Jun 08, 2026 15:58 pm IST

Opinion | The Kashmir Nobody Mentions - And How Pakistan Is Quietly Profiting From That

Recent elections in Gilgit Baltistan - and the protest note India had to issue against them and a slew of fake news reports - lay bare a concerning reality.

Tara Kartha Tara Kartha Columnist

Tara Kartha Columnist

India's Ministry of External Affairs is seriously annoyed. Not only did it have to issue the expected 'protest' note on the holding of the June 7 general elections in Gilgit-Baltistan - an integral part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir - but it also had to call out fake posts and sophisticated deepfake videos that claimed that Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had backed the strong protests in that region, and apparent declarations that Delhi would "capture" the area. This fakery is not surprising. It is a calculated attempt to undermine and discredit civil action groups that have recently been at the forefront of the demands for basic rights and constitutional changes in the region.

The Last Colony On Earth

But first, a little about the region. Unfortunately, there are few in India who know or care about Gilgit-Baltistan, or the fact that it is one of the last colonies on earth. In the 1940s, Pakistan, quite simply, ignored United Nations resolutions asking it to withdraw its troops from the region and allow a referendum, and sat itself down on the highly strategic piece of territory that borders China and Afghanistan. Then it went one step ahead. In 1949, it secretly hived away a large slice of territory of more than 70,000 sq km under the 'Karachi agreement' supposedly signed by Gurmani Singh, Pakistan's Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas (KANA), and Sardar Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, the 'President' of PoK, with the Chairman of the Muslim Conference almost as an aside. There was no representative of the Gilgit-Baltistan region. This was a complete violation of UN resolutions, which called for a plebiscite to decide the legality of any changes to the area. 

In later years, Sardar Ibrahim Khan claimed........

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