Statement on Kashmir: New Socialist Initiative

On 5 August the Home Minister of India introduced two bills in the parliament abrogating the special status of J&K and downgrading the state to two union territories. For weeks before this Indian government had been inducting thousands of additional CRPF troops in the Kashmir valley. Indian Army had produced a landmine and a sniper rifle with Pakistani markers to show that a terror attack was imminent; following which the Amarnath yatra was cancelled, and all tourists and out of state students asked to leave the valley. A day before Home Minister’s actions in the parliament, the state government run by a governor sent by the central government made large scale arrests of political activists and leaders of mainstream political parties of Kashmir, including two former chief ministers. All means of communication within the state and with the outside world were cut. Armed police enforced curfew like conditions everywhere.  By all accounts, the central government had indeed executed a well-planned conspiracy against the people of J&K. However, it is also clear that the bullies and spymasters running India’s Kashmir affairs did not have the courage to face the very people whose legal status in India they were conspiring to change. They hid behind the brutal military strength of Indian armed forces, and played legal trickery in Indian parliament. After the act, these bullies are now afraid of the protests of the ordinary Kashmiris. So they continue with their draconian measures. For two weeks the people of Kashmir have lived in an open prison, while in the so called mainstream of India, many have been celebrating this forced integration of Kashmir into their nation.

The Modi-Shah duo’s attack on the legal status of J&K is not only against the people of  that state, but is also a challenge to constitutional governance and federal division of power in India. While people of J&K are its immediate target, its real intent is to stoke and strengthen majoritarian politics in the country. The presence of Article 370 in the constitution was a sign of the unique circumstances under which the state of J&K joined Indian union. If the communal logic under which the country was partitioned in 1947 were to be followed then being a Muslim majority state J&K should have gone to Pakistan. India had no claim on it under that logic. However, the people of Kashmir were not ready to let their future be determined by a communal logic. Even before 1947, the most important political party in the state, the National Conference, had rebuffed Muslim League. Its Naya Kashmir programme was quasi-socialist, which promised to liberate Kashmir from feudal autocracy, poverty and backwardness to a realm of equality irrespective of religion and race. It imagined a prosperous economy based upon planning, and included right to work along with a broad spectrum of social welfare measures. There was no place for the two-nation theory propounded both by Hindu and Muslim communalists in the vision of Kashmir advocated by popular Kashmiri leaders like Sheikh Abdullah.  While it was obvious that there will be no place for a Kashmir of their vision in Pakistan, an India which promised constitutional democracy and secularism did offer hope. Against the Hindu communalist propaganda which has always projected article 370 as an undue favour given to Muslims of Kashmir valley, it needs to be noted that the physical connection of post-partition India with J&K in 1947 was very tenuous. The main road from Jammu connected it to Sialkot in Pakistan. Similarly, Srinagar was most easily accessed from Rawalpindi via Jhelum gorge. During the 1947-48 war with Pakistan, Indian armed forces had to rely on air transport. Were it not for the solid support received from the people of the Kashmir valley, many of whom also joined the armed militia organised mainly by Communist activists of the valley, Indian operations against Pakistani forces would have been very difficult. Hence, it was mainly the promise of a democratic secular politics due to which Kashmir became part of the Indian union.

Article 370 was thoroughly debated in the Indian constituent assembly and was a product of the special conditions of that time.  It reflected the balance between the aspirations of Kashmir for self-rule, and imperatives of the Indian nation state. Ever since 1953 Indian state has many times violated the spirit of the article, and it had practically become an empty shell. However, under its fig-leaf the idea persisted that nations should be constructed out of voluntary association, rather than a forced homogeneity. The constitution of India and the structure of governance emerging after independence have many provisions and schedules to allow autonomy for regions and communities considered different from the so called mainstream. All hill states and schedule areas place restrictions on outsiders buying land. Even though the republic of India has one common electoral roll in which every citizen has one vote, autonomous councils have seats reserved for special communities, which promise them higher representation in elected bodies than their population ratios. Article 370 is not an anomaly in a vision of a nation which accepts diversity, and does not force one language, one religion, or one governance structure everywhere.

The RSS and the BJP have always opposed the conception of an India composed of diverse elements. They had even opposed the names Jharkhand and Uttarakhand for the new states carved by the Vajpayee government, because the word ‘khand’ in Hindi indicates division with boundaries. Their rhetoric of a ‘strong’, and ’united’  nation (the Rashtra) is a cover for a centralised and militarised authoritarian governance, under the cultural and political mores of upper class, savarna Hindus elites. Hatred for minorities, particularly Muslims, and ridiculing and devaluing other linguistic and regional communities is the glue of their nation.  

Actions of Modi government are not only an attack on Indian constitution’s scheme of a nation that accepts diversity, it is also violates its moral force, and is a trickery against its legal structure. Constitutional morality demands that an agreement entered between two parties should subsequently be changed only by mutual consent, irrespective of their relative strengths. At least their should be a dialogue during which the weaker party gets an opportunity to put forth its viewpoint. The strong cannot unilaterally rough-shod over the weak that is the crux of the constitutional guarantee of the rule of law.

The abrogation of Article 370 by the Modi government has received widespread approval from ordinary people in the ‘mainstream’ of India. Many Indians actually believe that Kashmir has now been fully integrated with India. For them Kashmir as a piece of land carries more value than the people living there. Their wish that Kashmir be an integral part of India is driven more by the sentiment of ownership, rather than by any concern for the people of Kashmir.Many Indians who disapprove of violence nevertheless think it is fine if the Indian state uses force against Kashmiris to ‘integrate’ their state with the country. They justify this violence in the name of Indian nation, and suspend rules of everyday morality and elementary rationality when it comes to the so-called national interests.

By abrogating article 370 and turning the state of J&K to centrally administered Bantustans, the Modi government has burnt the last civilian political bridge between the Republic of India and the people of Kashmir. With this step Indian state has pushed Kashmir into an interminable cycle of state violence, popular protests and armed insurgency, with no political buffer. Pakistan obviously is only too ready to fish in troubled waters. For the moment people of the rest of India may think that they are shielded from this violence.  However, even some responsible generals of the Indian Army have been emphatic that the only solution to Kashmir imbroglio is a political solution. Modi government is not interested in any political solution. It actually wants the cycle of violence in Kashmir to continue, as this will keep its majoritarian pot in the mainstream of India boiling.“

What happens in Kashmir ultimately depends on the people of India. They need to beware of the anti-Kashmir propaganda by the media and government according to whom anyone protesting in the valley is a jihadi terrorist. They need to decide if they want a nation in which one third of the armed forces of their country of 1.2 billion are  engaged in subjugating eight million people of a small valley, whose numbers are less than one percent of India’s population. Do they want this bullying to go on in the name of their country?

Let's all rise against this unconstitutional and utterly contemptuous decision of central government. Let's all stand in solidarity with the brothers and sisters of Kashmir in this most brutal hour of their lives and the darkest hour of Indian democracy.