India changes residency rules in Kashmir under cover of COVID-19 lockdown
A woman looks out from a window in Srinagar during the beginning of India’s lockdown on Kashmir in August 2019. Photo by Avinash Giri.
SRINAGAR, Indian-administered Kashmir — Days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a 21-day countrywide lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19, the Hindu nationalist-led government ushered in a new residency law for Kashmir, opening up India’s only Muslim-majority region for settlement by outsiders.
The new law has been introduced at a time while India and the world are grappling with a massive crisis due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and Kashmir is experiencing a second lockdown in less than a year.
Kashmir has endured many lockdowns in the last three decades. The longest lasted for four months after the repeal of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5, 2019, which had ensured limited autonomy for Kashmir and helped to preserve Kashmir’s identity and Muslim majority character by barring outsiders from buying land and applying for government jobs in Kashmir and thus preventing demographic change.
The August 2019 lockdown was accompanied by a communication blockade and the detention of hundreds of people, including three former chief ministers—Farooq Abdullah, his son, Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti. The people in Kashmir responded by resorting to civil disobedience. All work and vehicular traffic were voluntarily suspended. The only activity was the opening up of markets in the morning and evening for the people to replenish their stocks.
The new law grants residency status for anybody who has stayed in Jammu and Kashmir for 15 years or has studied in Jammu and Kashmir for seven years and has taken the High School examination there. The new law also spells out changes in over a 100 laws of the erstwhile semi-autonomous state of Jammu and Kashmir, while repealing many other laws. The new legislation has sparked fears that it could trigger the floodgates of Hindus to settling in Kashmir and altering the Muslim majority character of the region.
“It was expected from a government as diabolic and cunning as this is; it is not a big surprise to us. Once activities return to normal after the coronavirus threat has passed, we will know about the real impact and the reactions of the people,” said Sidiq Wahid, a Kashmir based political analyst.
Kashmir acceded to India rather than merging with Muslim Pakistan in 1947 after India agreed to grant it a semi-autonomous status under Article 370 of the Constitution.
Jammu and Kashmir are 68percent Muslim; Hindus constitute 30 percent of the population, with Sikhs accounting for two percent and Buddhists for one percent.
According to government estimates, since the 90s 47,000 people have been killed in fighting between Indian security forces and Kashmiri militants. Most Kashmiri Hindus, known as Kashmiri Pandits, fled Kashmir soon after the start of the armed rebellion.
The repeal of Article 370 had been a longstanding demand of Hindu nationalists in India; it was a campaign promise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Its revocation in August 2019 was largely hailed by Indians outside Kashmir.
According to estimates, 600,000 Indian security personnel are deployed in Kashmir. The region is also home to an estimated 700,000 migrant laborers from other Indian states. The new residency law creates conditions for their permanent settlement in Kashmir.
The abolition of Article 370 has secured the formal residency of 300,000 non-Muslim West Pakistani refugees living in Jammu, who had been barred from settling there permanently by Article 370.
The ruling BJP party had worked hard to win refugee votes in the 2019 parliamentary elections that returned Narendra Modi to power for the second time. Modi had promised to give state citizenship rights to the refugees, including the right to vote, own property, and get access to higher education and state government jobs.
“The decision is really a good one for us. We were deprived of our rights, but we are equal citizens now,” said Varyam Singh, a West Pakistani refugee in Jammu.
The West Pakistani refugees had come to settle in Jammu and Kashmir after India gained independence from the British and the subcontinent was partitioned into a Hindu majority India and Muslim majority Pakistan.
The decision to introduce residency laws for Kashmir in the middle of coronavirus pandemic has however drawn strong reactions from Kashmiri politicians, including the former chief minister, Omar Abdullah, who had opposed the withdrawal of Kashmir’s limited autonomy under Article 370. Omar was released March 24, 2020 after seven months in detention. Upon his release, he said he would formally address the repeal of Article 370 and the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two centrally governed Union Territories only after the threat from coronavirus crisis has passed.
Omar Abdullah tweeted:
“Talk about suspect timing. At a time when all our efforts & attention should be focused on the #COVID outbreak the government slips in a new domicile law for J&K. Insult is heaped on injury when we see the law offers none of the protections that had been promised.
“It is high time the people of J&K get to decide the laws that will govern them rather than being subjected to the whims and fancies of the center where orders are issued in the morning and changes to the same order issued in the evening. Restore statehood, conduct election.”
Yet, the residency law has been passed even as high-speed internet continues to remain banned in Kashmir, as it has been for the last eight months. Calls to restore high-speed 4G internet in Kashmir have been ignored by the government.
Poor internet connectivity has compounded the challenges facing doctors and health workers who are onthe front lines in the battle against the coronavirus. Khawar Khan a doctor based in Srinagar said Kashmir is at least five months behind the rest of the world in terms of having access to the latest information and research on the coronavirus. He said a continued ban on high-speed internet is worsening the impact of the pandemic.
“It is a new virus. Researches, studies, guidelines and updates are changing every other day,” he said. “We cannot access video lectures and find out what precautions need to be taken; I need to watch those videos which I can’t do that in absence of high-speed internet," he said. “The internet is a window for a doctor to keep abreast of what is happening in the world involving the coronavirus,’’ he added; “Kashmir needs to know what’s happening around the world.”
The functioning of schools and colleges, which had barely resumed after seven months of lockdown, has again been disrupted due to the COVID-19 lockdown. A few schools had started online classes, but these are hampered by the lack of high-speed internet.
Access to the “internet is a fundamental right,” said Shazia Ahmad, a teacher based in Srinagar. “There is no reason to keep high-speed internet blocked when we are passing through such a massive crisis.”
In most parts of the world, the ongoing lockdown might be a new thing, but for Kashmir the concept has been part of the local lexicon since the start of the armed rebellion in the 90s. Past cycles of unrest in Kashmir, such as in 2008, 2010 and 2016, triggered months of shutdowns and communication blockades.
As Kashmir moves from lockdown to lockdown, a new set of rules to define who can claim residency in Kashmir and Jammu is another blow for a people who have been already grappling with communication blockades, shutdowns and curfews.
Zaffar Iqbal is a journalist based in Kashmir, India. He has been reporting on the Kashmir conflict for the past two decades. Previously, he served as the Jammu and Kashmir Bureau Chief of NDTV. He is on Twitter @szaffariqbal.