A Dangerous Precedent
Last week, amidst the never-ending chaos of Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon renewed the call for a second Scottish Independence vote. Protests turned violent in Catalonia as the hotly anticipated verdict for 12 separatist leaders was released to much public disapproval. In Canada, the Bloc Québécois clawed their way back into the reckoning after several years in the political wilderness. In Kashmir, meanwhile, silence prevails. Almost two months after India’s momentous decision to strip the region of its autonomy, the region remains under curfew, communications are still heavily restricted, and many politicians and young activists are yet to be released. Despite what India’s mainstream media outlets would have you believe, ‘normalcy’ has yet to return.
Ever since India gained its independence 72 years ago, critics both within and without have doubted the prospects of the future of the Indian democracy. Till now, with the exception of the Emergency of 1975 under Indira Gandhi, the South Asian country has continuously defied the naysayers to remain the world’s largest democracy. Today, that status is under threat. The challenge comes from both sides of the political aisle. On the one hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fresh off an increased majority in the 2019 elections, has a mandate to push through the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) agenda, which he and the more extreme elements of his party have long campaigned for. Simultaneously, the opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), is imploding with alarming speed. Political commentators had predicted a significant upturn in fortunes after they had slumped to their lowest number of seats since Independence in 2014. Instead, the INC only increased their number of seats from 44 to 52 and conceded an even greater majority to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In 2014 Modi had run on a strong economic platform, with a huge emphasis on jobs. Five years later having largely failed to deliver on those promises, his campaign had a much more ideological focus, making no bones about promoting a Hindu nationalist agenda. This resulted in a rare increased majority, liberal political commentators worried that he would take this as a mandate to push through measures Hindu nationalists have clamoured for throughout independent India’s existence.
Those fears were confirmed on August 5th, when Modi’s BJP government revoked article 370 of the constitution. The article had, since Independence in 1947, enshrined Kashmir’s special status in law. As a condition of joining the union, the border state between Pakistan and India was granted a significantly greater level of autonomy than any of the other states in India. Kashmir’s constituent assembly was empowered to choose whether to adopt rulings made by the central government. It entitled the region to write its own constitution, which it did in 1956. That constitution has also ceased to be applicable after the central government’s ruling. It should be noted that while the value of article 370 had been continuously diluted during India’s 70 year history, the August 5th ruling went further, not only removing the state’s special status, but also downgrading it from a single state to two union territories: resulting in an entity with less autonomy and less say on the national level.
Democracy in India has always been a fragile entity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kashmir, the most consistent dark mark on India’s progress, a plain reminder of the reality of partition that tore a newly independent nation into two upon religious lines. Under Nehru and the INC, the country had long clung to the notion of being a secular nation in opposition to Pakistan’s staunch Muslim governance. Under Modi, despite his hollow promises of Sabha Vikas (‘development for all’), it is becoming increasingly difficult to back up the claim. It is easy to forget that India is the country with the second highest population of Muslims in the world, with 200 million, making up 14.2% of the total population of India. Despite this significant presence, Kashmir, which had been the only state in India to have a majority of Muslims, is now no longer a state. That Muslim majority may soon also be under threat. In conjunction with article 370, article 35A had been in place to protect the autonomous rights of Kashmir. Central to article 35A was the prohibition of any non-Kashmiris from purchasing land in the state. With this also rendered obsolete by the central government, many fear that the state will effectively sponsor or encourage Hindus to buy land in the area, thereby diluting the Muslim majority and eventually rendering the Muslim vote bank, who largely vote against the BJP, insignificant.
With this context in mind, Modi’s latest move relating to Kashmir takes on an even more sinister tone. Fresh off an increased majority he has set about humbling the only Muslim majority state in the country and removing any pretence of India remaining a secular and tolerant nation. More than the move itself, the manner in which it has been realised is particularly problematic. In issuing the order directly from Delhi the government has completely bypassed democratic process. Kashmir is a semi-autonomous state and has its own legislative assembly. To complete the move, Modi ought to have consulted with the local government as well as debated it in parliament. Neither of these processes were properly followed. Conveniently for Modi, the state legislative assembly has not been sitting since June 2018 when an unnatural coalition between the BJP and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) collapsed. It was thought that new elections were imminent, but the Prime Minister had other ideas. Instead of waiting for a new government to be formed, he simply consulted the Governor, Satya Pal Malik, an official appointed from the centre and thus not representative of the Kashmiri populace, and used that as justification for the abolition of law, curfew and communications blackout that followed. At the same time major political leaders in the region were placed under house arrest and troops were moved into the region in a sign that this was a decision taken and implemented through force, rather than through democratic process.
The momentous act, taken so soon into Modi’s second term, is part of the BJP’s increasingly prominent policy of marginalising the Muslim minority. In the last few months they have been gearing up for the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a register specifically made for Assam state, around the entire country. The list is intended to record all the citizens of the state, and thereby identify and single out the illegal immigrants among the populace for potential deportation. Speaking about the register, Home Minister, Amit Shah, clarified that all illegal immigrants from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Christian backgrounds would be safe from deportations. Muslims, however, were conspicuously absent from Shah’s list. The same Amit Shah had, in the run up to the election, described Muslims immigrating from Bangladesh as ‘termites’. He has become increasingly prominent in Modi’s regime, and contributed significantly in creating an atmosphere of hostility and violence for the not so insignificant Muslim minority living in India. In the last few days crime statistics for the country in 2017 were released. Missing were the stats about lynchings and murders for religious reasons, even though this information had been collected and fully analysed. With INC struggling financially, and unable to escape the thralls of the Nehru/Gandhi family, who remain in power, the BJP are able to continue with this policy without being held accountable. If nothing changes, Kashmir is likely to just be the start.
