Kashmiris demand for the return of Maqbool Butt’s mortal remains to Kashmir from India on his 39th martyrdom anniversary

London: Kashmiris demand for the return of Maqbool Butt’s mortal remains to Kashmir from India on his 39th martyrdom anniversary: world-wide demonstrations by Kashmiri Diaspora against India.

On the 11th day of February, Kashmiri Diaspora communities in Britain, Europe and North America are commemorating thirty-ninth martyrdom anniversary of the Kashmiri leader Mohammad Maqbool Butt, with the demand that Gov’t of India returns his mortal remains to the people of Kashmir. Today Diaspora based Kashmiri organisations are holding demonstrations in Britain and across the world at Indian embassies, including at the Indian High Commission in London in a call given by the pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front -JKLF.

Thirty nine years ago, on this day the then Indian government ordered the judicial murder of pro-independence Kashmiri leader Maqbool Butt. His body remains buried in a corner of the notorious Tihar jail in India where he was executed on 11 February 1984. Despite repeated demands from his family, his party and the people of Jammu and Kashmir- commonly referred to as Kashmir- India refuses to hand over his mortal remains. An empty grave awaits his remains in the martyrs’ cemetery of Srinagar. Martyrs’ cemetery in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, will indeed be a fitting final resting place for Maqbool Butt who is a national hero, and the embodiment of Kashmiris’ spirit for resistance, sense of sacrifice, freedom and patriotism in contemporary Kashmir.

Maqbool Butt epitomises the spirit of resistance against subjugation, and the unshakeable belief in his people’s inalienable and inherent sovereign right to be masters of their political destiny. Maqbool Butt has gained the love, adoration and the gratitude of his nation for the supreme sacrifice he made, resulting from India’s neo-colonialism and arrogance in Kashmir. India refuses to release Maqbool Butt’s mortal remains, and those of Afzal Guru’s who was another innocent victim of India’s neo-colonialism and arrogance and was hanged on 9 February 2013 in a fabricated case. Afzal Guru, like Maqbool Butt, is also buried in the grounds of Tihar Jail.

Maqbool Butt stood for territorial integrity and political sovereignty of his homeland, which comprises of the greater Valley of Kashmir, Jammu, and Ladakh, the three regions of the state occupied by India, while Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, the two regions of the State, directly and indirectly controlled by Pakistan. He advocated political unity of the heterogeneous people of his beloved Kashmir, majority of whom live in the three regions under India’s occupation. Both countries are required by UN Resolutions on the Kashmir issue to hold a Plebiscite to determine the status of Kashmir in accordance with the unfettered will of the Kashmiri people.

Maqbool Butt was born in 1938 in Trigham a village of Kupwara district in the greater Valley of Kashmir. He hailed from an ordinary family. His early education took place at his village school, which was elevated to secondary level as a result of campaigning by himself. He went for higher education at the renowned St. Joseph’s College in Baramulla. His political activities were monitored by the Indian authorities which forced him to go underground on occasions. He detested occupation of his country and wished to organise resistance against India’s colonial occupation. Consequently in 1958 he crossed the 1949 UN supervised ceasefire line- CfL- into Pakistan controlled part of his motherland to organise the resistance.

Context of his struggle: For centuries people of Kashmir have struggled to regain freedom and sovereignty which was lost to Mogul rulers of India towards the end of sixteen century. The struggle since, has been to re-assert national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and to maintain the religious, social and cultural heritage, peculiar to the peoples of all the regions of the forcibly divided State. At the heart of this struggle is the firm desire by Kashmiris, to be masters of destiny in their own country!

It has not been an easy course to follow for the oppressed and subjugated masses against their non-Kashmiri rulers and local quislings. Countless precious lives have been lost for freedom in the past few centuries. The quest to be free, remains an abiding objective for the Kashmiris despite the sufferings, and the oppression of India’s neo-colonial rule.

The historic context of oppression and subjugation impacts on both the collective, and the individual aspects of the people of Kashmir. This provided the broad context, which politically nurtured Maqbool Butt; and imbued in him with the spirit of sacrifice to serve the interests of his people with a selfless and intense sense of national duty.

Currently ultra-religious chauvinist Modi Government of India, has embarked upon crushing Kashmiris’ quest to be free, with all means at its disposal. Maqbool Butt’s ideology of standing up for their inherent and inalienable rights however, has ensured that Kashmiris will not be deterred from their goal of freedom, and independence.

If presence of 900,000 Indian forces was not enough to maintain its illegal neo-colonial occupation in Kashmir, Modi government deprived the people in Kashmir even of the remnants of autonomy, which defined the provisional relationship agreed between India and Kashmir in 1947 pending the UN supervised plebiscite.

India’s ultra-religious chauvinist Modi government abrogated articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution unilaterally, ending Kashmir’s autonomous status and depriving the people of their fundamental political rights. And in defiance of UN Resolutions, India illegally annexed and disintegrated the internationally disputed territory on 5 August 2019. Since then India rules the bifurcated State illegally as two union territories of Ladakh, and the greater Valley of Kashmir with Jammu, directly from New Delhi. With massive military and paramilitary troops added since 5 August 2019, India has laid siege to the entire greater valley of Kashmir, and other parts of the bifurcated State. Since 22 February 2019 Mr Yasin Malik, Chairman of the pro-independent JKLF- and heir of Maqbool Butt’s political ideology, is illegally incarcerated at the notorious Tihar jail serving a security court given, life sentence since May 2022. On 22 March 2019, the JKLF was banned by the Modi government as part of its vindictive ‘all out policy’ to stifle, and throttle the peaceful political dissent in Kashmir, spearheaded by the JKLF.

Clearly this means that: despite the use of draconian laws like the PSA and the UAPA against the Kashmiris and their leadership, and the annexation and bifurcation of the State in contravention of UN resolutions, India has lost control of Kashmir, and Maqbool Butt’s nation has rejected a forced marriage of an ‘accession’ which in any case, was temporary, and contingent upon a UN supervised plebiscite, which shamelessly India has reneged on.
India has no moral or legal justification therefore: to hold on to the mortal remains of Maqbool Butt and Afzal Guru. We demand their immediate release so that their mortal remains can be re-interned by a grateful nation at the martyrs’ cemetery in Srinagar with respect and dignity, which both sons of the soil, so richly deserve. We demand that all the fabricated and trumped up charges against Kashmiri political prisoners, including Yasin Malik, and other Kashmiri leaders, are dropped and that they are, immediately released from illegal and politically motivated incarceration.

Diplomatic Bureau of the JKLF. International Secretariat 119-123 Cannon Street Road North Basement London E1 2 LX. Email: jklfDiplomatiBureau@gmail.com.
CIO: B-144 Satellite Town Murree Road Rawalpindi Pakistan. Email: jklf1977@gmail.com