Section:GDN 1J PaGe:3 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 17:46 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
3
Mirza
Waheed
I
haven’t been able to hear the voices of my
parents for more than a week now. We usually
talk or exchange messages a few times during
the day, mostly about their creeping health
issues or about my children’s latest antics
here in London . But now, not a peep. It’s
because, like all Kashmiris, they’re under
siege , experiencing the worst crackdown in
three decades, imposed by the Indian government as it
revoked the region’s autonomy by abrogating article 370
of the constitution.
The article, dating back to 1949 , guaranteed Kashmir’s
special status within the larger Indian union and
enshrined the conditions of the state’s accession to India
soon after partition in 1947. The newly created states
of India and Pakistan had gone to war over Muslim-
majority Kashmir, an independent kingdom at the time.
After mediation from the United Nations, all parties
agreed that the future of Kashmir was to be decided later
via a referendum – something India and Pakistan have
failed to honour. The provisions of the article meant that,
pending the fi nal resolution via a plebiscite, the state
had its own constitution, its own national fl ag, a prime
minister and a president , even as successive Indian
regimes , starting in the early 1950s, diluted the article in
order to diminish Kashmir’s autonomy.
India has also abrogated article 35A, introduced in
1954. It empowers the state legislature in Srinagar, the
capital , to defi ne who is a permanent resident with
the right to buy property and apply for jobs. It’s the
dissolution of this article that perhaps presents a graver
threat to Kashmiris, as it potentially clears a way for
Indians to acquire land.
By erasing what was left of its independence , without
any legal foundation, the government of India, led by
Narendra Modi, has chosen to unilaterally alter the
future of an entire people (who have never submitted
to Indian sovereignty). Not only that, it has eff ectively
instituted a mass detention of Kashmiris by rushing
in thousands of troops in addition to the half a million
already stationed there.
As part of this shock-and-awe move , political and
civil leaders in Kashmir, including unionists who’ve
been arguing India’s case , have been arrested. The entire
population is under the severest curfew in decades and
Mirza Waheed
is a Kashmiri
journalist and
author based in
LondonIndian soldiers
man a barricade
in Srinagar,
Kashmir
PHOTOGRAPH:
FAROOQ KHAN/EPAan unprecedented communications blockade has been
put in place, with mobile phones , broadband, even
landlines blocked. The world’s largest democracy has
cut off Kashmir from the rest of the world.
T he decision, however, has wide support across
India. Most political parties, most of the Indian media ,
fi lm stars, some writers – everyone seems to say
in unison : take away the rights of these ungrateful
Muslims. Imagine a small land locked region with a
few million people incarcerated in their own homes,
up against a mighty power, its army, its people, its
media, and you get a sense of the crushing injustice of
the situation.
India’s treatment of Kashmiris is the clearest glimpse
yet of the path that Modi, a Hindu nationalist leader,
wants to tread. His vision is for a majoritarian, Hindu-
fi rst nation where all debate, diff erence and dissent
will be crushed. The rebellious others on the margins,
especially if Muslim, are to be subjugated and subjected
to a medieval siege to force them to bend to the will of
the mega-state.
Kashmiris will inevitably see this new attack on
their body politic as part of a long list of betrayals, and
it reinforces the idea that India’s behaviour towards
Kashmir has always been like that of a colon iser. The
erasure of autonomy, however tenuous, however
token, is the starkest display of that relationship – and
it’s important to remember that Kashmir is subject
to the densest militarisation on the planet. A video
fi lmed by the BBC shows thousands protesting after
Friday prayers in Srinagar. Another video , recorded by
Indian journalist Siddharth Varadarajan , shows boys in
hospital beds who’ve already been hit in the eyes with
lead pellets.A
s statist Indian journalists work
overtime to project a narrative
of normality, it has fallen to the
international media, and a few
brave Indian outlets, to report the
truth. The BBC, the New York Times,
Reuters, Al Jazeera, the Guardian,
the Wire India , Scroll India ,
Telegraph India and a few others have shown protest
marches, wounded civilians, and a grieving people
seething with anger , despite the unprecedented siege.
Addressing the people of Kashmir in 1952, India’s
fi rst prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, said: “Kashmir
is not the property of India or Pakistan. It belongs to
the Kashmiri people ... We have taken the issue to
the United Nations and give our word of honour for a
peaceful solution. As a great nation, we cannot go back
on it. We have left the question of fi nal solution to the
people of Kashmir and we are determined to abide by
their decision.”
India has now done exactly what Nehru ruled out,
going back on its word, and scripted a fi nal betrayal of
the Kashmiri people. The journey from being a colony of
the British empire to colonising the unyielding Muslim
other next door reveals a catastrophic mutation at the
heart of the Indian state.
I asked a Kashmiri journalist who had returned to
Delhi after spending two days in the state if he knew
where it was all headed. He responded with one word,
Falasteen, the Urdu for Palestine – a clear reference to
the settler-colonialist occupation there.
I pray that when I go home next, I do not visit my
parents in a colony of the Hindu nationalist empire.India’s illegal
power grab
turns Kashmir
into a colony
Opinion
Narendra
Modi’s vision
is for a majoritarian,
Hindu-fi rst India,
where all diff erence,
debate and dissent
will be crushed
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