Hindu Forum of Britain and Keir Starmer’s positioning on Kashmir

By South Asia Solidarity 

South Asia Solidarity Group (SASG) is an anti-imperialist, anti-racist organization based in Britain committed to supporting, publicising, and building solidarity with people’s struggles for justice and democracy and against exploitation, gender, and caste-based oppression,  imperialism, war and the so-called ‘war on terror’ in the countries of South Asia. Since August 5, SASG has worked with various members of the Kashmiri and Indian diaspora in the UK to campaign and organize against the revocation of Article 370 by the Indian Government. In association with the diaspora and student organisations, SASG has put forth a resistance to the Indian government’s actions in Jammu & Kashmir. Further, they have ruptured the myth of the British Indian diaspora’s unquestioning loyalty to Narendra Modi and the BJP Government through parliamentary interventions. 

In May 2020, following a meeting with “Labour Friends of India”, which acts as a channel between people in the Labour Party and India’s far-right Hindu nationalist government, Keir Starmer, currently, the leader of the Labour Party declared that Kashmir is “a matter for the Indian Parliament” and that he wanted “even closer business links” and “dialogue” with India. SASG and Indians for Labour expressed their concern over this development in an open letter signed by over 600 people, most of them members and officeholders in the Labour Party.

At a time when Kashmir had been under lockdown for more than 9 months, this was a let-down for Kashmiris and effectively a capitulation to the Hindu-fascist government of Narendra Modi. After Keir Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, there have been several attempts to form stronger relations with the Indian diaspora by reaching out to the Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB), an organization closely aligned with the far-right and Hindu supremacist government in India. This attempt to form alliances with pro-BJP groups in the diaspora was strongly criticised in the letter by SASG.

Parts of this are reproduced below:

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This (amendment of article 370) is an act of colonialism by the BJP government against a nation that has been denied its historic right to self-determination and was handed over to India by British colonialists in 1947. It comes against a background of decades of occupation by the Indian army and human rights abuses and has been followed by brutal lockdowns, curfews, and increased repression in a region which has long been the most highly militarised in the world.

 
Contrary to their assertions in their letters to you, the HFB does not represent the entirety of the Indian diaspora in the UK. Many Labour Party members who are part of this diaspora have actively condemned not only these human rights abuses but also the lynchings of Muslims, Dalits and other minorities by mobs affiliated to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), which is a fascist organization modelled on Mussolini’s Blackshirts and is the parent organization of the BJP. These mob attacks have been rampant since Modi’s initial rise to power in 2014. To attempt to rebuild ties with the ‘Indian community’ in the UK by reaching out to far-right sympathising organisations such as HFB is to ignore us and suggest that the Labour Party will from now on be more concerned with maintaining the support of far-right groups within the Indian diaspora than with sticking to the Labour internationalist principle of condemning international human rights abuses.

The second issue raised in the HFB letter is Labour’s policy on Kashmir under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The letter claims Corbyn’s supporting a motion to bring the issue of the siege on Jammu and Kashmir to the United Nations represents his ‘Anti-India stance’. This is an attempt to silence the condemnation of the revocation of Article 370 as a human rights issue, despite the UN repeatedly raising concerns about the Kashmir situation. To reposition the Labour Party approach in this context would also be disrespectful of the Labour Party procedure.

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In a second letter to you, the HFB makes a further disturbing claim that, in their own words, ‘Pakistan Occupied Kashmir was and is an integral part of India, of that there is no doubt’. Not only is this an act of war-mongering against Pakistan, which like India is a nuclear-armed state, but it is also an assertion of the idea of Akhand Bharat or undivided India, which will include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka and is one of the key expansionist aims of the RSS.

The letter specifically spoke about two actions of the Indian Government that are reflective of its Hindu supremacist agenda: revocation of Article 370 followed by the longest lockdown in the world in Kashmir and the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act. They go on to state “We urge you to represent the majority within the Indian diaspora who do not align themselves with the ongoing fascism of the Modi regime and their allies in Britain.”

SASG acknowledges the long and continuing struggle for self-determination by Kashmiris and offers them its unconditional solidarity. SASG will continue organizing events, protests, vigils, and campaigns for the rights of Kashmiris at the ground and parliamentary levels while centering Kashmiri voices and narratives.

SASG has played a prominent role in raising awareness in the UK on the situation in Kashmir by organizing protests such as the Emergency Vigil for Kashmir on 5th August 2019, Stand with Kashmir protest on 15th August 2019, panel discussions at academic institutions such as the event in SOAS, “Resisting Fascism, Building Solidarities: India, Kashmir, and Beyond” and have continued their efforts during the pandemic time through webinars and social media actions. Importantly, SASG has been working consistently within, and outside, the Labour Party to highlight the occupation and colonisation of Kashmir by India.

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This opinion article forms part of Kashmir Reading Room’s Yearly Report Aug 2019-Aug 2020. You can view the full report by clicking on the button below.

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