A few years ago, at a seminar on the J&K conundrum in Islamabad, a prominent Pakistani politician told a group of participating Kashmiris from this side of the Line of Control that Pakistan was suffering from “Kashmir fatigue”. More recently, a former chief of an Indian intelligence unit was quoted as having said that “Pakistan has given up on Kashmir” in an interview published a little before Pulwama. Similarly, officials of the “international community” are frequently heard saying that while they sympathize with the plight of Kashmiris, they cannot intervene on a “bilateral issue”, as if to embrace the Indian state’s “sincere” (not in the sense of “truthful” but of “overt”) propaganda – that there is no dispute over the State of Jammu & Kashmir. The tacit argument embedded in these reactions is: why should the voices of people disturb state to state liaisons?
It took one terrifying, though isolated,bombing (the second in thirty years) that killed more than 40 paramilitarysoldiers in Pulwama to derail these self-satisfied complacencies. An immediatereaction within various parts of India was to target innocent Kashmiris awayfrom home. Less than two weeks later the bombing had spawned shoot-outs in theskies above India and Pakistan. Suddenly, the world media was abuzz with fear,as most of India’s mainstream media was gung-ho with war talk.
Reactionsin South Asia and beyond
On February 25th, The Guardian chided the globalcommunity for its “nonchalance” and other outlets once again began to quoteformer U.S. president Bill Clinton’s twenty-year old prescient statement thatKashmir is “the most dangerous place on earth”. Even as your columnist writesthis, The New York Times EditorialBoard (March 7, 2019) has issued a dire headline warning that “[South Asia] Iswhere a nuclear exchange is most likely. It’s not North Korea”. No doubt to theconsternation of New Delhi, the Editorial Board went on to assert that “…theUnited States needs to get involved” to curb Human Rights violations, citingthe U.N. reports. Some international political commentators even publishedrushed suggestions for resolution.
In Kashmir, many of us immediatelyrecognized that Pulwama was going to be weaponized by the BJP government topolarize and demonize: polarize the moderate – zealous opinion binary onKashmir and demonize the Kashmiri as a legitimate target of abuse. But that wason the surface. The BJP also showed uncommon dexterity in using the Pulwamaattack to switch and bait. While the Prime Minister remained silent for a fullweek as Kashmiris were being verbally vilified and bodily beaten all overIndia, his handlers and minions were busy encouraging the violence, aswitnessed in many a YouTube video or occasional television story. When Modieventually spoke, he revealed much, saying “Our fight is for Kashmir, notagainst Kashmiris”. (More on that in a bit.)
Meanwhile, On February 24th,India sent its Air Force deep into Pakistan and the latter retaliated the verynext morning just across the Line of Control. The prospect of war clearly alarmedthe world as it began to think the unthinkable. To counter that internationalopinion, the BJP seemed to switch from war talk back to jailing Kashmiriresistance leaders, raiding their houses, issuing PSA orders and rumors aboutsome of its members in prison. Meanwhile attacks against Kashmiris in Indiantowns and cities continued, staccato style. To mitigate the dead-end of a warwithout benefits, the war on the people of Kashmir was allowed to intensify.
In this “perfect storm”, the mother ofall divisive issues for India, Kashmir’s political status, once again surfacedas an election issue: the threat of abrogating Article 35A. This law,stipulated by the Indian constitution, has been opposed by the BJP throughoutits political lineage and life. So, a war not with guns but with the threat todefy international law and the Indian state’s agreement with the people ofKashmir. All for electoral benefit.
Today, almost a month later, thereactions to the Pulwama suicide attack continue to be used in the form ofcynical egotism to boost the BJP’s electoral fortunes in the April generalelections. The dispute fades, becomes an instrument for Indian electionargument.
Somelearnings, minus helplessness
Challenging times. But we cannot affordto feel helpless. We must learn from the aftermath to Pulwama, recognize theBJP’s tactics and counter its agenda. That is – resist.
One learning is the unintentionallycandid statement of Modi’s quoted above. “Our fight is for Kashmir….”. In onefell stroke, he has vindicated the belief among citizens of the J&K Statethat Delhi’s anxiety lies in acquiring the territory of Kashmir; its people aresecondary. Officially.
It is the land row of 2008 redux,although more overtly. It is also a warning shot about the government’sargument in the debacle concerning Article 35A. The latter is a constitutionalconfirmation of the spirit of Article 370 in relation to territory, and overtlyacknowledged in 1954. Its flagging by the BJP alerts us to be cautious in ourexpectations during the unnecessary Supreme Court hearing followed by itsruling about a law that is crystal clear by all counts.
A second learning is that the aftermathto Pulwama has once again internationalized the Kashmir dispute, as somecommentators have pointed out. Ignoring the Indian constitution will do so evenmore. The Kashmir legal fraternity would know better, but we need to be awareof this as an instrument for argument. The unionist parties must be heldaccountable for transparently defending the upholding of this law in tandemwith the Bar Association and other legal bodies of the state. An opportunity tobe heard fairly and comprehensively in the courts on article 35A is thebest-case scenario. It is also a cause for which international support wouldnot only be legitimate, but should be sought to avoid the risk of furthercomplicating an already complex dispute.
A third learning is the possible ‘nextworse’ scenario: that the BJP will win enough seats in the state assemblyelections and, taking advantage of the structural change that has been wroughtin Kashmir politics since 1975, attempt to become a coalition partner onceagain. In the event, it will have six years to engage in horse-trading andintrigue to ensure that J&K has the best possible legislative body that”money can buy” (to quote, with apologies, Mark Twain) to fulfill its agenda.Clearly, the 2014 coalition with the PDP was formed with such an agenda. We nowknow what became of that folly and the coalition’s so-called “Agenda of Alliance”.A repeat, with much more lethal consequences, must be avoided at any cost.
TheBJP Difference
The consequences would be lethal becausethe BJP’s policies on Kashmir are qualitatively different from that of otherparties. They accumulate power solely to push their agenda. It is a well-knownstrategy of all authoritarian rulers. It is also why the BJP plays the Islamistextremist or Islamic “radicalism” card to the hilt both domestically andexternally. In doing so the BJP joins the twenty-first century Islamophobiaprejudice by freely seeing Muslims as what Arjun Appadurai calls a”biominority” threat (that is, an ethnic, religious and racial menace) againstthe majority. In this, the presentgovernment can be compared to those of Israel and Myanmar, who see Palestiniancitizens of Israel and Rohingya citizens of Myanmar as a threat to theirmajority populations.
If this comparison of the threats toDelhi, Tel Aviv and Yangon is apt, so would the potential remedies against it.Appadurai writes of two strategies that are used against the perceivedbiominority threat to the majority.
The first is the diasporic emptying (heuses the word “genocide”) of the target population’s geographic space. As anexample of this, he proffers the treatment of the Rohingya by the Myanmargovernment. Extrude them out of their ancestral homes at any cost. The secondstrategy to counter the threat is carceral crowding (he uses the word”genocide” here too) of a population into their geographic space. ThePalestinian case is cited as an example of this. Physically crowd them intoGaza. The cases of the Uighurs in today’s Xinjiang and Tibetans in Tibet alsocome to mind.
If the BJP were to return to power atthe center or as a coalition partner in the state or in both governmentssimultaneously in April 2019, it is not unthinkable that they would use theremedy of carceral crowding to mitigate their fear of a biominority threat. Theforced incarceration of a people in their own land. If the attacks againstKashmiris and their expulsion from various parts of India to force their returnto Kashmir is any indication, this policy may have already begun.
The challenge of the 2019 elections maywell be to preempt such a fate for Kashmir and Kashmiris.