The Government of India appears to be blissfully ignorant of the global information war on Kashmir, waged on the Internet. The Internet has more than a thousand websites on Kashmir, almost all of them anti-India. There has been no attempt by our information agencies or intelligence agencies abroad to counter this vile propaganda.There are several anti-Indian individual and academic home pages on the Internet on Kashmir which hail terrorism in the Valley as a freedom struggle for the self-determination of Kashmiri people.Last October Kashmiri-Canadians and quite a few Kashmiris all around the world observed the anniversary of ``Black Day'' which according to them was the day India ``invaded'' Kashmir. The Kashmiri-Canadian Council (KCC) based in Canada, which has a massive website, has gone to the extent of urging leaders of the G7 countries, the Commonwealth and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, to examine the validity of the recent election in Kashmir under international law.The Indian Government has turned a deaf ear to all the Internet propaganda, ignoring the fact that it would do the gravest damage to the nation in many ways. Internationally, it has eroded the credibility of the Government on the Kashmir issue and has helped mobilise support for militancy in several countries. Some of the Universities abroad, especially in the UK and the US, rally support for the liberation of Kashmir with their academic programmes. And there are quite a number of Ph.Ds produced in these Universities supporting the liberation of Kashmir. The militants have also managed to get support to convert mosques as centres of militant and terrorist activity and to create women volunteers to mobilise support for the so-called jihad.India in its new policy initiative on Kashmir must plan how it is going to handle the anti-Indian propaganda on the most influential medium of communication. The Internet propaganda makes it out that Kashmir is not a territorial dispute but a dispute over the exercise of the fundamental right of self-determination. Thousands of Kashmir home pages on the Internet try to convince the international community that this inalienable and irrevocable right had been promised to them by India, Pakistan and the UN through several resolutions of the Security Council. The fulfilment of this commitment is a blinding obligation on these parties and not the international community, they assert.Reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Commission of Jurists, the British Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, the European Parliament, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association and many other independent organisations have all attested to the continuing massive violations of human rights in Kashmir, thereby justifying the political violence and terrorism in the Valley by the militant organisations with support from across the border.As the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir Jagmohan has mentioned in an article on the Internet, Kashmir's relationship with the rest of India is long and virtually unending. But for our policymakers, it does not exist. No mention of it is ever made either inside or outside the country. No child is taught a word about it. No journalist writes a line on the subject. All that is spoken of or written about, is the special relationship, the need to continue and strengthen Article 370, and of giving more and more autonomy. What is India's stand vis-a-vis the world's most important propaganda system which is bent upon defaming and undermining the secular and liberal ideals of Indian democracy? The Internet is a large corporation trying to sell a product to the market. In this Kashmir war on the Internet, the product is the audiences who would reinforce the same distortions more effectively to the next generation. India's passive response to such an Intenret attack on its democracy is a great threat to its national security.
