terms of dealing with the challenge posed by China-Pakistan collaboration.
India needs to proactively buttress its broader position by affixing/prefixing the issue of Pakistan occupied Kashmir to the bilateral agenda every time the issue of Kashmir comes up for discussion.
Severing Gilgit Baltistan’s Kashmir link
Subsuming Gilgit Baltistan as a province may propel a paradigmatic shift and redrawing of Kashmir strategy across both sides of the Line of Control.