Madhu Kishwar’s political engagement with J&K started with a fact-finding trip in 1994 as part of the Citizen for Democracy team that included Justice Tarkunde, Justice Rajender Sachar and journalist Kuldeep Nayar. She describes how her engagement with JKLF and other separatist began with the naïve belief that Muslims of Kashmir were victims of Congress party’s undemocratic and authoritarian interventions in Kashmir. But after she witnessed the politics of Islamic parties of Kashmir, she came to understand that they have no use for democracy, they only use democratic sounding rhetoric to couch their real agenda—which is to convert all of India into Dar-ul-Islam as part of Mission Ghazwa-E-Hind. She also describes how both the mainstream media as well as the Government of India knowingly avoided providing correct information on Pakistan inspired insurgency in Kashmir to people in the rest of India and how the bureaucratic and political establishment under Congress rule conspired to lend strength to secessionist politics in J&K.
