The Report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a landmark document. Its central message is, equally, an explicit description of human rights violations and an implicit prescription for them; namely, solve the dispute over the State of J&K. It upset Delhi enough so that it did not respond, only reacted. Kashmir, meanwhile, has responded with a sense of relief at this first ever Report sponsored by the apex body of the modern nation-state system. Any assessment of the document must be read for its overt message as well as the implications of it.
An Assessment
To begin with, it is the first such testimony from the United Nations on the State of J&K. In large part the UN has been a forum for the two power centers of the Cold War era to play out their empire building shenanigans. The search for a new world order following the collapse of the bipolar regime, therefore, has been confusing. It could mean a useful trend for non-state actors in the “new” world order of states, one that has been “emerging” for three decades now. Second, although the OHCHR account concerns itself with developments within a fixed time frame (between June 2016 and April 2018) it expertly contextualizes the discussion with relevant historical, legal and political antecedents. It is an unusually meticulous and grounded practice for a third-party intervention. The citizens of the state must appreciate it.
Third, the UN testimony addresses the State of J&K on both sides of the LoC. This practice recognizes that the genesis of this conundrum was the British enfeoffment of the Dogra principality into a monarchy in 1846. Resistance to it manifested itself several times during the late 19th century, culminating in the 1931 Kashmir rebellion. It surfaced in more complex form in 1947 with the British withdrawal from South Asia. In the context of the OHCHR Report, considering the state in its entirety recognizes, by implication, the non-resolution of the dispute as the root cause of the human rights violations. Finally, the Report is scrupulous in the details it furnishes of names, times and places – often using official government of India documentation – on the killings, rapes, tortures, disappeared persons and arrests. It is a practice that gives Delhi the right to a rebuttal, accusation by accusation, albeit with equal attention to detail.
The Indian Response
New Delhi’s response, however, has been anything but detailed. Instead, it has employed the Trumpian retort to media scrutiny: deny, invent and lie. It has also mimicked the Israeli tactic of claiming interference in state sovereignty as an excuse to disregard and reject the human rights of peoples. In so doing it has counted on the power of state propaganda, the people being too busy surviving and research being thwarted by the time sensitive nature of reportage to counter the state’s resources.
Non-state reaction in Indian mainstream media has, unsurprisingly, not been rigorous. Shekhar Gupta, a well-known journalist, cleverly headlined his reaction with an ostensible criticism of the “Modi Govt’s Wolly-Headedness” but rudely rejects it with the rationale that “it will harden India’s approach”, thereby endorsing the current government of India’s policy inclination to murderous muscularity. Mr. Gupta’s conclusion also sends a more sinister message: the truth does not matter when pragmatism is deployed between unequals in power. Far be it for this veteran journalist to investigate or provide specificity in analysis of claims and accusations. The Hindu also toes a neutral line with a lukewarm reply to a question it asks and answers: “Why did India react so strongly to the report?” It replies: “India maintains [that] Kashmir is a bilateral issue that does not have space for a third party, including the UN.” It is an incomplete and disingenuous response.
The rebuttal of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, to the official Indian response hit the nail on the head. He urges “the Indian government to have the confidence to look at the human rights situation in Kashmir and understand that the violations committed there…”. He follows that reply with an unapologetic admission: the Report “is indeed motivated – motivated by the desire to contribute to the search for peace and justice in Kashmir”. The Achilles heel of the Indian state is that it is an unconfident state on more fronts than just Kashmir. Turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by its power structure, abuses highlighted by many of its citizens and even its own agencies some have noted, is optimistic propaganda. Incomplete and disingenuous responses of states are never enough on the world stage. They are a prelude to dangerous states.
In Kashmir – relief is not enough
The State of J&K, specifically Kashmir, greeted the Report with a sense of relief at a detailed third party recognition and description of our political despair. But “relief” is not enough. We must publicize the work of the OHCHR, we must respond multiply to its various dimensions and we must emulate the Report’s methodology and spirit in our own reportage. In this context, we, the State’s citizens, would be remiss if we did not recognize the contributions of our home-grown human rights watch organization, the Coalition for Civil Society (CCS) whose meticulous, transparent and relentless efforts and publications have obviously been a key conceptual and methodological donor to the Report.
That apart, two observations by way of a Kashmiri critique to the Report, so scrupulously mentored by Mr. al-Hussein, would not be out of place. The first is an aspect of the plight of the peoples of the State of J&K, poignantly illustrated in the Report. The latter points out that its methodology was “remote monitoring”. This was necessitated because India would not give the Commission access to the portion of the state it “administers”. Pakistan’s permission to the portion it “administers”, including Gilgit-Baltistan, was conditional to India’s permission. This reciprocal procrastination is reminiscent of the 1949 stalling when, prior to the promised referendum, India refused to withdraw its troop unless Pakistan first withdrew its troops. An apt formula for the status quo. Clearly the two states have not changed between 1949 and 2018, even though the world has transmuted into an unrecognizable one from the post-colonial days! It holds a lesson for the South Asian region, perhaps.
My second critique is a mild objection to the title of the High Commissioner’s rebuttal to Delhi official response in the Indian Express, “Listen to the voiceless”. The peoples of the state have not been voiceless. We have spoken throughout the last seventy years. First through “mainstream” politics, when negotiated “special statuses” were compromised time and again between 1953 and 1975. Our frustrations with being ridden rough-shod led to the armed insurgency in 1989. The unequal match in armaments gave way to unarmed methods between 2004 and 2008. That too was met with the Indian state’s armed wrath, resulting in a combination of the rise of armed and unarmed protests in 2016, which ushered the UN the Report.
So we have always had a voice, but it was not heard. The UN’s third-party Report has heard us and we are grateful. We now look forward to other third parties picking up the thread. To us that is what the idea of globality, the leitmotif of 21st century world order, means. All else is status quo propaganda.