by Taha Iqbal
“We have taken this decision as a family. A new era has begun,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaimed in an address to the nation on August 8, 2019. It is not lost on me that families are extremely important to the vast majority of South Asians. But, maybe sometimes irrelevant family members should shut up and allow individual members to make decisions about matters that affect them the most.
On Monday, August 5, 2019, Minister of Home Affairs and President of the Bharatiya Janata Party Amit Shah informed parliament that President Ram Nath Kovind had signed a decree effectively abolishing articles 35 A and 370 of the constitution. Article 370 allowed India’s only Muslim majority state to make its own laws in all matters except for communications, defence, finance and foreign affairs. Jammu and Kashmir was legally exempt from the Indian constitution. As a result, the state was able to establish a separate constitution and flag. Crucially, it enabled the Kashmiri government to deny property rights to outsiders. Article 35 A can be understood as an extension of Article 370. It allowed the state legislature to define permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir. In doing so, the local legislature was given the authority to forbid outsiders from permanently settling, buying land, holding local government jobs or winning education scholarships in the region. Furthermore, female residents (and their future children) were barred from property rights if they married individuals from outside the state. In short, both these constitutional provisions allowed Kashmiris to decide how they wanted to govern themselves and enabled them to prevent demographic change that would compromise their ability to actualise the former. The Lok Sabha also passed the Jammu and Kashmir (Reorganisation) Bill, 2019 with 370 votes in favour and 70 against it. The Jammu and Kashmir state will now be divided into two “union territories” directly ruled by New Delhi. The Jammu and Kashmir union territory will include the Hindu-majority Jammu region and will have a legislative assembly. The Buddhist-majority Ladakh region, which has a considerable population of Shia Muslims, will also be a union territory, but without the privilege of its own assembly.
Before Monday’s decision, prominent Kashmiri leaders were jailed or put under house arrest. Reuters reports have put the number of arrested at approximately 500. Internet and communication services along with cable networks were also shut down in anticipation of widespread unrest. An additional 38,000 troops were deployed in the region. Reports suggest that Indian law enforcement used tear gas and pellet guns to disperse a crowd of 10,000 protesters that had gathered in the state capital of Srinagar. One can write a book on how Kashmiris are caught up between the interests of different states that are unwilling to hear what they have to say. However, amidst the overblown ultra-nationalistic and at times jingoistic responses to the new status quo from either side of the border, there is an urgent need to examine the justifications given by the Indian government for the steps taken and the more obvious reasons for why this was done. The Bharatiya Janata Party led government coalition claims that articles 370 and 35A have resulted in Kashmir becoming a breeding ground for separatism, nepotism and corruption. All of this has led to Kashmir being left behind the nation in terms of development.
Our general assumptions about the state largely fall in line with this government argument. In the popular imagination, Kashmir largely resembles a less intense war zone with regular occurrences of spontaneous or planned violence. The only difference between the imaginaries of populations across the border seems to be about which actor is responsible for the violence: the Indian military or Pakistani supported terrorist militias. However, dear reader, you might be surprised about how developed Jammu and Kashmir actually is. According to census data, the state’s poverty rate stood at 10.35% in 2011-12 compared to the national average of 22%. Bihar, Assam, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat (where Mr. Modi hails from) all had poverty rates higher than Jammu and Kashmir’s. Per capita income in the region is also higher than that of Bihar, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. The state does even better in terms of social indicators. Life expectancy in Kashmir is 73.5 years while the national average is 68.7 years. Kashmir does better than all of the states mentioned earlier in this category. The infant mortality rate in Kashmir is also significantly lower than the national average and is lower than the states mentioned bar Maharashtra. 8.7% of women between the ages of 20 and 24 years were married before the age of 18 years, compared to the national average of 26.8%, according to data from the National Family Health Survey IV. In Bihar, this figure was 42.5%, and in Gujarat 24.9%, data shows. Mr. Amit Shah also alleged in his speech that Kashmiri children were being denied an education because of the state legislature’s decision to not accept the Right to Education Act. However, he failed to mention that children in the state are provided free and compulsory education until Class 8. The gross enrolment ratio in senior secondary schools is also higher than the national average. Jammu and Kashmir has 23 colleges per 100,000 residents which is much better than Bihar’s 7 and Assam’s 14.
