As the saying goes, What you sow, so shall you reap. Nothing fits Pakistan better. For decades, Islamabad sowed the seeds of separatism, jihad, and terror in India’s Jammu and Kashmir. Today, the flames of discontent are consuming Pakistan itself, and nowhere is this truer than in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The irony could not be starker. In 1947, when India’s newly independent army was driving back tribal raiders unleashed by Pakistan, it was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s shortsightedness—and his obsession with the United Nations—that left one-third of Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan’s hands. That sliver, misnamed “Azad” Kashmir, has been anything but free. Seven decades on, it has been reduced to a colony of Pakistan’s Punjabi-dominated establishment, exploited as cannon fodder for Islamabad’s proxy war against India. Instead of development, Pakistan set up terror camps in PoK, launching “a thousand cuts” strategy against India. Instead of treating its people as citizens, it subjugated them to the diktats of Rawalpindi and the ISI. Instead of protecting their land, Islamabad mortgaged chunks of it to China for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Today, PoK is not just occupied, it is sold. Meanwhile, the contrast across the Line of Control could not be sharper. Since the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A in 2019, Jammu and Kashmir under India has seen massive infrastructure development, investment, tourism revival, and political empowerment at the grassroots. Locals in PoK can see the prosperity of their brethren across the LoC—and they want a piece of it. Discontent that simmered for decades is now exploding. The Awami Action Committee (AAC), representing ordinary Kashmiris, has called for a massive shutdown and wheel-jam strike. Their demands are basic, not revolutionary—abolition of 12 assembly seats reserved for Kashmiri refugees in Pakistan, subsidies on flour and electricity, and renegotiation of hydropower projects that exploit local resources without benefiting locals. Imagine: after 77 years, people are still begging for bread and electricity while Islamabad squanders billions funding jihad abroad.
The hypocrisy is staggering. A state that calls itself the “Islamic Republic” has neither democracy nor republic left in it. It’s the so-called elected governments that dance to the tune of the army. Its economy is bankrupt, dependent on IMF handouts. Its provinces—Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and especially Balochistan—are seething with separatism. And now PoK too is on the streets. Pakistan is staring at what it always feared for India: fragmentation. But unlike India, which has held together despite its diversity, Pakistan may collapse into three or four republics before long. Which brings us to the larger question: Should India reclaim what is rightfully hers? Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is not some disputed territory—it is Indian land illegally held since 1947. If PoK slips out of Islamabad’s hands, should India act? Should we wait for chaos to breed new jihadi havens, or should we preemptively secure our borders and reintegrate PoK? But reclaiming PoK cannot mean repeating Pakistan’s mistakes. If India does take it back, it must not be a mere cartographic victory. It must be accompanied by a robust plan for industrialization, infrastructure, and migration that integrates the region fully into the Indian mainstream. It must balance demography by encouraging Indians from other states to invest, work, and live there. It must ensure that PoK becomes another success story, like Ladakh after 2019, and not another playground for separatists. The world is watching. The PoK diaspora in the US, UK, and Europe is already mobilizing protests, internationalizing the issue. Pakistan’s leaders, meanwhile, continue their theatrics abroad. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif seeks Western attention when his own backyard is in flames. Instead of begging Washington, he should be listening to Muzaffarabad. But he won’t. And that is why the writing is on the wall: Pakistan is collapsing under the weight of its own lies. Balochistan wants freedom, Sindhis want autonomy, Pashtuns want dignity, and now PoK wants justice. For a nation built on stolen land and borrowed time, the endgame is here. The real question is no longer if Pakistan will disintegrate, but when. And when it does, will India be ready to reclaim what is hers—not just in territory, but in destiny?
