Kashmir Education Crisis : A silent War on Future generation
Kashmir Education Crisis : A silent War on Future generation
India’s occupation turns Kashmir’s classrooms into battlegrounds, where ignorance is enforced and heritage erased.
In a land already scarred by occupation and conflict, the most insidious battle may be the one fought in its classrooms. According to the Indian Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2024, 52% of eighth-grade students in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK) cannot read a second-grade level text. Only 28% can perform basic division. These figures are not merely indicators of academic failure, they are the reflection of a system designed to deny Kashmiri youth their future. Education is a right, not a privilege. Yet in IOJK, it has become a casualty of a broader project of political domination. Kashmir’s schools operate under siege, literally and ideologically. Regular military crackdowns, curfews and internet shutdowns disrupt academic calendars year after year. Students preparing for exams often find themselves unable to access classrooms or online resources.
In many government-run schools, even basic facilities like electricity, heating and toilets are absent. The environment is not one of learning but of survival. This degradation, however, is not accidental. Analysts argue that the Indian state’s neglect and at times, direct interference, is part of a strategic effort to disempower Kashmiri youth. By ensuring that they remain undereducated and underqualified, the system blocks their access to employment, higher education and platforms of expression. A disempowered population is easier to subjugate. This is not just negligence, it is structural disenfranchisement.
More alarming is the ideological weaponization of education. The imposition of a curriculum rooted in Hindutva ideology, including the introduction of Vedic texts in public education, has sparked outrage. In a region where the majority is Muslim, such curricular decisions are seen not as academic enhancements but as deliberate tools of cultural erasure. Rather than fostering critical thinking and inclusion, the curriculum aims to rewrite Kashmiri identity, replacing it with a homogenized nationalist narrative.
What is unfolding in Kashmir’s classrooms is not a mere administrative failure, it is a silent war on the next generation. The erosion of education in IIOJK is the erosion of resistance, dignity and self-determination. If the world is to uphold the right to education as a pillar of human rights, it must recognize the educational repression in Kashmir for what it truly is: a systematic strategy to erase a people by dismantling their future from the roots.
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