“How does one censor rage?”: How India’s surveillance and control practices have restricted the rights of Muslims in Jammu & Kashmir

This paper examines how India’s post-2019 surveillance and information-control practices in Jammu and Kashmir—including internet shutdowns, CCTV and drone monitoring, social-media surveillance, and media crackdowns—affect the rights of the region’s Muslim-majority population. Using a qualitative literature review, it synthesizes scholarship on settler colonialism and spaciocide, human-rights documentation from organizations such as Amnesty International and OHCHR, and investigative journalism with direct access to Kashmir. It argues that these practices operate not as isolated security measures but as an interlocking system of governance that disciplines movement, suppresses dissent, and encourages self-censorship. The paper finds that this surveillance architecture implicates multiple rights protected under international human-rights law, including expression, privacy, due process, education, and political participation. It then evaluates the limited effectiveness of current international responses and proposes policy recommendations for the Indian state, the United Nations, international human-rights organizations, and technology platforms. The paper concludes that durable resolution requires not only stronger protections against repression but serious engagement with Kashmiri self-determination.