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THE KASHMIRI WORKERS ASSOCIATION’S DECLARATION OF

LAUNCHING THE THIRD PHASE OF THE AZAD KASHMIR
MOVEMENT

My dear countrymen/women, brothers, sisters, friends and comrades

This 4th Day of October 2008, I, Mohammad Younus Taryaby, hereby this declaration
launch the Third Phase of the Azad Kashmir Movement on the behalf of the Kashmiri
Workers Association ‘Britain’ on 61st Azad Republic of Kashmir Declaration Day. This is,
in the history of Kashmir, also a third political attempt on the behalf of patriotic,
progressive and revolutionary Kashmiri peasants, workers, students, and intellectuals to
reclaim our political movement arose from the womb of the peasants’ rebellion of 1931.

The uprising in the Valley of Kashmir following the events of 13th July 1931 failed within
two months. The leadership that emerged from this uprising sold out the movement by
making a futile five points agreement with the aristocratic regime of Kashmir on 26th
August 1931.

Disappointed by this sell out and oppressed under feudalism, a peasants’ rebellion broke
out under the red flag in Mirpur in the same year. Within a very short period of time this
rebellion spread to other regions of the country like a fire in jungle. A need for a political
party was felt to take this struggle forward and the Muslim Conference was set up in
1932.

From the very beginning the Muslims of the ruling classes like numberdars, zaildars,
thakedars, jagirdars and religious stipendiaries took over the leadership of the Muslim
Conference. Consequently, Kashmiri peasants and workers lost out their political
movement to the Muslims of the ruling classes.

The first successful political attempt was made by the patriotic, progressive and
revolutionary leaders of the peasants and workers in 1939 for reclaiming their political
movement and red flag. The name of the Muslim Conference was changed into National
Conference. The National Conference, then, raised the red flag having a peasants’ tool
“plough” - manufactured by workers such as carpenters and ironmongers.

When the progressive, revolutionary and middle class patriotic activists realised that the
leadership of the National Conference was working for the interests of the ruling classes,
they set up their own political party - the Kisan Mazdoor Conference in 1946. Meanwhile
some leaders of the National Conference had revived their previous party the Muslim
Conference.

The Kisan Mazdoor Conference, at the time, not only reclaimed peasants and workers’
movement successfully but it also launched the Azad Kashmir Movement by raising the
slogan of Azad Kashmir on 12th May 1946.
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Pundit Prem Nath Bazaz, the pioneer of the Azad Kashmir Movement, correctly analysed
at the time Indian nationalism, Akhand Bharat, or one-nation-theory presented by Indian
National Congress and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in British India as Brahminism
which caused the birth of two-nation theory: Muslims and non-Muslims lead by the
Indian Muslim League.

On 15th August 1947, under the British made Indian Independent Bill of 1947, with the
creation of two new dominions – Bharat and Pakistan based on religion and the transfer
of prison houses of Indian nations built by the British imperialism in British-India,
Kashmir became an independent and sovereign state in States-India. Maharaja Hari
Singh, then ruler of Kashmir, also lost all rights his family used to claim to rule Kashmir
under the “Amritsar Treaty of 1846”. However, the British imperialism had its own
designs against the independence and sovereignty of Kashmir.

When Mountbatton, the British ruler of “free Bharat” was working actively to annex
Kashmir for Bharat by making favourable adjustments in the boundaries of partitioning
Punjab, there was a big revolt taking place in Poonch and Mirpur against the oppressive
rule of Maharaja Hari Singh.

On 4th October 1947, hundreds of political activists including the leaders of the Muslim
Conference took-over the leadership of the Azad Kashmir Movement in their attempt to
give a political direction to the Poonch revolt and to defend the independence and
sovereignty of the Kashmiri people by setting up a legal, constitutional and representative
government of Kashmir, the Azad Kashmir Government with its headquarter in
Muzaffarabad. Subsequently, a civil war broke out in Kashmir against the illegal and
tyrannical rule of Maharaja Hari Singh.

Under the leadership of the Azad Kashmir Government, the Kashmiri peasants and
workers made great sacrifices and helped to organise the People’s Liberation Army of
Kashmir known as Azad Kashmir Army and fed them. The Azad Kashmir Army liberated
a large area of Kashmir known as Azad Kashmir, the base camp of the Azad Kashmir
Movement within a few weeks.

