‘Adding insult to injury’: India advertising Occupied Kashmir as hottest travel destination

Srinagar, India (AFP):

Ironically, India’s hottest new travel destination is also the site of its deadliest insurgency. In Indian Occupied Kashmir, regular skirmishes break out between pro-freedom fighters and Indian troops. Half a million Indian soldiers are still stationed in Kashmir.

Alongside the bitter reality of life for the residents of Indian Occupied Kashmir, India is running a big-budget tourism campaign inaugurated early last year. The campaign lures Indians to ‘visit Kashmir’ with the promise of stunning Himalayan scenery, snow-covered hill stations and the remote Hindu shrines dotting the Muslim-majority region.

More than 1.6 million Indian travelers visited the disputed territory in the first six months of this year — a new record, according to local officials, and four times the number that visited over the same period in 2019.

Many of these tourists take selfies with the soldiers of the Occupation, and are dismissive of the regular firefights between troops and liberation fighters that take place out of sight from popular destinations.

“Now everything is fine in Kashmir,” Dilip Bhai, a visitor from India’s Gujarat state, said while waiting in queue outside a restaurant guarded by paramilitary forces.

“The news of violence we hear in the media is more rumour than reality,” he said, adding that whatever armed clashes were happening “on the sides” did not worry him.

Security forces have tightened a chokehold on Indian Occupied Kashmir since 2019, when India’s government revoked the limited autonomy constitutionally guaranteed to the region, integrating it into mainland Indian territory.

That year, thousands of people were taken into ‘preventive detention’ to forestall expected protests against the sudden decision, while authorities severed communication links in what became the world’s longest-ever internet shutdown.

Public protests have since been made virtually impossible, local journalists are regularly harassed by police and the region is shut off to foreign reporters.

However, clashes still break out in the territory almost every week, with officials counting 130 ‘suspected rebels’ and 19 members of the security forces killed over the first six months of the year.

The constitutional change- dismissed by neighbouring stakeholder Pakistan as an illegal vilation- opened up land purchases and local jobs to Indians from outside Kashmir. Fore residents living under the tyranny of Indian occupation, this year’s influx of travelers from India is an attempt to add the proverbial ‘insult to injury.’

“Promotion of tourism is good, but it is done with a kind of nationalist triumphalism,” a leading Kashmiri trader said, asking not to be named for fear of government reprisal.

“It’s like war by other means,” they added. “The way tourism is being promoted by the government is telling Indians: go spend time there and make Kashmir yours.”

‘We changed past perceptions’ 

A 1989 uprising against Indian rule in Occupied Kashmir started a long-running insurgency which also sparked the migration of the minority Hindu residents from the Muslim-majority valley.

Periodic attempts to revive the tourism market faltered, with three popular uprisings between 2008 and 2016 which scared off potential Indian visitors.

However, after Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy three years ago, authorities again began promoting the region to Indians as one of the country’s premier ‘getaway destinations.’

A promotional blitz followed, with festivals, travel marts, roadshows and summits featuring Indian travel operators, sponsored by the local government and 21 major cities across India.

The government announced the opening of a ski resort among 75 new “untapped destinations” for tourists, including some close to the heavily militarised de facto border that separates the Indian Occupied Kashmir from Pakistan-administered parts of the region.

Authorities are also courting investors to build 20,000 hotel rooms in addition to the 50,000 already in the territory. Easing a homestay policy is also aimed to encourage residents to host visitors.

Sarmad Hafeez, the local government’s tourism secretary, disclosed that the official budget to promote tourism had “quadrupled” in the past two years.

“We changed past perceptions about Kashmir,” he said. “Events sent out a clear message that Kashmir is safe to travel to.”

‘Last nail in the coffin’

India’s drive to open Kashmir’s remarkable landscape to tourism comes as the Kashmiri economy languishes after the change in the territory’s status.

Drastic curbs on civic life and an intensified counterinsurgency campaign have stifled local business.

The government has also removed tax barriers that had helped protect local production from outside competition.

“This was the last nail in the coffin of our manufacturing industry,” Shahid Kamili, president of the Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Kashmir (FCIK) said.

Around 350,000 industrial workers lost their jobs since the region’s autonomy was rescinded, Kamili said.

The region’s potential for growth as a travel destination remains eclipsed by its turbulent and tragic history and prevailing discontentment with the Indian occupation, leaving some visitors unnerved by the heavy security presence.

“If Kashmir is a part of India,” a tourist from West Bengal questioned candidly, “then we should ask why there are so many security forces everywhere?”