The EconomistAugust 10th 2019 Leaders 1112
W
hen theprincely state of Jammu & Kashmir joined the
fledgling Indian union in October 1947, it had little choice
in the matter. Pakistan-backed tribesmen had invaded; only In-
dian troops could repel them. The consolation was that Kashmir
was promised a lot of autonomy. That came to include trappings
of statehood—a separate constitution and flag—and more sub-
stantial differences, such as a ban on outsiders buying property.
On August 5th the government of Narendra Modi, India’s
prime minister, tore up this compact. That has electrified his
Hindu-nationalist supporters, who want Kashmir, India’s only
Muslim-majority state, brought to heel. But it is likely to unleash
forces that do just the opposite.
Mr Modi’s plan is far-reaching. Jammu & Kashmir, already
split into two in 1947 when Pakistan grabbed one-third of it, has
been divided further, with the high desert of Ladakh hived off
into a separate entity. Both the new parts were demoted from
constituents of a fully fledged state to mere “union territories”,
ruled from New Delhi. And Article 370 of India’s constitution has
been gutted, thus eliminating Kashmir’s autonomy at a stroke.
The repeal of that provision has been a totemic issue to Hindu
nationalists for decades. In their view, the state’s political privi-
leges have fanned the flames of separatism by encouraging Kash-
miris to view themselves as irredeemably different from otherIndians. Direct rule would bypass Kashmir’s fossilised political
dynasties, dragging the state into the political mainstream.
That is a forlorn hope. For one thing, Mr Modi enacted the
change through repression and subterfuge. Kashmiri political
leaders were arrested, internet and phone networks were shut
down and public assembly was forbidden. In the week before the
move 30,000 troops were sent into the region, and another 8,
afterwards. The government has also resorted to constitutional
chicanery, exploiting the fact that Kashmir’s state legislature—
which would normally have to assent to such changes—was dis-
solved over a year ago. India’s Supreme Court ought to look un-
kindly on such legal sleight of hand, which would allow any oth-
er state to be similarly conjured out of existence.
Second, the move is likely to compound Kashmiris’ mistrust
of the Indian government. The autonomy they were promised in
the republic’s earliest years had already been whittled down. As
early as the 1950s, the state’s independent-minded political lead-
ers were occasionally jailed. The government’s rigging of an elec-
tion in 1987 sparked an insurgency, stoked by Pakistan. Violence,
which had subsided for many years, has ticked up recently, nota-
bly after the killing of a charismatic militant leader in 2016. Local
people are angry and disillusioned. Turnout in this year’s na-
tional elections was less than 30% in Kashmir and a dismal 14%Modi’s bad move
The revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy points to a radical nationalist agendaKashmir’s statuscause, as president, he has a responsibility to unite the country,
but also because America’s biggest mass shootings come in pat-
terns. In the 1980s there was a wave of post-office shootings. Lat-
er, shootings at schools and universities became a way for a cer-
tain type of young man to achieve fame. More recently there has
been an increase in acts of terrorism perpetrated by white men
who believe they are locked in a struggle against non-whites and
Jews. This thread connects the shooting at a Charleston church
in 2015 to the one at a Pittsburgh synagogue last year and to the El
Paso Walmart shooting.
That is where Mr Trump’s language comes in. His presidential
campaign began with an impromptu speech in
which he said Mexico was sending rapists
across the border, and it continued in that vein.
The White House has not changed him. At a rally
in Florida in May, where he denounced migrants
at the southern border, someone in the crowd
shouted that the solution was to shoot them.
“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away
with that kind of statement,” responded Mr
Trump, to laughter and cheers. After the El Paso shootings, as
after Charlottesville, the president, reading from a teleprompter,
condemned white supremacists and bigots. Yet the next time he
is in front of a big crowd he will be at it again.
If you accept that the words people say have some effect, then
the words that a president says must matter more. There is no
way to calculate the probability of such racially divisive language
encouraging someone to act out violent racist fantasies, but it is
not one and it is not zero. Run the experiment enough times with
enough people and at some point it becomes lethal.Yet it is also true that mass shootings were common before Mr
Trump took office and will continue after he has gone. The El
Paso shooter’s main fixation was immigration, but he also wrote
in his manifesto about excessive corporate power and environ-
mental damage. The Dayton shooter was not a Trump supporter
at all. In such cases it is impossible to know whether the ideology
makes the person violent, or whether the violent desires come
first and the half-baked justification follows after.
If motive can be hard to attribute precisely, and policy corre-
spondingly hard to design, the same is not true of opportunity.
White nationalists can be found in many Western countries, as
can politicians who exploit racial divisions. But
in a society where someone with murderous in-
tent can wield only a kitchen knife or a baseball
bat, the harm he can do is limited. When such a
person has access to a semi-automatic weapon,
which can hold 100 rounds of ammunition and
discharge them in under a minute, it is griev-
ous—and hence, lamentably, more seductive.
The answer is obvious: restrict the owner-
ship of certain types of guns, as New Zealand did after the shoot-
ings in Christchurch, and introduce proper background checks.
Such measures will not prevent all gun deaths. The constitution
will not be rewritten and too many weapons are in circulation.
Yet given the number of fatalities, even a 5% reduction would
save many innocent lives. Mass shootings in America have be-
come like deforestation in Brazil or air pollution in China—a
man-made environmental hazard that is hard to stop. Such haz-
ards are not cleaned up overnight. That should not prevent peo-
ple from making a start. 7