Pakistani flag in India

GAUHATI, India—Depressed from how New Delhi is suppressing local Assamese people who want to carve a separate homeland out of India, people in Assam waved Pakistan's flags in five districts.The eastern Indian state is one of a dozen Indian states in the north and east where ferocious freedoms movements are in full swing, demanding the right of self determination from Indian rule.As usual, the Indian government, blaming Pakistani agencies for the violence, has ordered an immediate enquiry for this incident.

The officials in New Delhi are so disturbed by this that they have invoked patriotism while asking newspaper editors across India to black out any news about the freedom movements.This week a student delegation visited the State’s governor and told him that ‘the villagers informed us that the miscreants were shouting slogans like Pakistan zindabad [Long live Pakistan] through loudspeakers in Dalgaon and some other border areas,” according to a report in The Assam Tribune.The Indian paper called on the government to give “stern punishment to those who hoisted Pakistani flags.”

The Indian Express reported the story in one paragraph: “Meanwhile, media persons saw a Pakistani flag in Sonaripara and Mohanpur villages and took photographs of them. Local television channels also ran footage of the flags. Officials and security forces denied any knowledge of the presence of the flags.New Delhi is disturbed by this new trend where the Pakistani flag has emerged as a symbol of freedom in India.

Indian officials are still smarting from the shock of a unanimous rejection of India across Kashmir. For years the Kashmiris have been marking India’s national day on Aug. 15 as a Black Day. But this year, Kashmir witnessed a unanimous civil disobedience and massive street protests where Kashmiris joined in raising the Pakistani flag and chanting slogans rejecting their forced inclusion in the Indian state.



The massive protests shocked the Indian media and ordinary Indians who for years were shielded by New Delhi authorities from ground realities in Kashmir and were fed an official version that almost the entire free Indian media adhered to without asking questions. The size and the impressive unanimity of Kashmiri protests this year helped break Indian official media blackout and provided the Indian people a chance to see for their own what their governments have been hiding for decades now, where the Kashmir dispute was often peddled as a Pakistani creation and not the result of indigenous Kashmiri demands.