Kashmir: Betrayal of Indian state is complete in the fascist era
Anand Singh
It’s been more than 4 months since the complete lockdown of Kashmir valley began in the aftermath of the abrogation of provisions conferring the special status to Jammu and Kashmir under articles 370 and 35A. It is already the longest ever internet shutdown in a democracy. By snapping all the communication channels and putting the entire Kashmiri leadership into jail, Modi-Shah regime has pushed the valley to the dark ages as there is little information flow happening between the valley and the outside world. Based on whatever little information that sneaks through the lockdown via some independent journalists and foreign media, it can be said that the situation in the valley is horrible. Apart from the suffocating presence of jackboots and barbed wires, the entire economy of the valley remains crippled for last four months. Since no tourists are coming, the hotels, the house boats, the, the markets, apple trade, carpet and blanket trade all have come to standstill. The flourishing online business has also come to halt. Kashmir’s chamber of commerce and industries showed its dissatisfaction with Indian bourgeoisie by releasing a data which says that there has been a loss to the tune of Rs. 180 million in the 10 districts of Jammu and Kashmir. Needless to say that the main victim of this economic collapse is the toiling masses of Kashmir who have hardly any work to do. As per a recent report, even the journalists in Kashmir are forced to work as daily labourer.
Many people including those within the ruling establishment expected a violent backlash of Kashmiris in the wake of this unprecedented lockdown, but as it turned out, the people of the valley have chosen to remain silent this time around and wait for an opportune moment for their response. This uneasy calm has disturbed the ruling establishment in New Delhi, so much so that they were compelled to issue full page advertisements in leading Kashmir dailies to convince people that normalcy has returned and they could carry on their daily routine. Clearly the ruling regime in New Delhi apprehends that this could turn out to be a lull before the storm.
The abrogation of special status and reasons thereof
History of Kashmir after its accession with Indian union in 1947 is replete with instances of betrayal by the Indian state. Apart from rigging elections and suppressing the aspirations of Kashmiris through brute force, successive governments at the centre had substantially eroded the autonomous status of Jammu & Kashmir by issuing presidential orders to dilute article 370 of Indian constitution. Now with the Modi government’s decision to abrogate the special status conferred by the article 370 and 35A, the betrayal of the Indian state is complete. All the hopes and aspirations of Kashmiris for greater autonomy and right to self-determination have been brutally crushed beneath the jackboot. As if the revocation of special status of Jammu & Kashmir was not enough, its existence as a state has been wiped out and it has been bifurcated to form two Union territories. These are indeed brazen steps that could have been taken only by a fascist government having a vicious ideological and political agenda.
Even as the Home Minister Amit Shah on the floor of parliament and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his televised address were reassuring people that everything was normal in Jammu & Kashmir, 40,000 odd freshly dispatched troops were marching in the valley alongside hundreds of thousands of troops already present there. As if to make the situation more ironical, there was total chaos and information and communication blackout in the state with clampdown on landline, mobile phone, internet and satellite television. All the tourists (including Amarnath Yatris) were asked to leave the valley and all the main leaders of Kashmir were arrested. Curfew was imposed in much of the valley. National security advisor Ajit Doval’s ridiculous photo-op with a few handpicked Kashmiris amid complete lockout failed to conceal the extremely tense situation in the valley.
There is no doubt that Modi-Shah-Doval doctrine in Kashmir is guided by the venomous Hindutva ideology of Sangh. Abrogation of Article 370 has been a major component of this ideology from the time of Jansangh’s founder Shayama Prasad Mookerji whose Praja Parishad movement contributed to communalise the Kashmir issue immensely. They have chosen to take this step at a time when the Indian economy is going through a severe crisis and Modi government finds itself clueless on the economic front. In order to remain at the helm, the fascist regime of Modi-Shah always needs an issue through which they could run a constant hate propaganda. Kashmir issue is unique because it gives them the opportunity to fan the wave to chauvinism and jingoism as well as to run their anti-Muslim hate propaganda and thereby divert the attention of masses from their pressing issues of livelihood. The abrogation of special status of J&K has has helped the Hindutva brigade to spread fresh dose of ultra-nationalism and also hate against muslims and Kashmiris. Portraying Muslims and Kashmiris as imaginary enemies helps in consolidating the reputation of Modi and Shah among the middle class and also working class whose support to Modi gets a dent due to economic hardships. As the increasing wave of support to the Modi government began to subdue after few weeks, they have now launched a new anti-Muslim offensive in the form of Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens.
