Imran Khan steps up rhetoric over India’s Kashmir move

Pakistan’s PM asks whether world will ‘appease as they did Hitler at Munich’

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, stepped up his war of words with India over its decision to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, suggesting that the Indian government was motivated by an ideology comparable to Nazism.

Mr Khan, who is under mounting domestic pressure to take a harder stance, wrote on Twitter that India’s decision to scrap a constitutional provision ensuring the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir amounted to “an impending genocide”.

“Attempt is to change demography of Kashmir through ethnic cleansing,” he wrote. “Question is: Will the world watch & appease as they did Hitler at Munich?” The ideology behind India’s actions, Mr Khan continued, “will lead to suppression of Muslims in India & eventually lead to targeting of Pakistan.”

The fate of Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state and

a region to which both countries lay claim, has been a source of continued tension and three wars between Pakistan and India since the two countries were partitioned in 1947.

Earlier this month India decided to revoke a constitutional provision known as Article 370, which had allowed Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws.

Analysts said Mr Khan’s rhetorical escalation was likely a calculated attempt to drum up international fury while countering domestic critics who think he has not been tough enough.

The heavily militarised line of division between the two nuclear-armed states in Kashmir is considered one of the most dangerous faultlines in the world. A two decade-long separatist insurgency in the region has claimed 45,000 lives.

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and his supporters say giving Jammu and Kashmir autonomy was a historic blunder that prevented the state from being fully integrated with India and held back its economic development. “Give us five years and we will make Kashmir the most developed state in India,” said Amit Shah, India’s home minister.

In a speech last week, Mr Modi also accused Pakistan of stirring up violence in Kashmir, saying that locals have long been subjected to “Pakistani conspiracies to promote terrorism and separatism”.

India imposed a curfew and communications blackout in the state and arrested hundreds of local politicians and separatists, sparking fury in Pakistan.

Pakistan has downgraded diplomatic ties with India, expelled India’s high commissioner and suspended trade and transportation links. Pakistan also plans to take its complaints to the UN Security Council.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a commentator on defence and security affairs, said that Mr Khan’s comparison of India with the Nazis “appears to be an attempt to remind the western world of the grim humanitarian situation in Kashmir. It’s a comparison they will understand.”