In her collection of essays Men in Dark Times (1968), Hannah Arendt wrote, “It is true that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it, that it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they really are.” In her recent book, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, Anuradha Bhasin tells the story of a land and its people forbidden to think or act against brutal regimental force. She, too, merely narrates stories without defining them. The book tears apart official and mass-media narratives of normalcy and acceptance of the abrogation of Article 370 by the people of Kashmir in August 2019. In 12 chapters, Bhasin has captured one of the most defining moments of the history of Jammu and Kashmir and the impact it has had on 13.6 million people of the erstwhile state at a time when the country is shedding all fig leaves to embrace a majoritarian nationhood. The details of detention; the longest running internet blackout in the world and the clampdown on political dissent are some of the highlights of this extensively researched book. At the start of chapter 3, Bhasin quotes Nobel laureate poet Czeslaw Milosz: “In a room where/ people unanimously maintain/ a conspiracy of silence/ one word of truth/ sounds like a pistol shot.” By Milosz’s definition, A Dismantled State is a resounding rifle of truth. Bhasin’s portrayal of the landscape of Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 is not only a sad commentary on the ground situation but an archival record for posterity. The book discusses the historical importance of Article 370 and how its abrogation fractures the Constitutional bridge which Kashmir had with the rest of the country. Bhasin argues that it was on the basis of a conditional accession that on October 17, 1949, Article 370 was included in the Indian Constitution. The special status of Jammu and Kashmir was defended by N Gopalaswami Ayyangar and it was passed almost unanimously. Interestingly, the dissenting vote against the motion was not passed by the Hindu Mahasabha ideologue Syama Prasad Mukherjee but by Maulana Hasrat Mohani. She adds that Article 35A (which empowered erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir’s state legislature to define ‘permanent residents’) closely resembles Article 371 of the Constitution, which provides safeguards to the people of the Northeast with respect to government jobs, ownership and transfer of land and its resources. Why is it essential to speak up for the people of Kashmir? Bhasin writes that Kashmiris, as they were pushed behind an iron curtain, seemed to discover that they had no or few friends in the rest of the country, which celebrated the full integration of the land minus its people. This is an indictment of each one of us — the silence we maintained and continue to maintain regarding Kashmir is not fear, it is connivance. Every jackboot in the face of a fellow Kashmiri, is our own. The incarceration of political leaders and common citizens which happened in the Valley in August 2019 appears many times in the book. Bhasin writes that many of the detainees were poor and illiterate. When their kin went to meet them in jail, the security guards would insist that they speak only in Hindi. One mother of a detainee recalls how during her visits to her jailed son, all they could do was stare at each other’s face. Bhasin’s book reminds me of the poem La Patria (The Homeland) by the Colombian poet, Maria Mercedes Carranza, published in the collection, Halo, Soledad (Hello solitude, 1987): “In this house, everything is in ruins, / In ruins are hugs and music, each morning, destiny, laughter are in ruins, tears, silence, dreams./ The windows show destroyed landscapes, flesh and ash on people’s faces/ Words combine with fear in their mouths,/ In this house we are buried alive.” Mentally annihilated by the political violence in her country, Carranza committed suicide in 2003. When hegemony and false consciousness spread their wings, truth becomes a pedestrian waiting for an opportune moment to cross a busy street. Regimes which weaponise their citizens with hate can only be countered by truth. Books such as A Dismantled State do exactly that — they handhold truth and get it to cross a busy street full of false news, hate and brute power. (Shah Alam Khan is professor of Orthopaedics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi)
