NEW DELHI -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended his government's controversial measure to strip the disputed Kashmir region of its statehood and special constitutional provisions in an Independence Day speech Thursday, as about 7 million Kashmiris stayed indoors for the 11th day of an unprecedented security lockdown and communications blackout.
In his live address from the capital's Mughal-era Red Fort, Modi said that Kashmir's previous status -- some political autonomy and a ban on outsiders buying land and taking public sector jobs in the Muslim-majority Himalayan region -- had fueled a movement for separatism and was unjust for Kashmiri women, because the law said that they lost their inheritance rights if marrying a person from outside the region.
"The old arrangement in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh encouraged corruption, nepotism but there was injustice when it came to rights of women, children, Dalits, tribal communities," Modi said in the speech marking 72 years since India achieved independence from British rule.
A lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir has been in place since Aug. 4, just before a presidential order to subsume the Muslim-majority region into India's federal government by revoking Article 370 of the constitution and downgrading the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories. A new law allows anyone to buy land there, which some Kashmiris fear could change the region's culture and demographics. Critics have likened it to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.
India's foreign ministry officials have said Kashmir is returning to normalcy, but The Associated Press and other news organizations operating in the region describe the severe constraints, including the suspension of internet, cellphone and landline services and steel and barbed-wire street blockades.
On the first Independence Day since the revocation of Kashmir's special status, the security restrictions in Srinagar were even more stringent. More than a dozen Hindu activists were detained as they tried to march to the city centre to celebrate, according to police officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to reporters.
In Pakistan, which shares divided Kashmir and has fought two wars with India over the region, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi described Modi as a key hurdle to peace and a resumption of dialogue between the rivals.
When asked whether the U.N. Security Council will be meeting on Friday to discuss Kashmir, Qureshi told Geo News TV station that according to his information, New Delhi was using diplomatic channels to oppose any such session.
Pakistanis and residents of Pakistani-administered Kashmir on Thursday observed "the Black Day" in solidarity with Kashmiris in the Indian-controlled portion.
While daily protests have erupted in Indian-administered Kashmir, Modi has received widespread public support in other parts of the country.
"Article 370 should have been removed a long time ago, but better late than never," Amarjeet Singh, a businessman from New Delhi, said outside the Red Fort as India finalized preparations on Wednesday.
"It is good. Everyone will be benefited by this, because every common man will be able to work there and start business there," Singh said.
On Thursday, turning to his agenda to make India a $5 trillion economy in the next five years, Modi said that the changes in Kashmir will help the region contribute more to India's development.
"In the last 70 years we became a 2 trillion-dollar economy, but in the last five years, we added 1 trillion dollars to the economy. This gives me the confidence of becoming a $5 trillion economy in the coming years," Modi said.
The prime minister, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won a landslide victory in general elections in May, also announced the creation of a new Chief of Defence Staff to co-ordinate the country's security operations.
He also made a pitch for restructuring India's electoral system so that state and lower house of Parliament elections are held simultaneously rather than on separate timetables.
