22 Time November 4, 2019
that Kashmir would become India’s Viet-
nam War, a nightmare with “body bags”
returning in large numbers. “Remove the
restrictions, and popular protests will
engulf the whole Valley. Continue them,
and the pot will boil until it explodes.”the problems in Kashmir have
been shaped by colonial history, reli-
gious tensions and nationalism. During
the partition of British India in 1947, the
leader of Jammu and Kashmir pushed
for independence rather than joining
Muslim- majority Pakistan or Hindu-
majority India. When Pakistan tried to
take the territory anyway, Kashmir’s
leader asked for help from India, which
agreed—on the condition that Kashmir
accede to India. What fol-
lowed was the first of two
wars that Pakistan and
India fought over Kashmir.
Today, both of the nuclear-
armed countries claim the
state as a whole; India con-
trols roughly half the land,
Pakistan controls less than a
third, and China the rest.
Over the past three
decades, Pakistan has
also partially backed and
funded insurgents in Kash-
mir, where India has re-
sponded with troops and brutal mea-
sures. A U.N. report in July noted serious
abuses by Indian forces, including extra-
judicial killings, torture and pellet-gun
blindings. New Delhi dismissed the re-
port as a “false and motivated narrative.”
Repealing Article 370 of the Indian
constitution—which gave Kashmir
autonomy in all areas except foreign af-
fairs, defense and communications —
was a long- standing goal of Modi’s
party, which sees India as a Hindu na-
tion and has long opposed rules pre-
venting outsiders from buying land in
Kashmir. Stripping the special status
has seemed to rouse the party base. “For
70 years, Article 370 was proving to be
an impediment in the way of the spiritiT’s apple season in Kashmir, buT
in orchards across the fertile Himala-
yan valley, unpicked fruit rots on the
branches. Markets lack their usual bus-
tle, most shops are open for only a few
hours each morning, and schools and
colleges are largely empty of students.
The slowdown reflects both the firm
grip of the Indian government on the
Muslim- majority state and the Kash-
mirian people’s seemingly spontaneous
reaction to it. A tweet posted on the ac-
count of Mehbooba Mufti, the state’s
former chief minister who has been de-
tained for more than two months, read,
“Kashmiris have been resolute about a
civil curfew as a mark of protest.”
It was on Aug. 5 that Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s Hindu
nationalist government
said it would scrap the
semi autonomous status
that the state of Jammu
and Kashmir had held
under India’s constitution
for seven decades. For the
next 72 days, the Kashmir
Valley and parts of Jammu
endured a communica-
tions blackout, with land-
lines, cell phones and the
Internet suspended. “Nine
to 10 million people were
pushed behind an iron wall. We’d never
seen anything like this,” says Anuradha
Bhasin, executive editor of the Kashmir
Times, citing previous Internet black-
outs that still left phone services in-
tact. “There was an absolute silence.”
Already one of the world’s most mili-
tarized regions, the Valley was flooded
with thousands of Indian troops.
If the heavy-handed measures of the
curfew were intended to dampen the
threat of violence, they succeeded—at
least for a time. But now that India has
begun lifting restrictions on the valley,
Kashmiris are bracing for what hap-
pens once the clampdown is over. In a
Sept. 29 column, former Indian Supreme
Court Judge Markandey Katju wrote
Kashmir simmers
between dueling
nuclear powers
By Naina Bajekal
TheBrief World
of ‘one country, one constitution,’ ”
Modi said to cheers during a rally in
Maharashtra before local elections.
To Pakistan, the situation looks rather
different. “The red line has been crossed
on Aug. 5,” says Masood Khan, president
of Azad (Free) Kashmir, one of two terri-
tories in Kashmir administered by Paki-
stan. A career diplomat who worked in
Washington and Geneva as part of Paki-
stan’s permanent mission to the U.N.,
Khan grew up in Azad Kashmir and de-
scribes himself as a “son of the soil.” On a
recent trip to Washington, D.C., he urged
the international community to inter-
vene and start talks with India. “We’re in
a state of war,” he told TIME.
But while the rhetoric on both sides
remains hostile, Pakistan can ill afford a
full-scale conflict, analysts say. On Oct. 18,
the Financial Action Task Force, the
global terrorism-finance watchdog, ruled
Pakistan would stay on its “ greylist” until‘There’s a
collective
sense
of fear,
humiliation,
hurt and
anger. This
will erupt
in different
forms.’Security forces
patrol in Srinagar,
Kashmir’s biggest
city, on Aug. 10