On 22nd October 1947, the British military and civil bureaucracy of Pakistan organised a
tribesmen incursion into Azad Kashmir to block the march of the Azad Kashmir Army
towards Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, to communalise the Azad Kashmir Movement
and to provide a pretext for the Bharati military invasion of Kashmir. Bharat did invaded
Kashmir on 27th October 1947. Following the Bharati military invasion of Kashmir, the
tribesmen invaders fled from Kashmir killing, looting, and plundering Kashmiri women.

In this situation, the Azad Kashmir Army succeeded not only in defending Azad Kashmir
for a very long time against the Bharati invasion but also in making the defeat of Bharati
occupying army in Kashmir certain. In order to reverse these achievements of the Azad
Kashmir Movement and to defeat the Azad Kashmir Army, General Gracey, the British
Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan army mapped out the division of Kashmir with a
Line of Military Occupation (LoMO) as Naushera, Poonch and Uri.
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On 20th April 1948, General Gracey submitted his military plan to the government of
Pakistan to occupy Azad Kashmir implying Azad Kashmir Movement, Azad Kashmir
Government and Azad Kashmir Army as terrorist forces. Pakistan army did invaded Azad
Kashmir in May 1948. Under the military plan, mapped out by General Gracey, Kashmir
was divided and annexed by Bharat and Pakistan and the United Nations was misused to
legitimise the annexation of Kashmir in the name of Kashmir’s accession dispute
between Bharat and Pakistan. As an end-result, the Azad Kashmir Government failed in
defending the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kashmir.

The failure of the Azad Kashmir Government in defending the Azad Kashmir Movement
resulted in forced division of Kashmir into Bharati Occupied Kashmir, Pakistani
Occupied Northern Kashmir and Pakistani Occupied Southern Kashmir and bringing an
end to the first phase of the Azad Kashmir Movement.

This meant that the people of Kashmir lost out their Azad Kashmir Movement and its
history to the most powerful occupying armies and cultural industries controlled by the
ruling classes of Pakistan and Bharat and supported by imperialist powers of the world.

The second phase of the Azad Kashmir Movement, therefore, consists of a long struggle
for digging the Azad Kashmir Movement out of distorted history of Kashmir compiled
under the Bharati and Pakistani occupation to serve the interests of the occupiers.
Khawaja Ghulam Nabi Gilkar Anwar, the founder president of the Azad Kashmir
Government, always defended the Azad Republic of Kashmir Declaration made on 4th
October 1947. Maqbool Butt Shaheed supported a programme of building ‘Azad
Kashmir’ into the preparation camp for the war of liberation. These struggles of
Kashmiri revolutionaries helped us in tracking down both the history of Azad Kashmir
Movement and its relationship to the national question in India.

After having a long struggle in exploring and analysing the Azad Kashmir Movement in
the context of unresolved national question in India, the Kashmiri Workers Association
‘Britain’ is launching the third phase of the Azad Kashmir Movement today. This means
the beginning of a new struggle towards building a revolutionary party of the masses of
the people of every occupied part of Kashmir through organising workers, peasants,
students and progressive intellectuals under the red flag of the Azad Kashmir Movement.
Only through this struggle of the masses of the people of Kashmir the conditions can be
created in favour of re-establishing the legal, constitutional and representative
government of the Kashmiri people - the Azad Kashmir Government in any one of three
occupied parts of Kashmir as a first and foremost stage to make the liberation of other
occupied parts of Kashmir feasible.

The red flag of the Azad Kashmir Movement represents Kashmiri peasants’ uprising of
1931. It also reminds us the struggle of the leaders of the peasants and workers who
successfully reclaimed their movement and red flag by changing the name of Muslim
Conference into National Conference in 1939. It also pays homage to the People’s
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Liberation Army of Kashmir (Azad Kashmir Fauj) by having four stripes (rivers) of
national pride.

In the struggle towards building a revolutionary party of the masses of the people of
Kashmir through defending the Azad Kashmir Movement, the Kashmiri Workers
Association ‘Britain’ intends to play its role as a coordinating body amongst the people of
Bharati Occupied Kashmir, Pakistani Occupied Northern Kashmir, Pakistani Occupied
Southern Kashmir, and Kashmiris living in other parts of the world at these initial stages.

This initiative of launching the third phase of the Azad Kashmir Movement taken by the
Kashmiri Workers Association ‘Britain’ also appears to be a third political attempt of the
Kashmiri workers in reclaiming our political movement since 1931 - the first being in
1939 and second in 1946.

