Opinion Radha Kumar writes: After abrogation of Article 370, there is no normalcy in Kashmir

The facts, unfortunately, indicate that all three are wrong on the ground situation. What is normal about taking over 5,000 people into detention to prevent outcry against the actions of August 5 and 9, 2019? Is it normal to put journalists and human rights defenders behind bars for years on end because they publish information or opinion that the government seeks to suppress? Is it normal for Pandits and migrant workers to be targeted by militants, or for crimes against women and children to be rising or for unemployment to be as high as 23.1 per cent (three times the national average)? Is it normal for militancy to resurface in the Pir Panjal region from where it had virtually disappeared over the past 15 years? Is it normal for political leaders to be routinely denied permission to protest peacefully or their offices to be sealed, as happened with the PDP and NC on Friday, while the three articles were in press? Is it normal for land to be alienated, cross-border trade to cease, local hotels to be put out of business by the refusal to extend their leases and mining rights to go to non-local industry? Is it normal for 71 CRPF troops to be killed in the four years between 2019-2022, twice as many as in the previous four years, 2014-2018, when 35 died? Above all, is it normal to delay legislative elections for five years?

Madhav states grandiosely that the Modi administration has achieved what the allies did in post-war Germany and Japan — the dismantling of a militarist edifice. What is he talking about? Last I knew it was Indian security forces that constituted the military edifice in Jammu and Kashmir. That is clearly not being dismantled. Is he comparing the relatively limited Pakistan-backed armed groups to Hitler’s German-Prussian or Japan’s imperial army? If so, the former’s military edifice lies in Pakistan, and neither the Modi administration nor the Indian army has tried or been able to dismantle that. Indeed, NSA Ajit Doval was supposedly engaging in quiet talks with Pakistan army representatives until recently, perhaps even today.

Sinha and Madhav’s assertion that ordinary people are now free to express their views is not so grandiose but equally intriguing. I wonder where they do so. Since August 2019, I have not seen a free flow of opinion in any one of the Valley’s newspapers. Though there is some opinion in Jammu’s newspapers, there is little by dissenters.

Similarly, while regretting the high unemployment figures, Madhav stresses that 30,000 government posts have been filled (actually 29,295) but omits to mention that 54,710 vacancies remain. Shockingly, he avers that corruption has been rooted out, but forgets that the Jammu and Kashmir Selection Board awarded the recruitment process for engineers to a blacklisted company, Aptech Limited, and the contract had to be cancelled when there were massive protests in Jammu. Is he aware that several cases are pending in the J&K High Court by temple trusts against the administration’s grab of temple lands, one for the Paras group to build a hospital, another for a helicopter company to fly pilgrims to Hindu shrines? Or does that not qualify as corruption?

Mishra’s article is equally rife with inaccuracies. He alleges that Maharaja Hari Singh offered to join the Indian Union in July, August and September 1947, but appears to have confused the standstill and accession agreements. The maharaja sought the former, Pakistan signed it and then violated it, India did not.

Nevertheless, Mishra’s expose of how the RSS built opinion on the ground – everywhere but Kashmir – in favour of reading down article 370, is fascinating if true. What stands out is the belief that Kashmiri opinion did not count and had never counted in the BJP’s calculus. The RSS’s national opinion-building mission he says, started in 2016, when the BJP and PDP were in a coalition administration. Evidently, the BJP did not see fit to disclose the campaign to its partner.

Anyone who argues that these are signs of normalcy must be willfully blind. Worse, they must be callous in the extreme. The truth is that the Modi administration’s unilateral imposition of legal and political alterations that affect every aspect of local life, accompanied by incessant police operations that show complete disregard for human rights, have created such fear in the Valley and in Jammu’s Muslim population that ordinary citizens dare not speak. Indeed, there can be no more telling sign of the lack of normalcy than that of Ladakh, in which Leh welcomed the abolition of special status and the creation of two Union Territories but is now united with Kargil to demand an elected administration instead of a lieutenant-governor.

Jammu and Kashmir’s assembly election will happen in due process, Madhav says. He might have done better to advise a holdback on the four bills the Modi administration proposes to bring in this session of Parliament, which seek to influence the election through reservation. Challenges to the August 2019 actions are currently being heard in the Supreme Court, as Mishra notes. Propriety demands that a government should wait for the court’s decision before proceeding with legislation that might have to be repealed within months. But then, as the raging conflict in Manipur, the upsurge of violence in Haryana and the Delhi services bill indicate, our government has thrown compassion, accountability, and propriety to the winds. That is the new normal in Jammu and Kashmir as well as the rest of the country.

The writer is a former government-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir