Kashmir: Crackdowns and Plunder | Tariq Mir

On a heat spring day final March, I visited Ali Mohammad Sagar at his residence in Humhama, a middle-class neighborhood in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. As we sat inside his high-walled compound, in a well-tended backyard under cypress hedges, he forged a dismal look at heaps of particles that lay to 1 facet of the enclosure—the stays of a two-story residence that, two months earlier than, the Indian authorities had deemed constructed on “state land” and demolished. Sagar was not at residence when the construction was leveled. Like many well-to-do Kashmiris, his household was idling away the winter months within the hotter Indian plains. He rejects the federal government’s claims and says he has the paperwork to show it. 

Sagar was one among 1000’s of Kashmiris focused in an eviction drive final January, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) deployed policemen throughout the area, ostensibly to grab state land again from “encroachers.” They bulldozed properties and companies in rural hamlets and concrete localities, expelled households from farmland that they had cultivated for generations, and displaced indigenous nomads from forests the place they camped.

It was an unprecedented train of mass dispossession. In line with official information, greater than 42,000 hectares have been seized. The evictions have been paused solely when protests threatened to interrupt out. A yr later there may be little readability on the variety of properties flattened and folks made homeless. Kashmiri activists who doc state abuses are sometimes harassed by authorities; some have been imprisoned for years on trumped-up terrorism costs. 

When the Modi authorities got here to energy in 2014, one among its goals was to hole out Kashmiri sovereignty, which many years of Indian occupation had already severely eroded. In 2019 the Lok Sabha revoked Article 370, a constitutional statute that allowed Kashmiri legislators to write down legal guidelines to guard land, jobs, and tradition, thereby ending Kashmir’s semiautonomous standing—the situation on which it acceded to India in 1947.

The implications of the revocation can’t be overstated. First, it has facilitated a land seize: below Article 370, outsiders couldn’t purchase property in Kashmir. Now they’ll. Authority over public lands has handed from the state authorities to New Delhi, which has evicted locals and bought plots to new arrivals. 

Kashmir’s political panorama has additionally been remodeled. There was two camps: unionist events and a broad vary of separatist outfits and guerilla forces. The previous contested elections, in search of to manage and thus legitimize India’s occupation; they loved the spoils of workplace and have been typically corrupt. The latter referred to as on Kashmiris to boycott polls and fought the Indian army; they have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed. However the distinction between the 2 has now blurred: the Indian authorities has refashioned its allies as enemies. 

Sagar is a working example. A former regulation minister of Jammu and Kashmir, he’s the senior-most chief of Nationwide Convention (NC), the unionist outfit that has dominated the state’s politics since accession. NC distanced itself from the armed freedom wrestle that broke out within the Nineties after safety forces murdered dozens of peaceable demonstrators. On the peak of the insurgency, when even uttering the identify “India” was thought-about a betrayal, Sagar pushed to strengthen ties between New Delhi and Srinagar. The guerrilla management put a mark on him. He advised me that at the very least twenty-five folks have been killed in makes an attempt on his life. India, as a part of its coverage to guard unionist politicians, gave his household private safety—however retracted this safety in 2023. The guards used to reside within the demolished constructing in his compound. “It is like throwing him to the wolves,” a colleague remarked once I visited.

Modi mentioned that the revocation of Article 370 would “integrate” Kashmir into India. In actual fact it marks the onset of a settler-colonial mission. After many years of struggling below military occupation and violent counterinsurgency, the area is now uncovered to Indian settlers and industrialists. Kashmiris justifiably worry being became a minority in their very own homeland and finally pushed out. In November 2019 Sandeep Chakravorty, India’s consul-general in New York Metropolis, advised a gathering of expatriates that settlements have “happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it.”

The land and sources of Kashmir have lengthy been coveted by outsiders. In 1846, after profitable the primary Anglo-Sikh struggle, the East India Firm acquired Kashmir after which bought it for 75 lakh rupees ($90,000) to the Hindu Dogra ruler of Jammu, an arid area to the south. The Dogra rulers imposed a corvée and levied punitive taxes on the Muslim-majority peasantry, who have been forbidden from cultivating their very own land, and empowered Pandits, a tiny minority of upper-caste Hindu landlords.