Kashmir under Modi raj
The decades of conflict has created a climate of permanent winter in the valley as a thick layer of ice gets accumulated every year on the lives and aspirations of Kashmiris. On top of this, the dark cloud of fascism that looms large over the valley is doomed to bring devastation on a magnitude much higher than the ‘Sailaab’ of 2014.
Violence, bloodshed, militancy and atrocities by army is not new to Kashmir, but what is happening in the valley since last 5 years of Modi regime is qualitatively different because it is an outcome of a conscious ideological and political offensive with a clear cut aim of communal polarisation to gain political mileage. The scope of this polarizing offensive is not confined to Jammu & Kashmir alone, rather the entire country. This communal polarisation paid rich dividend to the Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party as is evident by the thumping victory of BJP in the recently concluded Loksabha elections. So much so that the BJP shamelessly used even the Pulwama fidayeen attack to spew venom against Kashmiris and in the process it consolidated its vote banks. Some crucial questions related to this attack remain unanswered till this day. Many analysts have rightly highlighted that Pulwama attack was the turning point because before this attack the popularity of Narendra Modi was at its lowest ebb on account of its dismal performance on the economic front. Kashmir issue has always been a potent tool in the hands of Indian ruling class to divert the attention of the public from their pressing issue, but with the Hindutva-vadis at the helm, this issue has become a tool to spread their venomous ideology throughout the country.
Ironically, in their eagerness to milk Kashmir issue in the elections and spread their venomous ideology, the Hindutva fascists are laying bare all the pretentions of Indian democracy. The unilateral abrogation of article 370 is a case in point. Even before, speaking in the first session of the newly constituted Lok Sabha on June 26, the new home minister Amit Shah revealed an open secret that India under Congress rule had rigged the polls in Kashmir multiple times. This is the first time that a home minister has acknowledged on the floor of parliament that elections in Kashmir have been rigged in the past.
Amit Shah had also alluded in his speech that the government will pursue the hard line on Kashmir issue to root out terrorism from the valley. Anyone familiar with the ground reality in Kashmir knows it too well that this hard line has actually fuelled the terror problem in the valley. One of the stated objectives of the infamous demonetisation drive as announced by Narendra Modi was that it would give a decisive blow to terrorism, particularly in Kashmir. The facts, however, reveal an entirely different story. The hawkish policies of Modi government vis-a-viz Kashmir have led to sharp increase in the incidents of terrorism in the valley as also in the number of casualties of both Kashmiris and the security forces. Now with the abrogation of the special status and all doors of dialogue being permanently shut, the people of Kashmir are not left with any option than taking extreme steps.
Before 2014, there was a clear trend of militancy in Kashmir being declining rapidly. However, the hawkish policies of Modi government have created a new wave of militancy. As per the data released by Home Ministry, Jammu & Kashmir witnessed 1,708 terrorist incidents between 2014 and 2018. In terms of percentage, there has been an increase of 176 percent in the terrorist incidents in this five years duration. In this duration, there has been a 93 percent rise in the number of security personnel killed in J&K. Alarmingly, in this duration, a total of 1,315 people were killed in the state due to terrorism. Of these, 138 (10.49 per cent) were civilians, 339 (25 per cent) security personnel, and 838 (63.72 per cent) were terrorists.
Not only has there been an increase in the number of terrorist incidents, more significantly there has been a drastic upward shift in the number of local Kashmiri youth joining militancy, particularly after the killing of Jaish-e-Mohammad commander Burhan Wani. Also, there has been increasing support of masses to the militants as evident in the swelling of crowd at the funeral procession of even the nondescript militants. All this shows unambiguously that the in Modi regime alienation of Kashmiris has grown by leaps and bound.
