Reporter's Notebook: Kashmir is more silenced than ever
A barbed fence and empty street in Srinagar. Photo by Zaffar Iqbal.
(OPINION) On the night of August 4 last year, Kashmir was a witch’s brew of fear and suspense. People could hardly sleep in their restless wait to see what would unfold the following day when the home minister Amit Shah was to introduce some bills on Kashmir.
The preceding week had witnessed a steady build-up of the armed forces plunging the region into a deep uncertainty. The matters came to a head when on August 2, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Home Secretary Shaleen Kabra in an order called on pilgrims and tourists in the then state to “immediately” curtail their stay and leave. The order cited an unspecified security threat for the egregious step. There was panic. People clogged the roads to stock up on essentials. Motorists queued for fuel at filling stations. People were seen carrying fuel in cans, bottles and even vacuum flasks.
The chaos was reinforced by thousands of pilgrims taking part in the then ongoing Amarnath shrine yatra (trek) leaving the Valley in government-arranged transport. Tourists, too, were evacuated. In 24 hours, Kashmir’s bustling tourist spots turned into ghost towns.
After two days of the rush on the streets to buy essentials, the markets looked empty and eerie. Restricted to houses, people waited for some clarity to emerge. The atmosphere was rife with rumors and suspicion about what could unfold. It was now clear that the unprecedented security arrangement was building up to something big.
This sense was only reinforced when around the same time, home minister Shah met the country’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to discuss the situation in J&K. Similarly in Pakistan, too, Prime Minister Imran Khan summoned a meeting of the National Security Committee. In a series of tweets, Khan also urged U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene in view of the “new aggressive actions taken by Indian occupation forces” that, according to him, had the potential “to blow into a regional crisis.”
As the clock struck midnight on Aug. 4, Kashmir found itself snapped from the world: Kashmiris woke up to no phones and no internet. Not even landlines worked. Almost all major leaders across the mainstream-separatist divide – including the three former chief ministers Dr. Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti – had been put under detention. The arrestees included political activists, youth, among them 956 former “stone-pelters” and even business leaders. Many of them were shifted to major jails across India.
When on the following day at around 11 a.m. Shah announced the repeal of Article 370 of the Constitution in parliament and bifurcated J&K into two union territories – J&K and Ladakh –Kashmiris, disconnected from one another, could only react to it in disbelief individually. Their ability to organize had been broken. There was no leader still active on the scene, no functional political or social organization that could do this. And even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to communicate: for example, the militant leaders who would use social media to convey their messages.
Looking Back
A year on, Kashmir remains as anxious and uncertain as last August. Apart from a brief partial relaxation in between, the Valley has been under an uninterrupted lockdown – one in the wake of Aug. 5 decision followed by the one occasioned by COVID-19. This has wrought havoc with the economy and the education. The Valley’s economic loss has been estimated at over 500 billion rupees. On the ground, it has meant a loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Sectors like tourism, information technology, transport, horticulture, or even ordinary retailers, have been hit hard. And there is little hope that the situation is going to improve anytime soon.
But considering the continuing devastating political fallout of the Aug.-5 move, a moribund economy is the least of worries. Many political and civil society leaders continue to be under detention. All kinds of protests remain strictly barred. Last November, around two dozen women who tried to hold one such protest a month earlier were quickly hauled off to a lock-up and released only after signing a bond that they wouldn’t do so again.
Kashmir still has nothing remotely resembling a working political and social organization – other than a few new ones believed to have been forged by New Delhi – that can either articulate the sentiment of their people or formulate a response to the current crisis. And there is little hope that things will redeem on this score too. New Delhi remains nervous about an organized mass resistance to the revocation of Article 370 at a time when the world’s attention is focussed on Kashmir. It is, therefore, unlikely that the region will be allowed to have a normal political and civil society activity anytime soon.
What’s more, in recent months, the centre has embarked on far-reaching measures that seek to build upon the Aug.-5 decision to remake Kashmir. On April 1, New Delhi issued new domicile rules for Kashmir that have thrown Kashmir open for settlement by outsiders. According to the rules, anyone who has been a resident of Kashmir for 15 years will get the residency rights. The law applies retrospectively.
For central government officials, the period is 10 years, and for students, it is just seven years. People can apply for these certificates online and the official charged with granting them the document has to do so within a fortnight, failing which he will be fined 50,000 rupees (roughly $675 USD). This leaves little space for investigation of the documents of the applicants. Even the original residents of J&K have to apply for domicile certificates, putting them on par with the outsiders.
This has been followed by the Control of Buildings Operations Act and the Development Act, under which any area can be notified as a “strategic area” where Indian Army will be allowed to carry out unhindered constructions and other related activities. Army can now acquire land in the former state without a “no objection certificate.” This gives the military a carte blanche to take over any area.
A Fraught Future
Where does Kashmir go from here? In fact, nowhere in the near term.
The past year has witnessed little change in the ground situation in Kashmir, other than the one enforced through a prolonged lockdown and communication blockade – now partially eased – and arrests of political and civil society actors. There seems to be no let-up in the central government’s efforts to control and micro-manage things in the Valley and recast it in its ideological image. And to this end, the Hindu nationalist juggernaut appears to be working overtime to alter everything from demography to political representation in the region.
But despite bringing to bear all its might on the region, New Delhi seems nowhere near pacifying Kashmir, the alleged grand point of the withdrawal of Article 370. The militancy-related violence has only spiked. According to South Asia Terrorism Portal, this year so far, 205 people have lost their lives comprising 155 militants, 34 security personnel and 17 civilians. Though the public protests and stone pelting have momentarily disappeared, this is due more to the all-encompassing lockdown and the arrests of leaders, activists and potential protesters than to any reconciliation or sense of resignation among the people.
The reality is that a year on since the loss of autonomy, Kashmir is more alienated from New Delhi than perhaps ever in the past. This is why the space for pro-India politics has drastically shrunk; one indicator of it was the massive online backlash to the former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s recent interview to a national daily in which he was perceived to be demanding only restoration of statehood, overlooking the loss of the region’s autonomy. Another indicator of this is the endemic support for China’s recent incursions in Ladakh, something Kashmiris assume might help dissuading or delaying New Delhi’s pursuit of its alleged ideological designs in their region.
It’s difficult to tell what form this alienation takes in the weeks and the months ahead as New Delhi goes about easing the lockdown. But one thing is sure, it would be long before Kashmir even starts coming to terms with Aug. 5. The day for them is no longer only about the loss of autonomy in a literal sense; it has now taken on a larger figurative dimension: it is also about betrayal of trust, political disempowerment and a deep sense of humiliation.
This article was originally published at Stories Asia.
Riyaz Wani is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir. Previously he was a journalist for the Indian Express and Tehelka. He is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Award in 2015 and he received a Certificate of Honor at the 2014 Red Ink Awards in India.