In order to just hang in there, will New Delhi henceforth be guided only by mistrust in dealing with the people of Kashmir? Will a militarised dispensation, under which will flourish the “new politics” conceptualised by the likes of Amit Shah, the Union home minister, be the new normal?
“We are back at 1947,” said a disgusted journalist in the north Kashmir town of Baramulla. The sentiment is encountered across the famous, and now deeply troubled, Vale of Kashmir. (Identities of the people spoken to for this report cannot be disclosed for fear of consequences for them.)

On October 26, 1947, forced by military circumstances imposed by newly created Pakistan and having being thwarted in his design to remain independent, the J&K ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, had signed the Instrument of Accession to join his kingdom with newly independent India under specific conditions.

The essence of this document was formalised in the shape of Article 370 after prolonged debate in India’s Constituent Assembly — which means a compact was arrived at, and now stands violated.

The question people in Kashmir have begun asking is whether the choice made by them in 1947 needs to be re-visited. “It has been an illusion,” they say.

With Sheikh Abdullah marshalling popular opinion, in 1947 the Kashmiris put their faith in secular India rather than Islamic Pakistan, although the latter has continued to attract the allegiance of a small section since then. This section has now come alive.
 

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CPI-M leader Sitram Yechury (left) with party colleague in Kashmir

The Government of India last month when it ended J&K’s special status — which had been a condition of joining the then Dominion of India — guaranteed though Article 370, and the subsequent Presidential Order of 1954 (alongside the Delhi Agreement of 1952 that received endorsement from our Parliament as well as Kashmir’s Constituent Assembly).

Jettisoning this compact of provisions, which together delineate the pathway for J&K to become an “integral” part of India, has caused serious injury to the Constitution’s basic structure since this pathway is an essential building block of our federalism, historically and juridically.

The tampering of such magnitude, amounting to ham-handed constitutional annexation for which there is no explicable justification, can raise speculation about the very status of J&K since the state joined India through accession and Article 370. If this was not available, the action of the Maharaja on October 26, 1947 (to accede to India) may have been wholly different.

Aside from questions of history and constitutionality, at the purely human level and at the level of human rights, practically the entire Kashmir valley has been reduced to a militarised spectacle from the first days of August, causing serious injury to the notion of the protection of life and personal liberty which Article 21 of the Constitution.
 

The sloth of the apex court was visible when the personal liberty of thousands was at stake

This is arguably the most important aspect of India as a constitutional entity. And yet, literally thousands of our Kashmiri citizens have been locked up by the state, and have been fired on by pellet guns — which the government belatedly acknowledged — if not guns with bullets, which the state strenuously denies, though there is no way to verify in conditions of curfew and communications blackout.

Unfortunately, our Supreme Court has slept through it all. It has become the real Rip van Winkle of our times as far as protecting the life and liberty of our citizens is concerned. In the past fortnight, as many as 14 Kashmir-related cases have been filed in the Supreme Court. These relate to the constitutional crisis imposed on the people by the regime, as well as repression and the suppression of human rights which have followed as a matter of course.

The top court has not disregarded them. It intends to hear them, it assures us. But, when? Sometime in October, it says. This is bizarre. It may have been expected that when the country is faced with a politically kinetic development of life-shattering proportions such as Kashmir, the Supreme Court would have moved with despatch, and would have wanted to be heard by our citizens on one of the most material of cases of the post-independence era with a sense of urgency.

But it chose to remain slothful. More, the sloth of the apex court was visible when the personal liberty of thousands was at stake. And this was at a time when there were reports that even eleven-year old boys were being taken to the lock-up from their homes as the government showed unbounded enthusiasm to safeguard the country’s security.

As matters stand, there are more than a dozen petitions challenging the Centre’s action in respect of J&K. But even if there had been no petition, a court which is alive would have been expected to take its responsibilities to the people of India with a greater sense of seriousness and sobriety. It would have innovated to plough into the question of Kashmir created by the government in a delusionary moment.

