New Delhi: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah said that now Kashmiris don’t feel and want to be Indian, rather they would be preferred to be ruled by the Chinese.
“It was complete rubbish for the Bharatiya Janata Party to claim that the people of Kashmir have accepted the August 2019 changes just because there have been no protests,” Abdullah told The Wire in an interview.
Abdullah, who has been the most prominent ‘pro-India’ face in Kashmir for the last four decades, described the Kashmiris as slaves and were being treated like second-class citizens.
The former chief minister said if the soldiers on every street and Section 144 were to be lifted, people will come out in their tens of lakhs. “The new domicile law was intended to flood the Valley with Hindus and create a Hindu majority. He said this has further embittered the Kashmiri people,” Abdullah told the website.
Abdullah said that the Kashmiris were “deeply disillusioned” when asked about how Kashmiris view the Central government and, in particular, Prime Minister Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. “They had no trust in the Central government. The trust that once bound Kashmir to the rest of the country has completely snapped,” he said.
Abdullah also divulged details of his meeting with the PM Modi some 72 hours before August 5, 2019, when the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A was announced.
According to him, he met Modi seeking assurances about the continuation of Articles 370 and 35A. He even asked the prime minister about the presence of so many troops in the Valley. But Modi apparently didn’t say anything about the abolition of Articles 370 and 35A, which made him believe that both the articles of the constitution were not in danger.
