Copyright dailytimes
‘Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan.’ (MA Jinnah) Every October, Pakistan observes a date carved into its national memory – October 27, 1947. It was on this day that Indian forces entered Jammu and Kashmir, transforming what was meant to be a political dialogue into a brute military occupation that still casts its long shadow over South Asia. Kashmir Black Day is not a mere annual ritual. It is an act of remembrance – an insistence that history, though often buried under propaganda and silence, continues to breathe. This year, under the direction of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the provincial government has framed the observance of Kashmir Black Day as an exercise in civic awareness and moral reflection. Across Punjab, rallies will be held at all levels. Arts councils will stage exhibitions, puppet shows, skits, and tableaus; documentaries will be aired to sensitize the world about this core issue. The flags of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir will be displayed together at public places, while black banners and panaflexes will mark the province’s solidarity with the oppressed Kashmiris. Even the symbolic city branding of Rawalpindi, with billboards and streamers at Kachehry Chowk and Peshawar Road, will carry a unified message: that the people of Punjab stand with Kashmiris in their just struggle for self-determination. Yet, the significance of these gestures lies not in spectacle but in substance. The intention is to turn remembrance into reasoning – to remind the world that this conflict is not a quarrel over territory but a matter of unfulfilled pledges and unaddressed principles. When India took the Kashmir question to the United Nations in 1948, it did so on the foundation of its own moral commitment. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in his radio address of Nov 2, 1947, made a declaration that history still remembers: “We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it.” India’s acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 47 the following year formalised that pledge, calling for a free and impartial plebiscite under international supervision. What began as an article of faith soon became a casualty of expedience. Over the decades, that unkept word has hardened into the silence of barbed wire and curfews. Today, the revocation of Articles 370 and 35A in August 2019 has stripped Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir of the limited autonomy it once possessed. The region, once celebrated as paradise on earth, now resembles a vast open-air prison, where communication blackouts, demographic manipulation, and the suppression of dissent have become daily realities. The question for the world is simple: can peace be built on the denial of consent? Punjab’s commemoration of Kashmir Black Day 2025, therefore, assumes a deeper meaning. It is an attempt to shift the conversation from emotion to ethics, from slogans to scholarship. By engaging citizens through culture, media, and civic participation, the provincial government aims to foster a rational understanding of why Kashmir matters – not only to Pakistan, but to the moral architecture of international law itself. There is an underlying philosophy at work here, one that recalls the wisdom of Kautilya, the ancient strategist who argued that power divorced from justice ultimately devours itself. The lesson applies with tragic clarity to Kashmir. When a state rules without legitimacy, it may command obedience, but never loyalty. Suppression may silence dissent for a time, but it cannot erase the truth that gave rise to it. The United Nations, for its part, has failed a fundamental test of credibility. More than seventy-five years after adopting resolutions that guaranteed the right of self-determination to the people of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, it has yet to fulfil its own mandate. The world that found its conscience in East Timor and South Sudan appears content to lose it in Srinagar. The selective application of justice corrodes not only institutions but the very idea of global order. Peace in South Asia remains hostage to this unresolved injustice. The resources that could lift millions from poverty are instead consumed by an arms race sustained by distrust. A conflict frozen in time continues to hold two nuclear powers at perpetual risk, while generations of Kashmiris live as prisoners of geography and politics. That is why Kashmir Black Day must not be reduced to mourning. It should be a day of moral clarity – a reaffirmation that Pakistan’s case rests not on conquest but on the principle of self-determination. It is also a day for the world to revisit its conscience, to recognise that silence in the face of oppression is complicity in it. Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s government deserves recognition for anchoring this year’s commemoration in awareness rather than anger. By invoking art, education, and civic participation, Punjab’s campaign demonstrates that solidarity can be expressed through reason as much as rhetoric. The message it conveys is not of hatred, but of hope – that peace built upon justice remains possible, if the world chooses to honour its own word. Kashmir today stands as a testament to both resilience and betrayal – a valley where the beauty of nature mocks the ugliness of politics. The black flags that rise across Punjab this October will speak for those who have been silenced, reminding the world that a promise once made before humanity cannot be buried under the rubble of expediency. Kashmir Black Day is not about darkness; it is about the refusal to let darkness prevail. The day endures as an indictment of hypocrisy – and a quiet appeal to conscience. For as long as the promise remains unkept, the prison remains unbroken. The writer is a Lahore-based public policy analyst and can be reached at [email protected]