Mr. Shah is correct about two things though. The state does have a high government debt burden and fares poorly in attracting private investment. However, both of these are a consequence of the security situation in the region. The state has to borrow capital from the central government because of its huge security expenditure. Private investors are also weary of entering a market that is plagued with violence-induced uncertainties. What is apparent at this point, however, is that Kashmir is not necessarily underdeveloped and even the areas in which it is lagging behind have nothing to do with Article 370 and Article 35A of the constitution. So, what about separatism then? There are many reasons for why separatist tendencies exist in the Kashmiri population. The first and most obvious one, is oppression at the hands of the Indian state. According to Mr. Modi himself, 42000 people have died in the last 3 decades due to violence alone. There are reports of illegal detention, torture and rape at the hands of security forces. I won’t explore this issue further because of precisely how well documented this is. What is relevant is that members of the population resort to violence against the state because of the actions of the state and the unwillingness of the state to change its behaviour and hold criminals operating within it accountable. Pakistani support for violent groups is also a reason for why members of the population become terrorists. Pakistani patronage gives violent dissidents access to resources that they otherwise would not have had. Notice however, that not only do both these broad reasons have nothing to do with both articles of the constitution, they will only be exacerbated further in response to the Indian government’s actions. With most of their political leaders in some form of state-mandated confinement and a crackdown on media, communication services and any form of peaceful organisation, the separatist sentiment in Kashmir will only get worse. This will also increase pressure on the Pakistani government to do something, given how important Kashmir is to Pakistani identity and therefore the Pakistani population and may lead to further support being given to these groups if the states current attempts at taking the issue up at international forums fails.
Why would the Modi government do this then? Jammu and Kashmir has been a focal point for Hindu nationalism ever since Partition. While Jinnah and the Muslim League considered that being a Muslim-majority state it should have been part of Pakistan and that Partition would remain unachieved so long as the whole of Kashmir remained under Indian rule, for the Hindu nationalists the state was inseparably a part of India. The transfer of one more state to Pakistan would make it stronger and India weaker. The Bharatiya Janata Party has a history of opposition to Article 370. In 1953, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, died in a jail in Srinagar where he was detained by the Sheikh Abdullah government for protesting against Kashmir being an autonomous republic within India. A year before his death, Mukherjee was the president of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh – the predecessor of the present day Bharatiya Janata Party. He saw it as a threat to national unity and famously proclaimed, “Ek desh mein do Vidhan, do Pradhan aur Do Nishan nahi challenge.” There is a strong element of territoriality within the ideology of Hindu nationalism and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Hindutva is not only based on ethno-religious categories but also on the belief that India occupies a sacred land whose frontiers matter as much as religion and language. Hence the demand for Akhand Bharat (complete, undivided India), which emerged in the 1950s and which implied that Partition should be undone to restore the natural extension of the sacred land that is Bharat. Such measures inevitably allow the BJP to secure its more hard-line electoral base. These actions will also appease party activists and politicians who lean towards the extreme right. Splitting Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories can be viewed as a unique attempt at gerrymandering to prove electoral outcomes for the BJP. We would be remiss however to exclusively focus on the Hindu right wing as has been the case with most coverage on the issue. Commentators have pointed out that this may also be an attempt by the BJP to divert criticism from India’s lack lustre economic performance. India’s economic growth cooled sharply in the first three months of this year. Gross domestic product increased 5.8 per cent from the same quarter the previous year, down from the 6.6 per cent growth rate recorded in the last quarter of the 2018 calendar year. The Indian economy also faces three huge problems: an ever-increasing population, deteriorating infrastructure and public sector corruption. Therefore, economic growth does not necessarily translate into a better quality of life for the vast majority of Indians. Triggering controversy in Kashmir takes media and public focus away from this difficult conversation and enables the BJP to dominate positive headlines. And yes, most headlines are positive. Comparing the Indian media to the work of Pewdiepie would be a disgrace to Pewdiepie (although he too has given shout outs to fascist organisations). There is also a crackdown on dissenting voices. The founders of NDTV, a channel that has been quite critical of the Modi government were prevented from leaving the country because of a “money-laundering” case. Videos published by the BBC have been called “fake news” by elected officials. As a result, most Indians are currently accessing news that portrays this as a move that was long overdue and will be in the national interest.
We must remember that Kashmiris are the primary stakeholders in this situation. They have been historically discriminated against and oppressed. They have not consented to Article 35A and Article 370 being revoked. They have been denied access to information, which is a fundamental right in any democracy. They have been stripped off their right to protest against this decision by a government that is framing its actions as necessary for the prosperity of these people. What has happened to Kashmiris historically and what is happening to them currently is unjustifiable. No actor has cared about their dignity as human beings, has respected their autonomy or stood up for their right to self-determination. We should all be outraged by what is happening in Kashmir. But we must also remain cognisant of our own shortcomings. Because there are parts in Pakistan where citizens disappear never to be seen again. There are elected representatives of vulnerable communities who have been jailed for simply trying to make things better. There are criminals amongst those responsible for protecting all of us who have not been held responsible for their actions. We must criticise the actions of oppressors, but we must also introspect, lest we have our own version of Kashmir soon.