This was expected of a court whose lineage boasts Justice Krishna Iyer, who blazed the trail of jurisprudence in India with the idea of public interest litigations. In contrast, today we have a court which is demonstrably sluggish when there are more than a dozen appeals before it, including those relating to personal liberty.
 

National security advisor Ajit Doval in South Kashmir

Just look at the story of CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s recent habeas corpus writ petition in respect of the safety of his colleague Yusuf Tarigami, a respected and prominent politician from southern Kashmir who is widely regarded as a voice of sanity. Tarigami has not been heard of in weeks.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi permitted Yechury to visit his colleague in Kashmir in order to satisfy himself that no harm had come to the senior leader. But the court also practically wagged its finger at Yechury, warning him not to cross the line, warning him to ensure that he engage in no other activity and to avoid political activity altogether. Why? Because the situation in Kashmir is very “sensitive”.

Does this not suggest that the uppermost layer in its DNA is to be too respectof the government’s sensitivities? This at a time when the court will be hearing cogently argued appeals by the government’s opponents — especially that of the National Conference — on the question of recent developments in Kashmir can hardly inspire confidence.

Issuing an instruction to the leader of one of the oldest political parties of the country who has never shown a proclivity for irresponsible actions or cheap theatrics is to undercut the value of the party system in our democracy.

Yechury is no rabble-rouser. He is no terrorist. The Supreme Court could have righted the balance somewhat in the favour of democrats if it had imposed no conditions on the CPI(M) leader and looked the other way if he addressed a few citizens, or even a press conference in the valley. The government needed to be told a few plain truths.

What an irony. Rahul Gandhi is forcibly turned away from Kashmir by the security forces at the Srinagar airport. The dozen top leaders of opposition parties accompanying him are shown the door. The media with them, the women included, are roughed up. Yechury is spoken to sternly by the Chief Justice without provocation. But national security advisor Ajit Doval is permitted to be photographed displaying the common touch with villagers at a roadside in South Kashmir. Voila. There goes democracy.
—
*Senior Delhi-based journalist. This article first appeared in The Asian Age

Courtesy: https://www.counterview.net

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In medical emergencies hospitals are practically out of reach. Vehicles ferrying patients can’t easily get past militarised check-points. A human rights issue is looming. Journalists are under tight monitoring. Controlled news is the order of the day.

A burst of gunfire can be clearly heard in a recent BBC television report. The police have not fired a single shot (since Kashmir’s special status became extinct earlier this month), says the government. Then, did BBC doctor the video, or did another uniformed force let go a volley on protesters? Or, was it the other way round- armed militants concealing among protesters shooting at the security forces? There are no details forthcoming, or even an accusation against BBC. Just blanket denial.

In the fog of one-sided propaganda, facts are a casualty. Political sources no longer exist when communications are down. Shah Faesal, a young bureaucrat-turned politician trying to leave the country, was arrested at Delhi airport and taken back to Srinagar. Senior opposition leaders on fact-finding missions were refused entry and made to turn back from Srinagar airport.

In under four days of the commencement of the state of disquiet on August 5, more than 400 Kashmiri politicians were thrown behind bars, including the hapless Sajjad Lone, who had cozied up to BJP. Ali Mohammed Sagar, the National Conference general secretary who has not lost a state legislator’s election from Khanyar in Srinagar since 1983, has been despatched to a jail in Bareilly in faraway UP.

In Srinagar, on the day of Eid-ul-Azha, one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, the largest mosques and Islamic sites of prayer of Muslim Kashmir, were out of bounds for the faithful. This has to be a low point for religious freedoms.

This writer can recall visits to the valley in the militancy years of the early ‘90s when the Indian state had to shoot its way out of the corner. The clampdown did not seem so severe then, though there were many serious problems.

In political terms, what the regime may have succeeded in doing — for the first time — is to unite all the political and social tendencies in a straight line against the Indian state. In conditions of extreme repression, this should ordinarily mean the deepening of repression.

