A Continued Saga of Betrayal in Kashmir: an update

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

Continued saga of deception in Kashmir

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 in the days preceding that fateful August 5, 2019 when it took Amit Shah, the 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 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 forced in the wake 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 that agreed, over the state or any change to the article 370 would require an approval by the state constituent assembly. 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 steep 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 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 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 the first illegal measure in Kashmir. On August 9, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of the state was dismissed on the orders of 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 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 not nothing but harden the attitudes of the local population that perceived those measures as nothing but act of aggressions against people. Nevertheless, it would be still some time before state descended into all engulfing violence that consumed all sections of the society.  That would take a few more acts of arrogance stupidity on the part of 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 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 called in the following year. It was at that point when nationalist in India started for calling for dismissal of Farooq Abdullah government. Indira Gandhi obliged them by sending to the state a devise figure, Jagmohan as the governor. He was 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 normal but he also damaged the basic fabric of the society in Kashmir. Despite all political upheavals, syncretic traditions in Kashmir, which made 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 lead National Conference and Indian ruling party Congress in the state elections of 1987 that doomed the state 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 elections that included incarceration and torture of representatives from 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 resigned in protest. Jagmohan, true to his distorted beliefs, started his term by unleashing brutality through security forces by use 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 committed against 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 2016 when Peoples Democratic Party entered into coalition with 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 the inalienable of India over the province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine valley.

If past 35 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 outside world, health care, or even the right to mourn their dead? Politicians, lawyers, labor leaders, activists and even journalists doing jobs have subjected 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 terrorist; 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?

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 Indian government has once again pushed Kashmir and its perennial abuse by India on to the world stage. The coverage against the Indian moral bankruptcy and its brutal inhumane lock up of the entire Kashmiri population is being covered by international media to the considerable heartburns in Indian circles. Now would the time to maintain that coverage through relentless 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 

       

 

 

 

 

    

Parochial road to destruction

Prior to August 5, 2019 there was a foreboding of an intrigue at work in Kashmir. Thousands of extra security personnel were being deployed to a place that is already one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world. That coupled with selective tweezing out of all non-Kashmiris, tourists, pilgrims, students, and laborers alike added to the uneasiness among the locals, notwithstanding the assurances of the state Governor. He along with the other minions of his administration, with the state being under president’s rule, kept on reiterating that people should not pay any attention to the ‘alleged’ rumors until that morning when the union Home Minister announced the stripping away not only the constitutionally enshrined autonomy but also doing away with the entity of the state and reducing it into two emerging entities as the appendages of the federal government.

 

It is difficult to know but not hard to imagine the reaction of the population in Kashmir, whose incarceration started on the eve of that fateful day and they remain in that condition to this day, stripped of not only their autonomy and the state but also their connections to the outside world. Reports coming out from the place suggest elaborate security procedures have resulted in redrawing of the zones with the generous use of concertina wires minimizing the local interactions. Virtually people have been forced to suspend their biology till the administration hopes them to accept the fait accompli. While it is painful to imagine the sufferings of those requiring immediate medical attentions, such conditions in general lead increased stress levels in general population.

 

Kashmir had been under virtual siege starting in 1989 after decades of myopic policies of the Indian establishment. As I personally remember, those days as a faculty member in Kashmir University, every waking hour would be characterized by a gnawing pit in the stomach and a wish that India had not so messed up the place. Since then Kashmir had seen marked increases in the cases with psychiatric and mental health issues that must have only aggravated under the current conditions of incarceration and isolation. The Lancet, one of the premier medical journals in the world has raised the concerns about the consequences of fear and uncertainty in Kashmir in an editorial in its latest issue. In the editorial the issue of over 50 000 deaths since the start of insurgency since 1989, besides the gross human rights violations by state security forces and armed groups including sexual violence, enforced disappearances and acts of terrorism have also been raised. The immediate concern remains the well being of the people currently held in complete incommunicado, irrespective of the political leanings, which must be further lending to the helplessness and stress.