In the aftermath of Burhan Wani’s killing, the brutal repression of the mass resistance with dangerous weapons such as pallet guns blinded more than a thousand Kashmiris, many of them children. The year 2018 was the one of the worst year for Kashmir in last many years. For the first time since 2008, the number of people who died in the conflict crossed the figure of 500. The number of listed militants with government agencies crossed 300 – the highest in a decade. In 2013, the year before Narendra Modi was elected to power, the number was just 78. All these prove beyond doubt that the situation in Kashmir has steadily deteriorated in the Modi’s tenure at the centre.
Apart from the brutal repression within Kashmir valley, the anti-Muslim campaigns steered by Sangh Parivar in different parts of the country, such as ‘Love-Jihad’, ‘Ghar-Wapasi’, orchestrated mob lynchings etc. and attack on Kashmiris in different parts of India also had the effect of further alienating the Kashmiris from India. There is a growing sentiment in the Kashmir valley that India under Modi is fast inching towards a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ where the Muslims would be relegated to the position of second class citizen. The anger in the valley is directed not just against the BJP government in Delhi, but also against the Kashmiri leadership of the valley, particularly against Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which had formed an alliance with BJP to rule the state. Not surprisingly, the PDP was routed in the recently concluded Loksabha elections. As the outcome of Loksabha election this year shows, BJP was successful in its strategy of communal polarisation in J&K and in other parts of the country. In J&K, BJP’s vote share increased from 34.4 percent to 46.6 percent. If the incidents of mob lynching in the initial months of the second term of Modi government are any indicator, BJP plans to intensify this polarizing campaign. The choice of Amit Shah as new Home Minister and the alacrity with which he took the decision of abrogating the special status of the state makes it clear that the policy of brutal repression of insurgency in Kashmir will continue unabated.
Whither Kashmir?
The unilateral step to abrogate the special status of Jammu & Kashmir and further militarisation of the valley is bound to exacerbate the hardship of ordinary Kashmiris. However, it is also true that Kashmiri resistance is not going to be subdued in the wake of the increasing oppression by Indian state in the fascist era. There is no doubt that the uneasy calm in the valley will not last forever and there is bound to be a storm after this lull. The history of all occupations bears testimony to the fact that more oppression does not end resistance, rather it breeds more resistance. As in the past, the Kashmiri people will continue to resist the might of Indian state with their remarkable courage and bravery. At the same time, it would be a folly to ignore yet another tragic reality of the Kashmir imbroglio that the communal polarisation being spearheaded by Sangh Parivar would further strengthen the social base of Islamic fundamentalism is Kashmir. Already the jihadi elements of ISIS and Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan are looking for new breeding ground to spread their base in the wake of American withdrawal from the region. Pakistani army and ISI would be too happy to give them safe passage and material support to make inroads into Kashmir. Needless to say that infiltration of political Islam into the Kashmiri resistance is bound to weaken it.
Clearly, the fascist onslaught in India has exacerbated the complications the Kashmir dispute. The future looks uncertain and bleak. The ruling classes of India and Pakistan see greater benefit in keeping the Kashmir issue alive than in resolving the issue as this issue can be raked easily at any time to divert the attention of masses in both the countries from their pressing problems related to livelihood. The struggle for achieving the right to self-determination of Kashmiri people can proceed towards victory only if it adopts secular and inclusive approach. Also, there is a pressing need to establish linkages between the Kashmiri struggle and working class struggles and other mass movements in India.
“We must not limit ourselves to struggle with and for the masses with our political and economic program. True, the political and economic demands press their way to the fore. But how can we offer the masses more than just defense of their bread? We must at the same time bring them the entire noble inner substance of communism as a world outlook. If that is done, our movement will sink roots in all social layers, and especially among bourgeois intellectuals whom recent historical developments have rendered insecure in their thinking and their striving, who have lost their old world outlook without being able to find a new one in the turmoil of these times. Let us ensure that these seekers do not go astray.”
– Clara Zetkin, The Struggle Against Fascism