At independence, the Indian Nationwide Congress, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a Pandit, strong-armed the Dogra king Hari Singh into acceding as a semiautonomous state. The eventual deal gave Jammu and Kashmir its personal structure and a separate flag, and allowed native legislators to make legal guidelines on all important issues save for protection and overseas relations. Kashmir’s head of presidency was a major minister, not a chief minister, as in different states. Nehru additionally promised to carry a plebiscite on Kashmiri self-determination below UN supervision. However neither he nor his successors have been critical about that promise—a betrayal that has led generations of Kashmiris to insurgent.

Sheikh Abdullah, the founding father of the Nationwide Convention, was Kashmir’s first Prime Minister. He was a progressive chief, impressed by Soviet socialism and prodded on by leftist Indian intellectuals. In what stays essentially the most profitable mission of its type in South Asia, he redistributed some 90 p.c of the land belonging to feudal landlords among the many peasantry. Kashmiris have been allowed to develop meals and put cattle out to pasture on commons. The state additionally arrange sturdy free schooling and healthcare programs. These reforms ushered in a interval of relative prosperity: incomes rose, as did life expectancy. Even as we speak Kashmir boasts one of many lowest poverty charges in South Asia and has much better social indicators than India (whose public faculties and hospitals are largely dysfunctional).

In 1953 Nehru dismissed Abdullah on the cost of consorting with insurgents, jailed him, and changed him with a pliant native chief, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. Abdullah was launched for good solely in 1964. 9 years later, lengthy after India amended the state’s structure and abolished the title of prime minister, he signed an accord with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, to turn into chief minister. However by then he was a shadow of his former self: Kashmiris considered him as a determined previous man who was sacrificing his beliefs. He died in 1982 and was changed by his golf-loving son, Farooq Abdullah.

In 1988 a youthful era of leaders disgusted by accommodationist politics launched a nonviolent rebellion. The Indian authorities’s response was ugly. Via the late Eighties and early Nineties safety forces killed scores of unarmed protestors—greater than 180 folks in Zakura, Tengpora, Hawal, Gawkadal, and Handwara in 1990, fifty-seven in Sopore in 1993, forty-three in Bijbehara the identical yr, twenty-one in Kupwara in 1994 (this can be a partial checklist). The bloodletting pushed tens of 1000’s of younger males to heed separatists’ name for an armed revolt. With assault rifles provided by Pakistan, guerilla fighters went after native police, troopers, unionist politicians, and anyone seen as collaborators, together with the native Hindu inhabitants. Over 130,000 Pandits fled.

The primary guerrilla outfits that emerged have been Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), Lashkar-e-Tayebba (LeT), and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Entrance. Pakistani intelligence officers skilled their members in secret camps in Azad Kashmir, the a part of Kashmir that Pakistan administers. Hundreds of guerrillas hiked by mountain passes and crossed the closely fortified frontier; lots of have been killed alongside the best way.

Quickly the Indian authorities had stationed greater than half one million troops in Kashmir, turning it right into a army colony. They have been legally shielded from prosecution for crimes dedicated whereas on obligation, together with homicide. They disappeared numerous civilians, killed others in “fake encounters” (during which civilians have been retroactively labelled insurgents), and burned down properties. In 1991 safety forces raped dozens of girls within the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora. 

The primary phrase that entered our idiom throughout the counterinsurgency was crackdown haa lug (crackdown has begun). When somebody introduced this, you knew that safety forces had arrived in a neighborhood, dragooned its residents to a close-by location—a college floor, a soccer or cricket discipline, a graveyard—and have been conducting “search” operations. On three events, as a young person, I sat by my grandfather’s grave as troops rummaged by our properties. He was a die-hard Abdullah admirer, who brooked no criticism of the “Lion of Kashmir.” I used to be glad he was not round to see what his hero’s get together had introduced upon us. Informants picked out younger males who troopers took to vacant homes for “questioning”—that’s, torture. Their screams made our blood run chilly. Many returned damaged and scarred, by no means to play with us once more. 

At the very least seventy thousand folks have been killed because the insurgency started, a overwhelming majority of them civilians. Though guerrilla preventing has markedly declined, Indian troops stay on the bottom—and are not any much less violent. In 2016, throughout mass protests over the killing of Burhan Wani, a charismatic guerilla commander, safety forces fired pellets at civilians, blinding over 1,100 folks. Journalists described the occasion because the world’s “first mass blinding.” The Indian authorities stays apprehensive about one other rebellion, which is partly why it will definitely revoked Article 370.

