Kashmir was locked up on the night of
August 4, 2019, cut out from the world and turned into one big prison guarded
by over 700,000 Indian troops reinforced significantly preceding that fateful
August 5, 2019 when it took Amit Shah, the Indian union home minister, a little
over seven minutes to strip away the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of
the state and dissolution of the state itself and turning it into two inferior
appendages of the Indian federal government. The move was duly rubber stamped
by both houses of the Indian parliament aided by significant defections from
the ranks of opposition parties, and the myopic people of the country fed on
the diet of narrow rabid Hindu nationalism went on celebratory dizziness.
Days and weeks before, in Kashmir there
was a foreboding sense of an intrigue in works. Sending additional troops to an
already the most militarized zone in the world and ominous evacuation of all
non-locals, tourists, pilgrims, students, and laborers didn’t make sense unless
one where to imagine the worst. All those assurances by the state governor,
prior to the day, like all promises made by Indian representatives in Kashmir
from the inception, turned out to be patently dishonest, deceptive and
out-rightly false. Deception has throughout defined the Indian behavior towards
Kashmir right from the time when the then ruler of the state was forced to sign
an instrument of accession with the Indian union in 1947 that allowed Indian
forces to enter Kashmir. The instrument of accession had provided for
explicitly temporary provisions of very limited relationship between the state
and the Indian Union subject to a final status to be decided by the people
through a referendum.
That temporary accession was forced in
the wake of tribal raid on the state mainly in reaction to the inhumane ethnic
cleansing in Jammu province at the instigation of the Dogra ruler of the state
that changed the demography to the disadvantage of Muslims of the region. The
article 370 of the Indian constitution manifests the only link between the state
and the union, with former having its own separate constitution. Extension of
Indian laws, beyond those agreed, over the state or any change to the article
370 would require an approval by the state constituent assembly that had
dissolved itself in 1958. Though, successive Indians governments through legal
deception played havoc with that autonomy of the state but none had been
foolhardy until the rabid rightwing Modi government. They through their
historically steeped ignorant arrogance and a contrived vision of a Hindu India
seem to have followed the dictum ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ to
indulge in a legal heist without being aware of the ultimate costs of that sheer
stupidity.
The article 370 and autonomy
guaranteed to the state through it, entitled “Temporary provisions with respect
to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” restricts powers of the Indian government
over the state. To overcome those limitations, the Indian government played
legal sleight of so many hands that those moves would not stand the legal
scrutiny, if the Indian institutions including the judiciary had not been
hollowed out by the Modi regime. They used article 367 to narrowly reinterpret
the constitution with respect to the state to do away the requirement of the
consent of the state constituent assembly, which does not exist, to make
article 370 inoperative through the subsection (3) using the governor as the
state authority for consent, despite being an appointee and representative of
the union government and not of the state.
Had the government been confident
about what its representatives have been blurting out since August 5, 2019 that
the measures were for the benefit of the people, then why would be entire
population of Kashmir incarcerated and that legal fraud forced down the throats
through high-handed measures aimed at intimidation? A few basic facts merit
unbiased perusal with one fundamental being that the act of accession never ever
attained credence, acceptance, or legitimacy within Kashmir, which coupled with
an ugly haste for dominance and forced assimilation only hardened local
attitudes against the Indian state and its true intention. The first major
inflection point came when the Indian government embarked on its first illegal measure
in Kashmir. On August 9, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of the
state was dismissed on the orders of the Indian government through the office
of the head of the state. That besides an act of betrayal and deception also
lacked any legal sanctity. After his dismissal, Sheikh Abdullah spent next
twenty years in and out of various prisons; the Indian rule since then in the
state had all but consistency of an orchestrated charade.
The staged democracy in the state was
maintained through liberal dole outs, predetermined phantom elections using
Indian intelligence agencies as major conduits, which to keep things under
control bribed, and propped local politicians and then spied on them. The state
politicians maintaining charade for India were handsomely compensated but never
trusted. Successors of Sheikh Abdullah after his 1953 dismissal ran state
through allegiances, patronages and brutality and Indian governments surreptitiously
instigated the overt and covert process of erosion of the autonomy of the state
through salami tactics of one at a time. All those acts of duplicity on the part
of Indian government did nothing but harden the attitudes of the local
population that perceived those measures as acts of aggression against the people.
Nevertheless, it would be still some time before the state descended into all
engulfing violence that consumed all sections of the society. That would take a
few more acts of arrogant stupidity on part of the successive Indian
governments.
Through changed geopolitics in early
1970s, Sheikh Abdullah entered into an agreement with the union government of
Indira Gandhi that brought him back to power in the state, an act that latently
tarnished his legacy forever. Indian government after having learned nothing
from its recurrent misdeeds repeated what would turn out to be a humongous
blunder with consequences that would result in destructions and deaths. After
the death of Sheikh Abdullah in 1982, his son Farooq Abdullah became the chief
minister of the state who won a big mandate in the elections that he had called
in the following year. It was at that point when nationalists in India started
calling for the dismissal of Farooq Abdullah government. Indira Gandhi obliged
them by sending to the state a divisive figure, Jagmohan as the governor. He
wasted no time in engineering defections from the ruling party in the state and
installed an illicit government and subsequently assumed full powers once that
puppet alliance failed.
