On Monday, the Kashmir valley went silent. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian administered half of the world’s most fiercely militarised zone, the internet and phone lines went down, a curfew was imposed and 40,000 more troops moved in. Local political leaders were arrested, and the Amarnath Yatra, a popular Hindu pilgrimage in the region, was abruptly cancelled. Then, with Kashmiris left in the dark, the Indian government announced it was amending Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, a move which revoked the region’s special status.
Throughout decades of border tensions, insurgent violence, and over-militarisation, the special status has given Jammu and Kashmir some constitutionally-entrenched political autonomy. With that autonomy now gone, the valley’s future remains uncertain.
What is Article 370?
When India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947 following the bloodshed of partition, princely states like Kashmir were given freedom to choose which country to join. One of the conditions of Kashmir joining India was preservation of autonomy in the region, which was enshrined in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. Jammu and Kashmir retained its own Constitution, flag, and criminal code. Meanwhile, Article 35A gave the state power to define permanent residents, providing basis for laws restricting non-residents from buying property in Jammu and Kashmir.
Why did India revoke Kashmir’s special status?
In May, India’s hard-right Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, was re-elected in a landslide, with removing Kashmir’s special status part of its election manifesto. For as long as it has been in place, Hindu nationalists have wanted Article 370 gone, claiming it provides special treatment to Muslims and ammunition for violent separatism in the region.
“Article 370 was a product of India’s secular nationalism — it embodies broader principles that you should accommodate minorities and differences”, Priya Chacko, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Adelaide tells Crikey.
“Making this article irrelevant has been a priority for the BJP because they have a fundamentally different view of nationalism, as a single identity, which is a Hindu cultural identity”.
On Monday, Home Minister Amit Shah said the changes would improve security and help the government fight terrorism. Since the BJP took power in 2014, terror incidents have steadily risen, with 2018 seeing 586 deaths in the state, the most in a decade. Shah and Modi also justified the changes on development lines, arguing Jammu and Kashmir’s special status as holding the state back economically.
What has changed?
On Monday, a Presidential Order was made amending Article 370, extending India’s Constitution to apply to Jammu and Kashmir. Shah then introduced a reorganisation bill in India’s Upper House which effectively stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its statehood. The region is now divided into two union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and the largely Buddhist-Hindu Ladakh.
Despite the incredible scale of the changes, they were pushed through quickly, with just 90 minutes of debate, and no consultation with people living in the state. The move also rests on legally unsteady ground, and involves a degree of Constitutional gymnastics Chacko tells Crikey is “crooked”. Article 370 allows for amendment with the approval of Jammu and Kashmir’s constituent assembly, a body which was dissolved in 1956.
Constitutional experts have cast doubt on the validity of the move, and a legal challenge is certain, although India’s Supreme Court is notoriously slow, and has a recent track record of siding with the government.
What do the changes mean?
Because Jammu and Kashmir is now a union territory rather than a state, it has fewer rights, meaning New Delhi has greater control over a heavily militarised region, and one where its security forces already stand accused of widespread human rights abuses.
But New Delhi’s power grab has the potential to further inflame one of the world’s most volatile regions, wedged between two nuclear powers. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan called the move a “clear violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions”, and called for international intervention. The country has been racked by protests since Monday.
According to Chacko, the move is more evidence of the parlous deterioration of Indian democracy under the BJP, with the government radically expanding its power, all with the outcome of marginalising India’s sizeable Muslim minority. Such a blunt, aggressive approach might only fortify anti-Indian sentiment in Kashmir.
“What we’ve seen over the past few years is an increasing number of young Kashmiris joining militant groups because of disaffection. Disaffection breeds resistance, and that same disaffection turned into an insurgency in the 1990s”, Chacko tells Crikey.
So while the changes might complete another piece of Modi’s Hindutva project, it could lead to more years of hardship for the people of Kashmir. On Monday, as India’s parliament pushed through the changes, one minister claimed Kashmiris were rejoicing. But in Srinagar, the state’s capital, the only people out on the streets were Indian soldiers.
The situation looks so far a case of back to the future for Indian Kashmir. I’ve yet to read up knowledgable sources so I’ll withhold judgment. I formally studied Kashmir and spent time there decades back and it was pretty obvious Kashmir itself (as opposed to Jammu and Ladakh) was the meat in the sandwich between multiple large forces.
The venal and corrupt Pakistan governments only ever had one foreign policy goal – the uniting of Kashmir. This laudable goal is understandable due to the valley being geographically contiguous to Pakistan. However, bad as the Indian administration was no one would wish the Pakistan government on anyone and I doubt things have changed much.
