The streets of Pakistani-administered Jammu and Kashmir are alive with defiance. What began as a peaceful mobilisation around a 38-point charter of demands has grown into a people’s uprising against decades of exploitation, humiliation, and internal colonialism. The uprising has already cost lives, with at least a dozen people killed since 28 September, but its heartbeat grows stronger every day, sustained by the conviction of ordinary workers, students, traders, and women who refuse to remain silent.

This movement did not emerge overnight. Kashmir’s history has always been one of struggle. From the Poonch peasant revolts of the 1940s to the student and labour agitations of the 1970s and 80s, the people of this land have long resisted both their local elites and the suffocating control of Islamabad. In recent years, daily survival itself became the sharpest battlefield. Flour subsidies slashed, electricity bills inflated, taxes imposed while judges, ministers, and bureaucrats enjoy lavish perks — these injustices hardened into a single collective voice under the Awami Action Committee (AAC). Their 38 demands are not radical dreams; they are the most basic rights of any society: affordable bread, free education and healthcare, representation without manipulation, and sovereignty over their own resources.

The betrayal, however, deepens the wound. Two years ago, when Kashmiris had again taken to the streets, the government formally agreed to implement the AAC’s........

© The Friday Times