NEW YORK – The Muslim-majority disputed Jammu and Kashmir state has becomea sacrificial goat at the altar of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’sideological agenda to remake India into a Hindu nation, a move that facesstaunch resistance, a Kashmiri journalist wrote in a prominentinternational magazine.
“This agenda is gratuitously and forcibly imposed on the erstwhile state ofJ&K despite the resolute opposition of its people …”, Riyaz Wani, afreelance journalist said in an article published in The Diplomat, which isheadquartered in Washington, DC. The magazine focuses on the developmentsin the Asia-Pacfic region.
“This is one of the darkest times to be a Kashmiri,” he said in his movingpiece, headlined: ‘Life Under Siege in Kashmir’ that highlights the toughmeasures by Indian security forces to suppress the people who have beenlanguishing under curfew for more than five months.
“We are being reminded of this fact every minute since the August 5abrogation of Article 370 of India’s Constitution, which had granted Jammuand Kashmir partial autonomy as an Indian state,” journalist Wani wrote.
“We encounter it in our minds, in the anxious look on the faces of fellowKashmiris, in the listless markets … and in the street-side huddles thatinvariably veer into discussions about an uncertain future and the specterof looming demographic change. We feel it every time we pick up our phones,knowing they won’t connect to the internet – even more than five monthsafter the communication blackout began. Or for that matter when our prepaidphone SIMs can’t make a call…
“The Kashmir siege, however, goes well beyond indefinite denial of theinternet and encompasses every aspect of life. It is about so many thingsdone to the people simultaneously: in its external manifestation it is, ofcourse, about a blanket security lockdown and a communication blockade,partially eased since, which between them have brought to bear almost theentire might of the Indian state on Kashmir to suppress all forms ofdissent. So much so that Iltija Mufti, daughter of the detained formerJammu and Kashmir (J&K) state’s Chief Minister (CM) Mehbooba Mufti, wasstopped from visiting the grave of her grandfather Mufti Mohammad Sayeed,also a former CM, on his death anniversary on January 7.
“Earlier, around a dozen elderly women, most of them from elite politicaland business families, were arrested and sent to Srinagar’s central jailthe moment they started gathering in a city park to peacefully protestagainst the revocation of Article 370. They were released the following dayonly after signing a bond that they wouldn’t engage in a fresh protest.
“So, while protests have erupted in the rest of India against the newCitizenship Amendment Act, which offers citizenship to non-Muslim refugeesfrom Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, Kashmir is being denied anyspace to protest. In fact, what is happening in Kashmir goes beyond thedenial of a space for protest: the region is being deprived of anythingremotely resembling a working political and social organization that caneither articulate the sentiments of their people or formulate a response tothe current crisis.
“All major leaders or influential voices across the region’sseparatist-establishment divide who are in a position to do so are underdetention. This includes the three former chief ministers: Farooq Abdullah,Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. Leaders who have since been released havestayed short of challenging government’s move to revoke autonomy, makingpeople infer they have signed a bond swearing off political activity.
“And given New Delhi’s fear about an organized mass movement to its August5 decision at a time when the world’s attention is focused on Kashmir, itlooks unlikely that the erstwhile state will be allowed to have a normalpolitical and civil society activity in the near future. All this is on theoutside.
Read Top Stories
“On a subliminal level, the Kashmir lockdown is about a deep sense ofpolitical disempowerment as a Muslim-state-turned-federally-administeredarea where Muslims are in a comfortable majority otherwise. Currently,Muslims constitute around 68.3 percent of the around 13 million populationof J&K, according to the 2011 census.
“It is also about being reduced to a vehicle for political power by thegoverning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the federal level, which seems tohave concluded that cruelty to people of Kashmir is electorally useful forit at the pan-India level. Years of choreographed demonization on sundrytelevision channels have made Kashmiris fair game for retribution in theeyes of a significant section of the population across the country, so muchso that they not only happily sanction oppression against Kashmiris butalso politically reward the party doing it. The BJP can thus use all itspower as a ruling party to suppress endlessly hapless people of the regionto demonstrate to the rest of India how strong and decisive it is.
“The many electoral victories of the BJP over the past six years,discounting some recent reversals, have only made the party more hawkish onKashmir. It has become numb and contemptuous to even routine demands of theregion’s people, say for restoration of the internet. In fact, when peoplein Kashmir press for any demand or protest against any indignity beingheaped on them, the party’s answer is not to listen, engage or reach out ina democratic spirit but to hoist more of the same indignity on to them.
“Journalists have learned it to their detriment by repeatedly protestingfor restoration of the Internet for themselves. But while the governmenthas selectively released the service for some institutions and businesses,around 300 journalists have to make do with just nine computers at anofficial facility in Srinagar. The time they get on a computer is barelyenough to check and send a couple of emails…
“What is more depressing is that there seems to be no imminent escape fromthis state of affairs. The structural nature of the situation is such.Obsession with an engineered pacification of Kashmir and paranoia about amass protest guarantees a lingering siege in its myriad visible andinvisible forms. It is an Orwellian world through and through, minutelycontrolling each and every aspect of life. Kashmir is thus unlikely to beallowed an autonomous political, social and media space to give voice tothe situation on the ground.
Nor does it appear that the Internet, which is an enabler of this spacealongside being the warp and woof of the modern life, will be restoredfully for now.
“This has created a suffocating environment for people in the region. It isas if every person living in the region has been imprisoned. People have nocontrol over their lives: everything seems monitored and guided. This evenso when Kashmir has largely been normal in last three months. Thegovernment acts on its apprehension of what might happen if curbs arelifted, and so it continues to prolong the misery. And the people inKashmir have little option but to endure it.”