On August 5, the government of India revoked the special status that the Constitution gave Jammu and Kashmir and reduced a state with de jure autonomy to two Union Territories – all this when the state was under President’s rule with no elected government in place.
Senior constitutional scholar AG Noorani a widely acclaimed expert on Kashmir, described this action as “utterly and palpably unconstitutional”, “accomplished by deceit” and called on the Supreme Court to strike it down as void.
There has been writing by other legal scholars questioning the constitutionality of this action building on a wealth of writing by Kashmiri scholars on the intergenerational effects of rule by fortification in the Valley – “garrison governance”, to use the words of Ather Zia.
What is worrying for our collective conscience is the eerie celebration in the ruling camp and the nonchalance about the suffering this move has imposed on a people: losing no time in declaring an investors’ meet in the Valley; corporate predators rolling out plans to decimate the Valley, like they have done in the rest of the country, especially in ecologically rich areas where communities have lived in recognition of the coeval standing of all the inhabitants of the land; political predators declaring gleefully that fair Kashmiri girls will now be available for the asking; Bollywood hastening to block the next 100 titles to consolidate this conquest of Kashmir through cinema. Brazen impunity marks this moment as never before.
Disregard for the Constitution
In the din outside Kashmir, the strident Bharatiya Janata Party government declares repeatedly that all is well in Kashmir; the governor of Jammu and Kashmir, holder of a constitutional office, takes unapologetically partisan political stands, completely disregardful of the fact that he is under oath to uphold the Constitution; the silent acquiescence of the highest constitutional authorities to what has been a manifest illegality – a complete and utter disregard for the basic tenets of the Constitution of India – is particularly worrisome.
It is of course true that the autonomy of Kashmir has been whittled down over the past 70 years bit by bit, and the previous Congress government have been no knight in shining armour. Even so, the BJP government’s blatant disregard and disrespect for the Constitution is a move in a different direction altogether – with grave and unprecedented consequences for the people of Kashmir certainly, and for people in the rest of India as well in relation to the Valley.
In the course of the fortnight, except for Kashmiri people outside who have not been able to establish contact with family at home, we have heard very few voices from the Valley. One of the most respected journalists in Kashmir, Anuradha Bhasin, approached the Supreme Court asking for the return of media freedom to report the situation in the valley – it is undisputable that allowing press freedom is a vital safeguard against the depredations of government.
Brutal restrictions
In the light of the shutdown of communication systems, reports of injuries from pellets and assaults by the armed forces, restrictions on the maintenance of hospital records of those admitted for treatment, the woeful inadequacy of access to basic health-care for over a week, and an undeclared curfew restraining any ordinary civilian movement in the Valley, petitions filed in the Supreme Court pleaded for the removal of extreme curbs that have incarcerated an entire people indefinitely. The Supreme Court declined to intervene and decided to wait for the “return to normalcy.”
What is the “normalcy” that the Valley can return to? And who will determine the degree of normalcy achieved? In a situation precipitated by zero adherence to fundamental democratic processes, where there has been a manifest collective humiliation of an entire people by the Indian State, where the occupation by stealth continues to impose deep suffering and trauma on a people dispossessed overnight, where surveillance and army action takes on a new meaning, what is the “normalcy” we imagine?
How will we ascertain whether and what extent of harms have been inflicted, or whether there has been loss of life if information from independent media is not allowed to flow, and the only narratives available subserve the interests of the government? The arrival of the Ambanis and Bollywood in Kashmir? Is that when it will be deemed to be normal for the removal of curbs in the gated, secured environs of “safe spaces” for predatory development?
In all this talk of the opening up of the Valley, can those of us living elsewhere in the country even imagine the effects of this governmental action and its meanings for the people of Kashmir?
Resisting state impunity
And what of impunity? The Supreme Court, less than two years ago sang paeans to the citizen’s right against surveillance, the right to autonomy and dignity, the right to be left alone, and the full enjoyment of the right to liberty. It also upheld the minority judgment in the ADM Jabalpur case, which restored the right to resist state impunity and arbitrariness through an appeal to the court.
As Kashmiri scholars and human rights defenders who stand with the Valley have persistently argued, these rights have historically only applied in the breach to Kashmir. But there was space to articulate the fact of the breach. Today we stand at a point where the breach is the new normal sanctioned by law – one that can only be kept in place through intensified practices of state impunity. Rolling up Kashmir like a mat and tucking it under the arm, hawking the land to brokers of different orders (to borrow an expression from Telugu poet Sivasagar), reducing what was a state into a high security prison forces us to recall Faiz Ahmed Faiz: “Hum mehkoomon ke paaon tale/ Ye dharti dhar dhar dharkegi” (And we oppressed/ Beneath our feet will have/ this earth shiver, shake and beat”).
The challenge before us is to find ways to resurrect “space for Kashmiris and their knowing in their own ways”, as Nitasha Kaul and Ather Zia observe in a recent article in Economic and Political Weekly and to keep robust dissent alive. Lest we forget, it is Kashmir that provides the context for any deliberation on the meanings of justice in India today.
Kalpana Kannabiran is a sociologist and human rights columnist.