8 Time August 19, 2019
O
n The sunny, cloudless morning when
Imaad Tariq was born in Kashmir, most of his
family had no idea. “Nobody knows that my
wife delivered a baby boy,” says Tariq Ahmad
Sheikh, at the hospital on Aug. 6, a day later. “We couldn’t
inform family, nor is anyone able to reach here.”
In the early hours of Aug. 5, the Indian government shut
down the Internet as well as landline and cell networks in
Kashmir, as part of an unprecedented bid for greater con-
trol of the disputed Himalayan territory, which both Paki-
stan and India claim and over which they have gone to war
three times. Some 7 million people in the region were left
with no way to contact the outside world, as the
government closed schools, banned public meet-
ings and barricaded neighborhoods. Officials
arrested more than 100 people, including politi-
cal leaders, activists and former chief ministers
of the state. Local reports quote police saying at
least one protester died.
But few Kashmiris will know any of that.
Many may not even be aware that hours after
the blackout began, India’s Home Minister Amit
Shah announced the state of Jammu and Kash-
mir would be stripped of the special status it had
held since shortly after the Partition of British
India in 1947. Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s government said it would revoke two cru-
cial articles of India’s constitution that have guar-
anteed Kashmiris the right to their own flag, con-
stitution and near autonomy for seven decades.
Overnight, India brought in radical changes to its
only Muslim-majority state, while its population
was left in the dark.
To some, India’s move was a rebuke to Presi-
dent Trump’s suggestion in July that Modi had
asked him to mediate in Kashmir, which New
Delhi angrily denied. Others see it as an attempt
to shift the region’s demographics; the legal ma-
neuver paves the way for (largely Hindu) out-
siders to buy property there for the first time,
sparking comparisons to Israeli settlers in the
West Bank. “Kashmir was always seen as real
estate, not a place with people,” says Nitasha
Kaul, a Kashmiri writer based in London. Scrap-
ping Kashmir’s autonomy has long been a goal
of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), which returned to power for a sec-
ond term in May with an even bigger mandate.
“A decision has been taken about Kashmir in
which no Kashmiri has been a stakeholder,” says
Indian journalist Rana Ayyub. “This is an attack on In-
dian democracy.”
And while Modi’s government stokes tensions between
Hindus and Muslims elsewhere, unrest in Kashmir has
been steadily growing. A U.N. report in July cited local
data showing 160 Kashmiri civilians were killed in 2019
alone, thought to be the highest figure in over a decade.
In February, a suicide bombing by Pakistani-backed mili-
tants killed 40 Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir; in
response, India sent fighter jets into Pakistani airspace
and dropped bombs near the town of Balakot in Pakistan.
(There were no confirmed casualties.)
India’s latest move has further widened the rift with
its neighbor, risking a return to hostilities between the
nuclear -armed states. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran
Khan warned Parliament on Aug. 6 that India’s actions
would likely spark militant violence, leading to tit-for-tat
strikes. “If we fight a war until we shed the last drop of
our blood, no one will win,” he said. “It will have grievous
consequences for the entire world.” Pakistan has
since downgraded diplomatic ties and suspended
bilateral trade with New Delhi.
But the risk to Islamabad of engineering a vio-
lent backlash via militant groups would be “very
great,” says Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at
the London think tank Chatham House, especially
as Washington has declined to intervene. U.S. of-
ficials told TIME the Trump Administration so
far is taking no action to prevent an escalation of
the conflict between the two countries. And with
Pakistan’s economy suffering, a fresh conflict with
India could derail its attempts to repair relations
with the West. “India in many ways has played its
cards just right,” Shaikh says.
Beyond the geopolitics, though, it’s hard to see
how India will win the hearts and minds of ordi-
nary Kashmiris, who woke up on Aug. 5 to find
their Internet cut off—and not for the first time.
“There’s essentially no other place on earth that
has had as many Internet shutdowns as Kashmir,”
says Ravi Agrawal, the author of India Connected.
Without any means of communication, it’s hard for
locals to organize protests that could turn violent,
just as it is for militants to plan an attack.
But at some point, the shutdown will end and
Kashmiris will discover that Delhi has reshaped
their lives in a move that carries echoes of a dark
history. “I am reminded of the days surrounding
Partition, when Indians and Pakistanis had no idea
which country they woke up in,” Hafsa Kanjwal,
a historian at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania,
wrote on Facebook. Modi is likely hoping a child
like Imaad Tariq, born under a different constitu-
tion than his father, will grow up to embrace India.
History suggests that might not be so simple.
—With reporting by Billy Perrigo/london,
Fahad shah/srinagar, Kashmir and john
walcoTT and KimBerly dozier/washingTon TheBrief Opener
‘Together
we are,
together we
shall rise and
together we
will fulfil [sic]
the dreams
of [1.3 billion]
Indians.’
Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, on
Twitter on Aug. 6WORLD
India takes Kashmir,
but loses Kashmiris
By Naina Bajekal