 

In a related development, another reputed medical journal, the BMJ in its editorial has raised similar concerns about medical emergencies in Kashmir based on a letter from 18 physicians across the India who have warned that the grim situation ‘had led to a blatant denial of the right to healthcare.’ They also raised concerns about the consequences of the total unending clampdown. The Lancet has earlier also waded into the issues of health and safety in conflict zones around the world. It famously published seminal studies on the adverse health consequences of the Iraq war, where it showed precisely death of at least 116 903 Iraqi non-combatants and more than 4800 coalition forces over 8-year course. It was somehow reaction to the editorial on Kashmir situation that drew an illogical response from Indian medical fraternity including its premier body, the Indian Medical Association that penned a letter to the editor “withdrawing its esteem of the Lancet”.

 

Scientists objecting to facts presented in a scientific journal on the basis of nationalist tribal political leanings not only represent a disappointing trend but a downright dangerous one. History is fraught with examples when scientists shook forsake their learnings and scientific truths for the sake of nationalism and identity politics only to lend to eventual disasters. Scientific facts are not bound by tribal and nationalist sensibilities; the nations that understand those simple facts are those who forge ahead with inclusive welfare of the society. Parochialism only ensures a road to destruction.

Rajiv Kumar 

'The others' in Fascism

The first principle of fascism is to make people 'the others'. 'The others' can try no matter how hard and ingratiate themselves but 'the others' can never become them. If they start considering 'the others' as them, then the entire fascist project will flounder. Invented crisis and siege are what fuel their fascism.

In Kashmir, the fascists didn't have problem with avowed separatists, They were already designated enemies. it was the loyalists whose proximity was contentious so they had to make them 'the others' and told loudly that they will never be them. Where was the problem? It's their religion that made even loyalists 'the others'.

Things should have been clear when a highly erudite, civilized and cultured patriot like Hamid Ansari was made 'the other'. Loyalists in Kashmir were just small fries.

Hannah Arendt could have explained it better.

A fascist makover

The man, who used disingenuous schemes to oust his predecessor from his own party and then used his office to foment, ignite and incite the worst riots against Muslims in the country went on to use that notoriety to tighten the stranglehold on the state in parallel with running a mafia like government indulging in extrajudicial methods to eliminate any potential rivals or to implicate the officials who dared to stand up to him, ultimately conned overtly communal population of the country to put him power at the center and brazenly used that power to empower worst of the worst and played havoc with education and research with precedent given to obscurantism; inflicted the pain on the most vulnerable through cruel and ill intentional demonetization; damaged reputation of the country through hair brained policies in managing external affairs; almost started a war against nuclear powered neighboring country for which masses fed on mescaline of crude nationalism rewarded him with even bigger mandate; then he went to use that affirmation to emasculate Kashmir by decimating it into an inferior status and incarcerating the entire population, separatists and nationalists alike, in a naked aggressive attempt to humiliate and subjugate it under majority as a step on the road to make the entire country a one nation state that never existed in a text book template to give the country a fascist makeover in which he co-opted his willing enablers who have gladly forsaken any sign of humanity and civility and instead donned the uniform of naked crudeness and aggression. Anything for fascism.

Legal fraud in Kashmir

Preceding August 5, 2019 that will add to the burgeoning catalogue of dark days in Kashmir, there was a foreboding sense of an intrigue in works. Sending of additional troops to an already the most militarized zone in the world and more ominously the very selective evacuation of tourists from everywhere in Kashmir in midst of a pilgrimage season didn’t make sense unless one were to imagine the worst. And with stripping away of not only the autonomy enshrined in the Indian constitution but also the entity of the state, what the extremist right wing Indian government did was worse than the worst. 

Armed even with a bigger majority than before in the elections of May 2019, the Modi government went around surreptitiously to commit a legal fraud to render the article 370 of the Indian constitution that governed the relations between the union and state and article 35a that protected the state from alien incursions through purchase and employments ineffective. They went even one step further by decreeing the nullification of the existence of the state itself by its bifurcation into two and downgrading the status of the two emerging entities into that of appendages of the federal government. All this was done after incarcerating the entire population of Kashmir through strictest enforced curfew by armed to the teeth Indian security forces supplemented by concertina wires. People in Kashmir have been forced to suspend their biology till India consolidates its grip on the region.

