The Jhelum of Blood : Vexing Kashmir.
The valley of Kashmir is vying for freedom and human rights as Hindu Nationalism & populist fundamentalism deranges the ‘state’ of Jammu and Kashmir in the world’s largest democracy.
August 5th, 2020, will mark few of the murkiest instances of political mendacity and fasten the project of populism in India. In a deeply religious country, revered for religious tolerance and held together by an exhilarating constitution, the secular state is mired by religious fundamentalism as the Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi lays the foundation for a long contested temple of Lord Rama in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. This comes at a time when the nation is usurped by the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s Home Minister and Modi’s strongman, Amit Shah has tested positive for the virus. Clearly, the moment of ‘Good Riddance’ for hyper-nationalism coalesced with far-right fascism is here and will impact the once multi-faceted socio-religious moorings for years in to the future. In a surreal deliverance of political psychedelia, the Supreme Court of India in M Siddiq (D) Thr Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors. ravenously settled the ‘Ayodhya dispute’ failing to notice the chain of events it will set in motion. The boisterous verdict at the time of deep social unrest in the diverse country and an appalling economic growth has echoed the ‘saffron machismo’ of Bhartiya Janta Party or the BJP and there’s no going back.
Not far from Ayodhya, Kashmir is gasping for human rights. On this day, last year, in an unadorned majoritarian style politics, the government of India used her strength in the Parliament of India and deracinated the constitutional minimalism that the state had with the rest of the country vis-á-vis The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019 without formal notices and barely any parliamentary discussions. The baseless rationale advocated by the Home Minister that Article 370 of the constitution of India ceded separatist propaganda and corruption to the people of J&K reverberated unambiguously with their political ecosystem. The rescission of this constitutional proviso when the state was under President’s rule, because of “governance failure” and the insertion of a new clause by the President, Ram Nath Kovind, legitimised the reading of ‘Constituent Assembly’ as the ‘Legislative Assembly’ of the state rendering the article ineffectual. To helpless citizens of the country who are inflicted with authoritarianism, the act seemed packed with Machiavellian brilliance, even though it was a vacuous film of cheap politics at best and a political macédoine at worst. The provision convalesced the state with India and formed the basis for trust. Lacerating it has made the process of political unification much more complex and the way it was done was a Himalayan setback to the sprit of co-operative federalism envisioned by Ambedkar.
Kashmir’s constitutional right to protest has been swerved by the Government of India. Inured to the miasma of distrust that a total lockdown will encourage and riding on a massive wave of political revanchism, it has detained mainstream political leaders via an anachronistic law, Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978. The rambunctious legislation has facilitated the preventive detention of former Chief Minister and People’s Democratic Party’s Mehbooba Mufti, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement leader Shah Faesal, Bashir Ahmed Veeri, Nayeem Akhtar, Hilal Ahmad Lone and several other leaders totalling 412 were detained. Infact, Mehbooba continues to be under preventive detention for another three months from August. The political leaders from Delhi who criticized this Kafkaesque commotion of travesty of justice had been denied politico-investigative visit to the valley for months after the rescission of Kashmir’s autonomous status. The political vacuum that this constitutional kerfuffle has created isn’t easy to avoid. In an embarrassing maneuver of diplomatic settings in October last year, a far-right delegation from European Parliament, that consisted of MEPs for Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Marine Le Penn’s National Rally in France was received with criticism in international political circles in Europe and international media. Chris Davies, an MEP from U.K.’s Democrat Party told the BBC that his invitation was flouted after he had asked for an unrestricted visit to Srinagar and Kashmir. He later told the BBC correspondent that “he was not prepared to take part in a PR stunt for the Modi government and pretend that all is well”. After a thorough legal petitioning in the Supreme Court, former Chief Minister and Indian National Congress’ leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad was allowed for an allegedly restricted visit to the valley and that people had been warned against speaking to him. Member of Parliament from Baramulla, Saifuddin Soz, rejected the submissions made by the central government in Supreme Court, voraciously denying the government’s claims that ‘he isn’t in political detention’ and asserted that Kashmir is far from normalcy, in a short interaction with the media against barbed wires and prevented by heavy security on August 2, this year.
Kashmir has been witnessing abysmal communications black-outs and internet shut downs, globally. The Jammu & Kashmir government has consistently cited national security concerns, proliferation of militancy and prevalence of separatist furore online to legitimise the internet disruptions. The militancy is on the rise in Kashmir and cross-border terrorism purported by India’s neighbouring country, Pakistan, ever since August 5 aren’t analogous with the policymaker’s reasoning. But it does have an impact on people. Once immersive, Kashmir’s Information & Technology economy is pulverized because of the communication blackout. As per Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) report, the disruptions in communication have cost the Jammu & Kashmir’s economy ₹4,000 crore between 2012 and 2017. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates the costs to the economy, a worrying ₹3,97,04,95,00,000 and half a million jobs lost since August 5, 2019. India has been labelled the “shutdown capital of the world” for authorizing the most number of internet shutdowns globally since 2015, by the New York based Digital Access Organization, ‘Access Now’ #KeepItOn Report. The citizens of Kashmir have faced ginormous difficulties in accessing healthcare services and digital education during the Coronavirus pandemic and once vibrant tourism industry has perished. Patients find it hard to make appointments with medical practitioners and Kashmiri entrepreneurs can not facilitate their services, the second generation internet connectivity just doesn’t cut it. This political debauchery is happening even after the Supreme Court of India, in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India, has ruled that access to internet is a fundamental right and decimating this access via Section 144 of CrPC arbitrarily is open for incisive judicial examination. What’s happening is very far from the truth.
The political farrago in Kashmir has stymied the perception of India as an inclusive democracy the world over. The impetuous legislation by the government has made foreign investors insecure and relations with Gulf Co-operation Council, European Union, Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, United States vis-á-vis United States Commission on International Religious Freedom or the USCIRF, Malaysia, and People’s Republic of China have been hit severely. Pakistan’s potential to use proxy terror groups, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Kashmir-based Hizbul Mujahideen has metamorphosed in to an even greater concern for security agencies in the country. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, has written to United Nations Security Council in what one describes as consistent attempts at internationalizing a bilateral issue. The country has flouted conflict resolution mechanisms agreed by the nations through the Simla Agreement on August 4, 1972, by including the territory in its Political map. It has been a hard diplomatic tussle in recent months to defend India’s position on the issue that has scunnered Ministry of External Affairs. That it comes at a time when the world is hit by one of the worst Virus outbreak since 1918, with border disputes with the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal and People’s Republic of China and cultural rhubarb with Bangladesh over the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 and The National Register of Citizens changing relationship in unfathomable ways, the last thing that India wants is socio-political and geo-cultural isolation.
It’s baffling that a nation is celebrating the homecoming of a deity at the exact same time when her own people are inflicted with this political sadomasochism and religious dogma. Are we nurturing a Ganges of majoritarianism and hate in exchange of a Jhelum of Blood? That two cities of a same country are going through slow poisoning, only to end up against one another? Well, this is India’s Tale of two Cities.