In such a situation, there is real danger that the day of the mainstream politician — especially of a party like the National Conference (NC) — may be over for the foreseeable future. Consider the enormity and the tragedy. But for the NC and its stalwart founder-leader Sheikh Abdullah in 1947, when Jinnah pleaded with Kashmir to join Muslim Pakistan, Kashmir had chosen “secular” India.

All this is forgotten. There is hypocrisy, doublespeak. If a concerned citizen wonders whether the BBC report about firing on protesters is accurate after all, ‘Pas-Darshan’ — as distinct from the government television Door-Darshan which, now doesn’t seem so outrageous — knocks her on the head and questions her “nationalism”. How dare you swallow a foreign lie and ignore home-cooked official facts? That’s the new trend in our journalism.

If another citizen says that in a zealot Hindu dispensation very unusual goings-on are occurring in Kashmir perhaps because the valley is mainly Muslim, he is clobbered and warned not to be “communal”. In New India, inversions of the truth are welcome.

Undiluted propaganda and the falsification of history about Article 370 are peddled. ‘Pas-Darshan’ beams the catechism with gusto. The provision was “temporary” and had to go to bring the whole country under one law, says the government. Many have fallen for this, but not the Supreme Court.
 

Post-1947, even people of Jammu, who could have legitimately settled in the Valley, chose not to do so in any significant way

In 1968, in Sampat Prakah vs the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and then again in as recently as 2016 in SBI vs Santosh Gupta, the top court made it clear that Article 370 was by no means “temporary”. This means that Union home minister Amit Shah, in the Rajya Sabha on August 5, built his case on a dubious premise. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the strongman in the forefront of integrating the princely states in 1947, is falsely invoked to justify ending J&K’s special status when the Sardar was central to the discussions and negotiations that produced Article 370 and related provisions.

Another element of propaganda is that 370 came in the way of Kashmir’s development. This has to be a wilful departure from facts because the facts are laid out in the official statistics. On social and infrastructural indices like education, health, nutrition, roads and housing, J&K- especially Kashmir valley- surely ranks among the best places in India.

In his recent address to the nation on Kashmir, wittingly or unwittingly, the PM too has seriously erred. He said Kashmir “had been deprived of the Right to Education (RTE)” because J&K’s special status under Article 370 prevented the application of Indian laws to Kashmir. This is monumentally at variance with the reality.

The facts are that there is perhaps not a single law passed by Parliament that did not apply in J&K if New Delhi wished it to, and this was made possible by the much reviled Article 370. As for the RTE, Kashmir — unlike the rest of India — does not need it.

Since as far back as 1950, education was made wholly free in government schools and colleges right up to the most advanced level in Kashmir. It is probable that young Kashmiris may be among the best educated people anywhere in South Asia.

In the Kashmir context, there appears to be well-crafted propaganda at work. The agenda is to misrepresent and misinterpret the known facts in deference to BJP’s ideological imperatives, and to falsely suggest that the special status for J&K, arising from Article 370, has paved the ground for terrorism in the Valley.

Ergo, remove the special status, and permit people from other states to buy property in Kashmir. When that happens, and Hindus settle in the Valley, separatism or terrorism would vanish, runs the unstated logic.

Apart from the presumption that Muslims are terrorists by temperament, there are two problems with this Israel-like settlement plan (operational in Palestinian territories). The first is that the Israeli settlements have failed to bring peace and have indeed made matters worse, just like the Chinese plan for Xinjiang or Tibet. These do not constitute a solution.

Two, in the post-1947 period, even the people of Jammu, who could have legitimately settled in the Valley, chose not to do so in any significant way.

There is some anxiety even in BJP-held Jammu now about being flooded by property-seekers from outside.

We are summoning a disturbing, uncertain, future.

*Senior journalist based in Delhi. A version of this article first appeared in The Asian Age

First published on https://www.counterview.net/

 

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