Prior to the day when the Indian government issued that draconian decree and presented to the Indian parliament for rubber stamping, a kind of fatalism had taken hold in Kashmir. People in general refused to contemplate such a possibility as they believed too much, which now turned to be a completely misplaced, in the provisions of the Indian constitution. The truth has been that the successive Indian governments have used those very constitutional provisions to strip away the autonomy and freedoms using salami tactics of one at a time. The adherence to constitutional guarantees and rule of laws are subject to the very acceptance by the people who are in power. Those human made laws unlike laws of nature can and are subject to capricious violations if lawless persons become in charge.

Modi steeped in the fundamentalism of extreme right wing ideology was never going to be the one bothered by constitutional restrictions. To overcome those legal limitations, Modi and his wily protégé Amit Shah coopted the Hindu population of the country into  the project of smothering the rule of law. The announcement of the decision about abrogation of the Jammu and Kashmir as an entity was greeted by celebrations by the Hindu majority. Even the opposition parties in the parliament barring a few individual exceptions were tepid in their objections to the changes that were  brought in by the government. The opposition parties actually saw defections from their ranks as some figures rushed in to congratulate the government for the measures to strangulate the entire population of Kashmir.

The constitutional coup by the Indian government vis-a-vis Kashmir far from being a culmination rather marks the first step of their cherished mission of humiliating and subjugating the population of Kashmir into submission for having defied the inalienable right of India over the province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine valley. Their next logical step would be to jig electoral boundaries to give an ascendency to Jammu region over Kashmir followed by attainment of a majority for the Hindu right wing in the assembly of now an inferior territory to be ruled directly by diktats from the Indian capital. In historical terms, the step is akin to arrest of Yusuf Shah Chak instead of being treated sovereign by the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Since that time Kashmir has been unable to throw off the yolk of foreign occupation-domination.

Modi, Shah and Kashmir

Ascension or rather re-ascension of Modi and Shah, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic doppelgänger, has caused unlikely flutters at the unlikeliest of places. In Kashmir, suddenly both separatists and collaborators have come together in fawning of the criminal duo in the Delhi durbar. The paeans seem to be flowing uninterrupted and the two of them, who in a civil world would be spending their time in hard labor wearing prison outfits, are being praised for their vision and virility. The scene has a feeling of been taken straight from A Tale of Two Cities, where Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! 

On the collaborator front that boy wonder Omar Abdullah, over the objections of his own father, seems to be leering a stitch up with Modi-Shah. One wonders how early the amnesia strikes the shameless tribe, otherwise that dimwit would remember the humiliation that visited Muftis after their Faustian bargain with Modi. What could be more discomfiting than the people shunning the funeral of Mufti Sayeed in his own home? Or is that Omar Abdullah doesn’t want too many attendees if and when his father leaves this world? One could never be sure about the devilish plans of a progeny. 

Why would suddenly separatists start seeing light in that thuggish duo, who essentially captured the throne in Delhi based on the atrocities unleashed on Muslims in Gujarat during riots of 2002? And Amit Shah as the state home minister was put in jail for orchestrating stage managed encounters. But then we do live in a post truth world or else we have crossed an alternate dimension and no one told me about that, but about one thing I am absolutely sure, Modi and Shah will have nothing but malice towards Kashmir. Sooner that hard fact is understood, better it would be for all concerned.

Dark cave and a monster

Just before the Indian election results were out on May 23, 2019, there was a spurt of articles in international media highlighting the true nature of Modi’s personality, divisive and polarizing, given to hyperboles, with an intrinsic hatred for anything intellectual, unapologetic Hindu nationalist, with scant respect of either truth or decency. It was not that international media had suddenly turned against Modi but rather analyses were based on observations of the person who built his entire life on total deceptions where his frequent claims to contradictory version of his own life didn’t add up to a logical truth. But given that in the five years of his first term he multiple times obliterated the borders between myth and history, unintentionally or intentionally distorted the history and historical figures, it hardly surprises anyone that he would add layers to his arid life built on tunnel vision that would not add up. 

While it would be hard to not acknowledge the gargantuan scale of his win yet it would be, at the same time, hard not to understand the power of his singularly divisive agenda of fear and hatred, inculcation of victim hood in Hindu psyche and priming it for retribution against what they call as a millennium of foreign domination, in relegating the real issues of governance to the background. From north to south and east to west, people voted for Modi for creation of a Hindu nation and assigning his massive victory to anything else simply doesn’t count, it’s an out loud message to minorities and dissenters that notion of an inclusive India had gone far too long. 