I define the Azad Kashmir Movement as a movement of the Kashmiri peasants and
workers. It stands for an Azad aur Muttahida Kashmir (a free and united Kashmir) free
from the occupation of Bharat and Pakistan, free from the exploitation of one class by
another class, free from the oppression of one religious group by another religious group,
free from the oppression of one caste by another caste, free from the oppression of one
nationality by another nationality, and free from all forms of discrimination based on sex,
race, faith and age. I added the term Muttahida in our struggle for an Azad Kashmir to
meet the existing challenges emerged from the forced division of Kashmir. “Azad aur
Muttahida Kashmir” is our new slogan.

I would like to make it clear as it was made clear by Pundit Prem Nath Bazaz and
affirmed by the thoughts of Maqbool Butt Shaheed, the Azad Kashmir Movement is a
part of the workers and oppressed nations’ movements of the world. Thereby, we stand
closely with all national and people’s liberation movements in India including Bharat and
Pakistan and the world over in their struggle against feudalism, foreign occupation,
imperialism, national oppression and capitalism.

We, the Kashmiri workers in Britain, are aware fully of our position in this struggle being
in Britain. We are an important segment of the British society and a part of the British
working classes. Although, there are signs of a few Kashmiris moving towards middle
class in Britain, all available social indicators suggest that the overwhelming majority of
the Kashmiri community remains as one of the most oppressed sections of the British
society. There are some understandable historical and political reasons for this.

Having origin from an annexed colony, the Kashmiri community in Britain is not
recognised as a distinctive ethnic group and, therefore, we have no solid evidence to
claim our level of achievements or under-achievements in education, employment,
housing and health. As a result, the Kashmiri youths in Britain are losing their cultural
roots very fast and they are suffering from a cultural identity crisis. This situation is being
exploited by the British state to marginalise the Kashmiri community and criminalise the
Kashmiri youths for being Asian-Black and for being Muslims.
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We believe that there is a correlation between the Bharati and Pakistani forced occupation
of Kashmir and the marginalisation of the Kashmiri community in Britain. Therefore, our
struggle for an Azad aur Muttahida Kashmir in Britain serves both political aspects of
our community. It provides us a sense of cultural identity having roots in Kashmir and a
political direction to find our position in British society as a Kashmiri community.

We also believe that the British government is preserving the barriers of blocking the
development of the Kashmiri community in Britain by not recognising us as a distinctive
ethnic group. This policy of British state is in consistence with what it did to Kashmir in
1947/8/9. The successive British governments cannot avoid their responsibility by
seeking their role as a mediator in Kashmir dispute. Historically, the role of the British
state in Kashmir dispute is not as a mediator but as a party to it and as a leading party for
bringing about the division and annexation of Kashmir.

The forced division and the forced Bharati and Pakistani occupation of Kashmir is the
direct result of a military plan against the Azad Kashmir Movement hatched by the
representatives of the British Crown in India in 1947/8. The British government of the
time also played a key role in misusing of the United Nations for legitimising the
annexation of Kashmir in the name of accession. We do not accept any claim that
suggests Kashmir dispute as a dispute between Bharat and Pakistan. There is no legal,
democratic, constitutional or historical ground to make this claim. Bharat and Pakistan, or
any other country of the world, has no any right to impose their will on the people of
Kashmir.

In fact, Kashmir dispute is, on the one hand, a dispute between the ruling classes of
Bharat and the people of Kashmir because the ruling classes of Bharat are occupying
Bharati Occupied Kashmir without having any legal, constitutional, or democratic
ground; and, the Kashmir dispute is also, on the other hand, a dispute between the ruling
classes of Pakistan and the people of Kashmir because the ruling classes of Pakistan are
occupying both parts of Pakistani Occupied Kashmir – Pakistani Occupied Northern
Kashmir and Pakistani Occupied Southern Kashmir without having any justifiable
ground.

We, the British Kashmiris, hold British state responsible for the forced division, forced
Bharati and Pakistani occupation of Kashmir and for misleading the United Nations on
the Kashmir question. Therefore, we demand that the British government must recognise
us as a distinctive ethnic group and the British government also must move a new
resolution in the United Nations for having United Nations record on Kashmir rectified
and the rights of the Kashmiri people to their sovereignty, independence and the
territorial integrity of Kashmir recognised. From today, this will be our goal for our
struggle in British politics and we will use this goal as a benchmark to judge the friends
and foes of the Kashmiri people.

Azad aur Muttahida KashmirZindabad