The ill-fated installation of Jagmohan
as governor not only disrupted the politics of the state when it barely had
started to look pseudo-normal but he also damaged the basic fabric of the
society in Kashmir. Despite all political upheavals, syncretic traditions in
Kashmir, which made the place unique, never lost their sheen. Jagmohan in his
capacity as governor through selective communal patronages played a big role in
disruption of that fabric of harmony leading to further alienation of the local
population. Further disaster came through ill-fated alignment of Farooq
Abdullah, leader of the National Conference and the then Indian ruling party
Congress in the state elections of 1987 that doomed the place to an eternal
violence. Farooq Abdullah an inherently weak politician, given to an easy life,
was loath to hard political fight; thus, to remain in power he chose to align
himself with the national ruling party despite knowing the intrinsic hatred
that people harbored for India. Anticipating the looming defeat at the hands of
opposition Muslim United Front, the ruling coalition resorted to massive
rigging in the elections that included incarceration and torture of representatives
of the opposition party. That act of deliberate heinousness brought in the
violence and disaster in Kashmir that no one would have ever imagined.
Some vested groups try to portray that
Kashmir fell to Islamic violence but nothing could be farther from truth. The
militancy took over Kashmir because of Indian blighted myopia. Left to no other
recourse, youth in Kashmir were left with no choice but to pick up guns to
fight Indian tyranny. Pakistan did provide arms and logistic support, which would
come at a cost. Kashmir, thereafter, was never same again. At the very start of
the violent rebellion 1989, the Indian state proved to be utterly clueless and
fragile, it collapsed to a degree that it failed to provide stability or
security to anyone. The most disastrous response from the Indian government came
through reappointment of Jagmohan as the state governor in January 1990 with
complete charge as the state government had resigned in protest. Jagmohan, true
to his distorted beliefs, started his term by unleashing brutality through
security forces with use of live ammunitions on protesting masses that resulted
in several massacres until even the Indian government had enough. Nevertheless,
Kashmir remained engulfed in a near-war in 1990s with causalities running into
tens of thousands. The acts of brutalities were committed without any compunction
and Kashmiris subjected to continuous subjugation by Indian security forces
with documented catalogues of tortures, excesses, extrajudicial murders, forced
disappearances, rapes committed against the civilian population.
The Indian government once again
started charade of electoral politics in late 1990s using brutal tactics to
force people into participation but it never even deigned to seriously address
the issues that had caused lost times and lives. The struggle against Indian domination
in Kashmir gradually changed from armed insurrection to peaceful unarmed
protest. But Indian security forces maintained their vehement unreformed brutal
zeal in dealing with unarmed protestors. That was apparent to the entire world
in 2008, 2010 and again in 2016. Brutality in 2016 marked a new low, the Indian
security forces introduced use of pellet guns to quell peaceful riots that has
left protestors maimed and blinded; despite, the apparent heinousness of
deploying such weaponry against unarmed civilians, Indian authorities have
refused even to contemplate any discontinuation.
Politics took a curious turn in 2014
when the Peoples Democratic Party entered into a coalition with the rabid
communal party of Modi to form the state government only to be ditched by the
latter when time was ripe to play another fraud on Kashmir. Armed with a bigger
majority than before in the Indian elections of 2019, the Modi government has
done away with legal niceties. The human made laws unlike laws that govern the
nature can and are subject to capricious violations when lawless persons become
in-charge. Modi steeped in the fundamentalism of extreme right wing ideology
was never going to bothered by constitutional restrictions. To overcome legal
restrictions, Modi and his wily protégé Amit Shah have coopted the Hindu
population to smother the rule of law. The constitutional coup by the Indian
government vis-a-vis Kashmir far from culmination rather marks the first step
of their cherished mission of humiliating and subjugating the population of
Kashmir into submission for having ‘denied’ the inalienable of India over the
province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine
valley.
If past more than 40 days are any
indication that mission is already in progress. Where in the world would be
incarceration of the entire people an acceptable norm and to have them deny the
right to access to the outside world, health care, or even the right to mourn
their dead? Politicians, lawyers, labor leaders, activists and even journalists
doing jobs have been subjected to indiscriminate incarcerations, with many
shifted to hostile prisons outside the state. Every move of the people is being
scripted to the detail, with Imams in local mosques being told the sermon they
could or could not use. Those living outside Kashmir are desperate to know the
welfare of their folks back home and the reckless statements from imprudent
Indian officials only add to those desperations and strain credulity. The state
governor is said to have stated on record that only terrorists use internet and
mobile phones. The truth is in their hearts they have actually declared all
Kashmiris as terrorists; how else can they explain mass incarceration and
denial of basic rights even to the people who until very recently ran show for
India in Kashmir? They did not spare 81 year Farooq Abdullah, who until the
other day would shout his Indian-ness.
The challenge remains for Kashmiris how
to counter the legal fraud that India committed in Kashmir? The only silver lining,
though very thin and faded, is that the excessive hubris of the Indian
government has once again pushed Kashmir and its perennial abuse by India on to
the world stage. International media to the considerable consternation in
Indian circles is relentlessly covering the Indian moral bankruptcy and its
brutal inhumane lock up of the entire Kashmiri population. Now would be the time
to maintain that coverage through continued exposure of Indian excesses and its
dubious propaganda. India might try to portray a hunky-dory picture of Kashmir
nothing can be farther from truth. Besides inhumane treatment of the people,
the Indian actions have destroyed the economy of Kashmir and jeopardized
livelihoods. If those are not acts of brutality then what else those could be?
Rajiv Kumar