The image of Modi as savior of Hindu didn’t built up in last five years of his rule. The foundation of that image was laid when he went on air on that fateful day of the Godhra train burning and demanded charred bodies brought back to the state capital of his Gujarat; then he let hell loose on the Muslims of the state in the following days. The camps set up for the escaping Muslims were out loudly described by Modi as children producing factories and Hindus of the state roared in approval and the rest of the country’s majority people took a notice of him. From that point on it was a potent mix of business and ultra Hinduism.

His dominant government in Delhi since 2014 might have not fulfilled many of the promises, but he didn’t waver in his vision of division and cruelty. He maintained a steadied silence when his followers embarked on lynchings and killings overtly on the basis of religion; he unleashed a down right economic cruelty when he made 86 percent of people’s money redundant and famously made fun of it. Steve Forbes called that act as awful and immoral but nothing Modi ever did could be termed as Moral. How many people can forget a desperate call by Ahsan Jaffry to Modi when Hindu marauders attacked the Muslim dominated area during the 2002 riots in Gujarat only to be taunted? The only issue on which Modi remained steadfast in past years was to show the minorities their place and to strangulate all institutions of secularism, turn education and history into farce, fill scientific conferences with sessions on mythology.

The people voted in overwhelming numbers through the breadth and length for Modi, as a brilliant analyst called, they bought his vision of Hinduism hook, line and stinker; anyone trying to cloak it with a patina of vision probably doesn’t understand the term visionary. Nehru was a visionary, who built the edifice of democracy in a country full of contradictions yet didn’t become an autocrat. India might survive another five years of total domination of Modi, it will emerge a different place with scathed minorities. Five years is a long time and given his propensity for bluster and awol at the time of attacks on minorities, the country for now is headed  into a dark cave without knowing where it does end. Those from the majority who voted for Modi with gusto should not get too complacent, strong men need to feed their egos and find scapegoats for failures and never hesitate to turn their hoodlums  on anyone. It’s like you created a Frankenstein’s monster.

Exit polls of hatred

It is likely that those exit polls were mere wishes of the bootlicking media or perhaps an exercise in enriching themselves through stock market manipulation. On the latter account, the international situation might have rained on their aspirations.

But one cannot discount the possibility of those exit polls being true. One just has to imagine the ramification of that reality. This was not an election where sinister motives were cloaked under a blanket of progress and inclusiveness.

Communalism of the worst kind was in open display; the hatred particularly against Muslims was the theme of the entire campaign. Maligning of history and progressive historical figures remained foremost on their agenda.

If Modi wins that means Indians will have voted for that unhinged hate and bigotry without any excuse. Not that they voted for anything else in 2014. Lest they forget, the worst dictator in the history was approved by his people repeatedly for his zealousness for violence against the vulnerable. That didn't stop from him from ending ignominiously.

Unraveling of a malevolent clown

Modi has lost his mind or to put in simple terms, he has become mad; he’s behaving on the campaign trail like a panic stricken barmy nut. The most crucial phases of the current elections are almost; the question is why all of a sudden he has become so pathetic? Not that he was not always pathetic but there’s a symptom in his rantings that alternate with his self-pitying groveling. That has all of a sudden become a comic spectacle.

At this point, it wouldn’t matter much whether he wins as everyone has witnessed him into turning a complete lunatic. The metamorphosis of Modi from an authoritarian kook to a raving lunatic remains a mystery or perhaps not or maybe he knows something that we don’t; maybe the truth is about to catch up with him and five years of deceitful fudging of economic data were not enough to save him from falling in an abyss. Truth be told, he dragged everyone into the abyss with him. Surprise remains, why everyone is surprised?

Didn’t he use deceit to evict his predecessor to become the chief minister in Gujrat? Didn’t he incite and preside over genocide in the aftermath of Ghodra tragedy and didn’t he create an atmosphere of fear and terror during his time in Gujrat? Didn’t as the prime minister in last five years usher in an ambience of hate and criminality? Didn’t he choose to not utter a word when his followers unleashed lynching in the name of cow? Didn’t he remain silent when intellectuals opposed to him were murdered? Then, surprise to what end? We might as well enjoy the spectacle of his mental unraveling; the malevolent clown might yet win to continue his vision of hatred and deceit.