There was also the issue of very substantial federal Indian subsidies to Kashmir which were a constant political problem.
I hope that Crikey will wait a bit then find an analysis from a suitably qualified source. This is a serious matter and remains one of the biggest sources of enmity between these adjacent nuclear powered states.
Firstly, everyone refers top “Kashmir”, when the whole state was “Jammu and Kashmir” and continues to be so-called in India. Why leave out Jammu? Because it is majority Hindu, so no one can claim they are being oppressed.
While Chacko may have truth on his side regarding the aims of the BJP (after all they never made a secret of them), no one can predict what the fallout will be. The BJP says this will allow Indian businessmen to setup in Kashmir and create jobs for unemployed Kashmiri youth, who are easily employed by Pakistani terror outfits as “Jehadis”.
It is also true that Kashmiris can buy land any where in India but people from the rest of India cannot do so in Kashmir. While this was a nice sop to the Kashmiris to help them along initially, after seventy odd years it is perhaps time these crutches were removed. I agree we need to watch and wait.
If the “problem” is solved over night, somehow, Pakistan will need to find another “raison d’etre”, and very quickly. Of course, no matter what happens, the “solution to the problem” is not in the interests of Pakistan. After all, why did they invade the princely state, before the ruler had made up his mind about where he would like his state to go at the time of independence?
Typical Modi. He is essentially a racist prick who has damaged India’s long effort at living in some kind of harmony. Attacks on non Hindus have increased just as Trump has increased race hate in the US by legitimising it.
India’s (read Hindus’) efforts to live in harmony for the past 1000 years with Muslims have resulted in millions of Hindus dead, thousands of their temples destroyed, at the hands of mughals and other muslims invaders and rulers. It has resulted in India losing a third of its territory to form Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1947. This partition happened because Muslims claimed they could not live with the Hindus. The Hindus not only lived in peace with but also protected and looked after Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians for centuries. They even fought against Arab Muslims to protect the family of their own Prophet Mohammed – look up Raja Dahir Singh of Sindh.
Despite partition in 1947, the Muslims that demanded a separate nation because they couldn’t live with Hindus, more Muslims live in India today than Pakistan. For the past 70 odd years since independence from the British, Muslims have enjoyed more rights than the majority (80-85%) Hindus. Kashmiris have enjoyed even more rights while stabbing India in the back at every opportunity. A Pakistani Muslim man could marry a Kashmiri woman and gain Kashmiri citizenship but if the Kashmiri woman married an Indian man from outside Kashmir, she would lose her citizenship of Kashmir.
This same Kashmir refused to give citizenship for 72 years to Hindus that had to run away from Pakistan during the partition. These people lived in camps like refugees with no identity since 1947. Kashmiris could work, do business, buy property in the rest of India but other Indians could do none of those in Kashmir. These same Kashmiri muslims killed, raped, looted and drove out millions of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990. These Hindus had been living there for millenia; they were then forced to flee to Delhi and live in squalor in refugee camps.
All of this while Hindus were the overwhelming majority of the population of India. Article 370 and 35a of the Indian constitution which gave this special status to Jammu and Kashmir was always meant to be temporary. It has the word temporary in its title! Temporary has lasted 72 years, the tolerance of Hindus and efforts of Hindus to live some kind of harmony has lasted a millenium. What you are seeing is a tolerant, docile, principled civilisation, culture and nation of Hindus taking a stand and fighting back to save what is left of their country, culture, dignity and civilisation. If a few million Jews when driven to extinction could do what they did, imagine what a billion Hindus can do. It is the fear of this exact same thing that drives the anti-Hindu, anti-India rhetoric in the media. Hindus have not attacked, conquered another country for centuries, they have been subject to genocide, extermination culturally, economically, politically etc first by the Muslim invaders, then by the European powers. Yet they have survived, preserved their multiple languages, dialects, cultures, cuisines, arts, literature and themselves. The Hindu of today is not in the mood to take anymore subjugation, insult or subservience. The Hindus have only just begun to fightback, there is a lot more to come.
The truism – “Nobody would wish the Pakistan government on anybody” – also explains why the real wish of Kashmiris, utterly futile, is for independence.
India has a larger Muslim population than any other country, except possibly Indonesia.
Although free to do so, they are not noticeable for their eagerness to migrate to the Land of the Pure.
And if China and Hong Kong, China and the US, US and Iran, Brexit and Russia don’t have you on the edge of your seat, this might get you there.