Occupier’s Law, Kashmiris’ Land

“Kashmir law” refers primarily to the current laws governing the Indian-occupied territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh after Indian legislature, the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and Lok Sabha (Council of the People) enacted the ultra vires Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act on 5 and 6 August 2019. Following a presidential order effectively amending the Indian Constitution’s Articles 35A and 370, the legislation stripped the territories of their historic autonomy, dissolving the region’s status as a ‘state’ and demoting it to create two Indian ‘union territories,’ constitutionally fused to India. 

Indian-occupied Kashmir’s previous semi-autonomous legal framework had provided special protections of land tenure for Kashmiris and permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir. In the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, the legal changes attacked Kashmiri identity, as well as actively denied Kashmiri self-determination in the most fundamental sense by incrementally dispossessing the Kashmiri People`s lands.

The term ‘occupation’ applies here as international law provides; i.e., such that “occupation” obtains when a foreign sovereign exercises administrative authority over another territory. Therefore, Indian, Pakistani and Chinese ‘administrations’ in the territory of Kashmir constitute ‘occupation.’ However, in all cases, the law of occupation prohibits the occupier from altering the legal system in the occupied territory. 

Contravening international law and custom on the subject, India’s Jammu and Kashmir High Court ruled on 25 July 2025 that reference to the situation in ‘Indian-administered Kashmir’ (IAK) an “illegal occupation,” or defending the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir constitutes “unlawful activity” under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Such state behavior contravenes the UN Charter, which qualifies legitimacy in the community of states.

The Indian occupation and media attach demonizing labels to defenders of Kashmir’s land and self-determination, referring to them as “terrorists,” “militants,” “secessionists,” “overground workers” (“OGWs”), “hybrid militants,” “hybrid terrorists,” “terrorist associates,” “militant associates,” “intruders,” “infiltrators,” or “terrorist handlers.” Each label presupposes the Indian occupation reserves the right to raid, confiscate and/or demolish homes and other properties. These practices have accelerated since the April 2025 attack on Indian tourists at Pahlagam and the subsequent military exchange between India and Pakistan in May, which also damaged at least 2,060 homes by shelling in IAK.

In many ways, Kashmir’s land question is playing out similarly to the exploitation of Indigenous, conservation communities and tribal areas inside India. However, Kashmir’s land question is distinct as a case of external colonization. The organized azaadi (freedom) movement finally emerged in 1989 to resist Indian occupation, and now India maintains about 700,000 hostile occupation troops in the Kashmiri territory under its effective control.

Already in January 2023, Indian occupation authorities had unleashed an eviction drive across the territory, seizing land in a campaign to confiscate land equivalent to the size of Hong Kong. The campaign sought to dispossess so-called “encroachers,” another accusatory term deflecting the true nature of the campaign; i.e., expelling thousands of Kashmiris from the farmland their families had cultivated for decades. They also displaced Indigenous nomads from the forests where they lived, and turned homes and business establishments to rubble. Indian authorities also have deported many Kashmir residents this year, including hundreds of Pakistani women and at least 150 mothers/wives, forcibly separating families.

The Current Wave

Following the events reported in the previous Land Times/ أحوال الأرض, India’s occupation forces have demolished at least 16 Kashmiri homes under the pretext that the owner or another inhabitant is an operative of resistance. The official publication of demolished residences is presented as if proof of guilt, confounding the critical distinction between accusation and conviction, obviating the need for evidence and proof before punishment. On that pretext also, Indian occupation forces have confiscated at least 270 ha of land this way in 2025.

Throughout the recent period, Indian authorities continued systematically expropriating large of tracts of Kashmir’s fertile agricultural and forest land for purported “development projects,” disempowering Kashmiris by destroying households, livelihoods, familial wealth, ways of life and the environment, particularly affecting Indigenous People.

The occupation has weaponized land reform and other laws to dispossess and expropriate land. Under both the Land Acquisition Act (1894) and newer legislation in 2013, government can acquire land for public purposes in two steps. First, the ownership is acquired. Second, compensation is paid to the rightful claimant (i.e., the one who holds the legal title, not just someone in possession). However, in practice, many collectors conveniently rely on whoever is present, files an affidavit, or claims to hold the land, without formal verification. The expedited process now leaves many owners to report that they did not know their land has been acquired until it was too late. These administrative measures form a backdrop of a larger settler project of India’s BJP government of Narendra Modi.

The Indian occupation has allotted more than 1,800 multinational businesses land in the last few years, with the government reporting that it has received $10 billion in investment proposals. In the process, Delhi’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change acknowledges allotting more than 576 hectares of Kashmiri forest land for non-forest “infrastructure and commercial projects” between 2021 and 2024.

The government declared that, all told, it had “impounded” more than 42,000 hectares of land through the campaign. And this follows an earlier 2020 report that calculated 78,000 hectares of Kashmir’s farm land had been converted to non-agricultural purposes, as the newly designated “union territory” is becoming ever more dependent on eternal supplies.

These developments have invoked the teachings of 14^th century Kashmiri Sufi saint, Shaikh Nur-ud-Din Wali (also known as Nund Rishi), who urged environmental conservation, emphasizing the indispensable connection between forests, food, and life. His phrase an poshi teli, yeli wan poshe (food will abound, only as long as forests thrive) strikes a deep chord among Kashmiris. And ecosystem defenders are wondering if Kashmir’s famous forests can be saved amid myriad violations and colonial extraction.

The Pattern

Comparisons between Palestine and Kashmir abound, not least because they share a similar chronology of external colonization dating from 1947-48. Meanwhile, during last Ramadhan, Indian occupation authorities prosecuted organizers and participants for raising “objectionable slogans” in a Beerwah, Budgam district march for Palestinian rights on al-Quds Day (28 March) under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The details of serial housing and land rights violations under India’s occupation of Kashmir in the recent period reveal a familiar pattern that consists of:

• Denying and thwarting the occupied people’s self-determination
• Demonizing the Indigenous rights holders and their defenders
• Using those demonizing—now legal—classifications as a pretext to persecute
• Targeting housing and land
• Expropriating homes and lands
• Destroying homes and lands
• Implanting alien (mostly Indian Hindu) settlers and settler colonies

For more of this story, see individual cases in the HLRN Violation Database. Go to “Your search” for the desired period and, at “Countries,” select “Kashmir” from the drop-down menu.

Housing and Land Rights Violation Database
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Kashmir
Between 1 Jan 1990 and 29 Sep 2025  

Photo on the front page: Kashmir rice fields as seen from above. Source: Kashmir Life. Photo on this page: Villagers at Uri, in northern Kashmir, sit amid the rubble of their home destroyed in the crossfire of Indian and Pakistani military operations on 26 June 2025.