By now, I have seen nearly two dozen videos by passersby on Srinagar-Jammu highway showing how the closure or blockade is enforced and manmade rather than due to any natural cause like landslide etc. Yesterday, my uncle reached home after almost seven days and narrated the same story. By now, this reality is known to each and every Kashmiri that the blockade was deliberate and very much intentional. So, what do the Indian government, military and intelligence agencies want from waging war against the apple? To understand how India wants to disenfranchise Kashmiris and break anything that contributes to our economy, we have to understand a pattern that has been going on since past many years now. When it takes more than 20 days for the puppet government or installed LG administration to clear a mere 200 meter stretch on the highway during such significant time of trade, it is, without any doubt, a preplanned strategy to choke the apple economy of Kashmiris. It cannot be seen as some isolated incident. It is part of a pattern. Each year, as harvest season approaches, roadblocks, delays, and “mysterious” disruptions multiply. Apples get rotten before they can be sold. Families who depend entirely on this trade are pushed into debt and despair. And in the dead of night the news of the felling of entire apple orchards by “unknown” hands emerges every year across Kashmir.

Kashmiri Apple and the Indian Conspiracy

Kashmir is known for its apple farming which has, over the years, become a main source of economy. However, the Indian state has now started a war against this farming that was now significantly contributing to livelihoods and economic sustenance for the population. India’s decision, a couple of years back, to abolish an extra 20% duty on fruit imports from the United States is poised to have a significant impact on the livelihoods of over 3 million individuals reliant on the $1.2 billion apple industry in Kashmir. According to president of Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and industries (KCCI), Kashmir has suffered a loss of around 50000 crore from 2019-21. In a long and well researched paper, two Kashmiri research scholars have, in 2023, highlighted that the Indian government is orchestrating a significant transformation of the apple supply chain in Kashmir. This involves restricting market access, unsettling pricing dynamics, and replacing time-honored cultivation practices, including the cultivation of resilient native apple varieties such as Ambri varieties (such as Dodh Ambri, Chari Ambri, Walayati Amberi, and Mah Ambri), as well as crossbreed variations of Delicious varieties (including Red Delicious and Golden Delicious), with rootstock imported from Italy. Within this supply chain, local Kashmiri farmers and traders predominantly oversee the production stage, while control over the commercial and market aspects of the sector’s value chain lies largely in the hands of Indian contractors and intermediaries. They further explain repercussions of India’s systematic war against Kashmir’s Apple Farming saying that Indian government’s persistent drive toward higher-density apple farming, with ambitious to expand apple cultivation to more than 5,500 hectares by 2025, could conceivably lead to a heightened demand for labor, primarily sourced from outside the region. This shift may entail a significant reliance on contract farming, where land is leased out of contractors. Such a transition threatens to profoundly disrupt the existing relationship between labor and land, as it would transfer this pivotal mode of production to non-local entities, particularly prominent agro firms, thereby depriving local residents of their traditional means of livelihood. An illustrative example lies in a Dubai-based Indian corporation that has already secured leases for over 350 hectares of orchards in central and south Kashmir regions.

Post -5^th August, Foreign companies have been granted full mining rights in Kashmir, marking a significant departure from the past when local communities exclusively engaged in activities such as sand mining and mineral extraction from the River Jehlum and its tributaries. Local residents have expressed their grievances, contending that the application process failed to provide them with equitable opportunities to participate in this transformation. India is employing a cunning campaign against the business community in Jammu and Kashmir, using its infamous investigative agencies like NIA, ED, and CBI to hound them. Simultaneously, they are encouraging outsiders to exert control over the region, a trend that threatens the very essence of self-sufficiency in Kashmir. This orchestrated effort to disrupt our economic autonomy is evident in the ongoing situation, leaving local businesses and livelihoods in a precarious state, as the power dynamics in the region undergo a fundamental shift.

Olives, Apples, and the Politics of Occupation

Occupation rarely confines itself to checkpoints and military patrols. It creeps into orchards, seeps into soil, and aims to cut people from the very roots that sustain them. Look at Palestine for example. The olive tree has stood for centuries as both livelihood and symbol in that region. However, over the decades, Israeli bulldozers have uprooted hundreds of thousands of olive trees, under the gaze of soldiers and armed settlers. The deep cultural bond and economy are both destroyed. The olive, which in Palestinian poetry embodies steadfastness (sumud), is reduced to ash as part of a deliberate project of erasure.

Here in Kashmir, an exact same strategy is at play. The apple orchards of the valley are its economic backbone that employ millions and feed families generation after generation. But in recent years, Kashmiri farmers have watched their crates of apples rot on roads blocked for weeks and their trucks held at checkpoints under flimsy pretexts. And when the sun sets, some awaken to find their trees felled in the night by “unknown hands.” Even the pesticides sent to Kashmir are at times meant to destroy the fruit rather than save it from numerous diseases. These patterns, beyond any doubt, echo a familiar script. This script of suffocating the economy, crippling the farmer, and weakening the community’s ability to stand tall is directly copied from Israel.

Now, we might wonder as to why do apples and olives threaten occupations? Because prosperity breeds confidence, and confidence nurtures resistance. An economically secure Kashmiri farmer or a Palestinian grower of olives is less likely to bow before the machinery of control. To erode that independence, occupation policies target the most ordinary yet vital symbols of self-sufficiency i.e., trees.

The parallels are stark. In 2012, Israeli forces uprooted over 800 olive trees in the West Bank in a single sweep, leaving families without harvests that had been nurtured for generations. In 2019, following the revocation of Kashmir’s semi-autonomy, apple growers found themselves trapped by communication blockades and transport delays; hundreds of tons of fruit spoiled before reaching markets. I can’t even remember now as to how many times have I heard of such stories of road blockade, spurious sprays (Baagh Dawah) meant for orchards etc. It has become so normal now!

Apple and Olive as Resistance

For both Palestinians and Kashmiris, apples and olives have, apart from crops, become acts of defiance. Every tree replanted, every harvest carried out under siege, is a refusal to surrender. They embody the will to remain rooted in one’s land when everything else including language, mobility, even life is threatened. It is not incidental that both occupations carry a vindictive, and fascist logic to punish communities through visible violence and also by erasing the small joys and livelihoods that keep them resilient. Both projects, shaped by an undercurrent of hostility toward Muslim identity, are not content with dominating territory, they seek to fracture the spirits. Apples and olives become dangerous in this calculus because they feed bodies and nourish hope too. Although it is clear now that India wants to choke our economy, make us helpless and completely dependent on them but we must take strong steps to resist this in whatever way possible. Every step should be taken in this very particular context.