A lawmaker from Indian Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that his colleagues are “excited because they will now be able to get married to white-skinned women from Kashmir”.

In a video that went viral after the hardliner BJP-led government abolished Article 370 of the Indian Constitution — lifting restrictions that barred non-Kashmiri individuals from permanently shifting to the majority-Muslim region — Vikram Singh Saini can be seen speaking at an event to celebrate the scrapping of Kashmir’s special status.

“The [BJP] workers are very excited and those who are bachelors, they can get married there. There is no issue now. If a woman from there [Kashmir] got married to a man from Uttar Pradesh, her citizenship would be revoked,” the lawmaker can be heard as saying.

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“Muslim party workers should rejoice in the new provisions. They can now marry white-skinned women of Kashmir. There should be celebrations. Everyone should celebrate… be it Hindus or Muslims. This is something the entire country should be celebrating,” he says, which is followed by applause.

Social media in India has been flooding with misogynistic remarks ever since the India government revoked Article 370 and 35A.

The development now allows people from all over India to permanently move to occupied Kashmir and start businesses there. Natives of the troubled valley fear that it may lead to the ethnic cleansing of Muslims to transform the region from majority-Muslim to majority-Hindu.