Opinion What bleeding hearts don’t understand about abrogation of Article 370 and Kashmir today

That day, I was fortunate to be present at the epicentre of this constitutional earthquake. Sitting in the Kashmir Frontier Headquarters of the Border Security Force in the Humhuma area of Srinagar as an Inspector General, I still remember getting goosebumps listening to the speech by Home Minister Amit Shah. As he began dismantling the controversial and convoluted provisions of the Constitution that had defined the relationship of Jammu & Kashmir with the Republic of India for nearly seven decades, I couldn’t help feeling that I was bearing witness to history in the making.

In all fairness, in over 75 years of its existence, the Indian nation-state has been constantly subjected to dramatic and often violent upheavals. We have witnessed terrible wars, bloody insurgencies, shocking assassinations, shameful atrocities, natural calamities and many other tumultuous events that have shaken and shaped our society. Even so, the abrogation of Article 370 and all the other measures announced on that fateful day four years ago, surely must count as one of the most significant days in recent Indian history.

Not surprisingly, the constitutional changes announced that day created shockwaves. Not just in the Kashmir Valley, but in the rest of the country and around the world. They represented not just a dramatic shift in the constitutional order, but also articulated a bold assertion of national sovereignty. They also announced a clear break from the debilitating and demeaning obligations of a violent and troubling colonial legacy. It was a legacy that gave us not just the bloody Partition of India but also a poisoned chalice filled to the brim. It came in the form of hundreds of princely states that the British Raj treated as vassals till the very end and then decided to confer with sovereignty at the time of departure. The cynicism and cussedness of a departing colonial power is central to understanding the post-Independence trajectory of Kashmir’s troubled relationship with India. In abrogating Article 370, India has not just attempted to settle the unfinished business of Partition, but to finally find the confidence to undo the chicanery imposed by the British on our idealistic but clearly inexperienced and overwhelmed leadership in 1947.

For nearly seven decades, Article 370 was treated as an article of faith, the very bedrock of Kashmir’s relationship with the rest of the country. This view was propagated not just by the people of Kashmir and their self-serving politicians, but also by the political and intellectual establishment that dominated our politics and government till 2014. It didn’t matter that this convoluted arrangement completely confounded the pious expectations with which it was enacted and did little to facilitate its stated purpose of the integration of Kashmir with the rest of the country. Instead, it bred a strong sense of separatism that relied both on a toxic mixture of exclusive ethnicity and religious chauvinism. It was a separatism that initially began with vague notions of self-determination and a composite cultural identity given the name of Kashmiriyat. However, thanks to the political and administrative ambiguity nurtured by Article 370, and a well-planned campaign of subversion and infiltration of foreign Jihadis by our Pakistani neighbours, after four decades of political drift and radicalisation, Kashmiri separatism took a decisively violent turn in 1989. Shortly thereafter, it was quickly subsumed into a larger narrative of jehadi Islam that openly called for not just the liberation of Kashmir but the destruction of India itself.

The influential and vocal sections of our civil society that are forever showcasing their bleeding hearts for Kashmir and are weeping copious tears of moral outrage for this act of abrogation, would do well to remember that Article 370 also encouraged a powerful sense of grievance and self-righteous victimhood in Kashmir. It is a narrative that has consistently blinded civil society in Kashmir to its own failings and complicity in fuelling over three decades of senseless violence. It has also led to the absurd and monstrous indifference to the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits that took place well before Kosovo and Rwanda shocked our moral imagination. Indeed, many influential sections of Kashmiri society and their sympathisers outside Kashmir continue to live in denial about this shameful episode in their history. The same sense of denial and victimhood pervades their perception of the Indian security forces deployed in Kashmir. There is no doubt that Article 370 provided legal and political legitimacy to such narratives.

As things stand today, a powerful legal challenge has been mounted in the Supreme Court of India against the abrogation of Article 370. Some of India’s finest legal minds are engaged in attempting to convince the Supreme Court and through it, the people of India, that this abrogation is not only a constitutional and legal mistake, but also a grave error of political and moral judgement. The fundamental thrust of their argument seems to be that Article 370 is now a part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution of India and, therefore, beyond the power of Parliament to amend in any way. In doing so, they are merely affirming the power of ideology and narrative to twist legal logic and constitutional principles, regardless of the practical implications for the sovereignty and integrity of India. One is confident that the Supreme Court will see through this legal sleight of hand and recognise the severe damage done to the idea of India by the nearly seventy years of the existence of Article 370 and finally consign it to the dustbin of history.

The Cassandras who predicted an apocalypse post-August 2019 must be very disappointed and desperate that their predictions have not come to pass. With a robust and sensitive security grid in place, the Valley remains largely peaceful and is seeing unprecedented levels of economic and cultural activities. Caught in its existential challenges, Pakistan has not shown the appetite to wreak the long-promised death and destruction on India in aid of its supposedly suffering Kashmiri brethren. In short, the bluff of Article 370 has been correctly called. The damage done to the social and political fabric of Kashmir by three decades of jehadi violence and the preceding four decades of political drift, will not be repaired any time soon. But surely if we were prepared to give seven decades to Article 370 to fail spectacularly in integrating Kashmir with India, its abrogation also deserves a few years of patient effort to vindicate the national resolve and vision of a strong, confident and assertive India that this decision represents.

The writer is a serving IPS officer. Views are strictly personal