Forgetting is easy for those who turn pages of history as though they are stories without blood. But for us, memory is survival. We cannot forget that our voice was silenced before it was ever heard. We cannot forget that instead of ballots, soldiers became our rulers. We cannot forget that the right to decide our own future was buried beneath military trucks landing on that cold October runway in Srinagar.

On the morning of 27 October 1947, when Indian aircraft touched down at Srinagar airport carrying the first wave of its soldiers, the earth beneath Kashmir shifted forever. To India, the landing is wrapped in the language of “rescue” and “integration.” But to us, the people who belong to these mountains and valleys, it was the beginning of a vindictive and ruthless military occupation, a day when our homeland was seized by bayonets and barbed wire rather than ballots or consent. No matter how people of the region see it or the reputed historians and authors have written about it, India has been lying shamelessly since that day about Kashmir. India’s favorite bedtime story till date remains the “voluntary accession” of Kashmir. A tale so oft-repeated in speeches and textbooks that even parrots in Delhi could recite it without missing a beat. According to this narrative, Kashmir’s people apparently threw rose petals on Indian troops as they landed in Srinagar on 27 October 1947, joyfully handing over their future to a state they had never consented to join. Except, of course, history tells us something entirely different. Every credible historian worth their ink has written that the accession was a hurried signature, extracted under duress, never ratified by the people, and certainly not a reflection of popular will. But India, the master playwright of political theatre, prefers costume over truth. It dresses up tanks as “protectors,” curfews as “peace-building,” and decades of resistance as “cross-border mischief.” Satire would be redundant here, for the reality mocks itself. What kind of “integration” requires a million soldiers stationed permanently on every street corner? What kind of “consent” needs to be defended by pellet guns, prison cells, and propaganda news anchors chanting nationalism like hymns? New Delhi insists Kashmir is its “integral part,” and yet the relationship looks less like marriage and more like a hostage situation, where the hostage-taker recites love poems to justify the rope around the hostage’s neck. India’s propaganda machine has churned out slogans, ceremonies, even “celebrations of accession day,” as though clapping loud enough could drown out the cries of an entire people. But beneath the glitter of these manufactured narratives lies the same unalterable truth: Kashmir was not embraced, it was seized. And no matter how many stories Delhi spins and no amount of tricolor paint can cover the cracks of occupation.

Anyways, we fought back, though the weight of men and machines was never in our favor. We faced armoured vehicles with stones, laws with prayers, bullets with our bare chests. We continue to do so. For theirs is the power of force, but ours is the power of truth. Ours is the knowledge that no army, no matter how vast, can erase a people’s longing for freedom.

Today, their project, apart from mere control, is to break our spirit. They seek to cut us from our faith, to strip away the Muslim identity that has always given us strength. They fear Islam because it teaches us to resist tyranny and to reject submission to false gods of power. And so they strike at our mosques, our culture, our very way of being, hoping to empty us from within.

We have carried seventy-six years of Indian chains, but we have not bowed. We have filled graveyards and still raised our voices. We have lived through curfews, sieges, and endless grief, but we have not surrendered. Because forgetting is a luxury the oppressed cannot afford. Memory is our weapon. It keeps alive the names of martyrs, the cries of mothers, the faith of fathers, the dreams of children yet unborn. We will continue to rise from the ruins. We will continue to carry the burden of remembrance until it breaks their empire. We will continue to press our chests against their bullets until freedom breathes again through our mountains.