In August 2019 Modi ordered lots of of 1000’s Indian migrant staff, holidaymakers, and Hindu pilgrims to depart Kashmir. The message was clear: the federal government was planning one thing huge. Quickly 1000’s of troops rushed into the Kashmir valley, reinforcing the roughly half million males already stationed there. Near midnight on August 4, the web was minimize. Telephones stopped ringing. Safety forces raided properties and kidnapped 1000’s of civilians, a lot of whom have been spirited to jails outdoors the state. Unionist politicians—together with three former chief ministers, Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti—have been detained in comparatively luxurious visitor homes. Resistance leaders have been dumped in squalid jails, from which a number of returned residence in coffins, together with Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai, Altaf Ahmad Shah, and Ghulam Mohammad Bhat. 

By morning, a safety lockdown had been imposed; nobody might depart residence. A profound silence fell on the valley. We realized what was occurring on Indian tv. Jingoistic information presenters gleefully declared that Article 370 had been revoked, and that the state was break up into two union territories to be managed by New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir as one and Ladakh as one other. The clampdown lasted almost seven months, by which cellphone and web entry was minimize. The troops bussed into Kashmir in 2019 haven’t left. 

Together with eradicating Article 370, the Modi authorities drafted legal guidelines permitting Indians in Kashmir to vote, work, and buy land. Since then New Delhi has poured billions of {dollars} into the area, scaling up infrastructure—roads, railroads, and so forth—to make it simpler to entry. The federal government has entered into public-private partnerships with enterprises it’s near, corresponding to Megha Engineering and Infrastructures, which has given thousands and thousands of {dollars} in donations to the BJP.

One mission is to construct the primary railroad by Himalayan gorges, erecting pillars on near-vertical slopes to put tracks and boring tunnels into mountains. Down within the valley work is underway on a four-lane freeway, which incorporates bridges over streams, canals, and rivers. (An intensive street community additionally makes it simpler to dispatch troops and army {hardware}.) Many of the staff are introduced from India for lack of locals skilled to deal with heavy equipment. They typically should labor in subzero temperatures.

In 2021 New Delhi formulated a coverage to “transform” Jammu and Kashmir into an “industrialized territory.” It has acquired greater than $10 billion of “investment proposals.” The enormity of the deliberate so-called improvement is staggering: an enormous community of luxurious accommodations, IT campuses, medical facilities, film theaters, cement factories, malls, a movie metropolis, and far else. As of final yr the federal government had allotted land to 1,854 industrial models. It has even courted overseas traders; the UAE-based Emaar Group is organising a buying complicated in Srinagar. 

Who’s all this infrastructure meant for? Absolutely not the native inhabitants, which hovers round 13 million. Kashmiris broadly consider that the Indian authorities is creating jobs for Indian staff who will disrupt the area’s Muslim demography. Indian capitalists are additionally shopping for up land with fervor. In February 2023 Sajjan Jindal, who chairs a conglomerate referred to as JSW Group, posted on X that he had “laid the foundation stone” for a nine-acre metal manufacturing unit within the southern city of Pulwama. Jindal vocally supported the revocation of Article 370.

When Modi ended Kashmir’s semiautonomous standing, he mentioned “peace and development” would come to the area. But guerrilla raids haven’t abated. At the very least 4 armed teams are at present lively: HM, LeT, Jash-e-Mohammed, and Resistance Entrance. R. R. Swain, head of the Jammu and Kashmir police, claims that just a few dozen insurgents are left amongst them, however this quantity can’t be independently verified. It additionally appears belied by the truth that, within the final three years, dozens of Indian troopers have been killed in Jammu’s forested mountain slopes. In line with the Ministry of House Affairs, 1,050 guerrilla fighters and 319 Indian troopers have died in fight between 2018 and 2023.

Rebels have additionally broadened their assaults to focus on civilians, murdering 134 between 2019 and 2022. Many are migrant staff from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, and Orissa. Blighted by India’s caste system and its neoliberal economic system, they’re drawn by higher wages and a milder local weather to Kashmir, the place they do every thing from constructing properties to harvesting apples and rice. Now, nevertheless, they’re vilified as settlers.

The guerrilla assaults come amid a ferocious crackdown on civil liberties. Kashmiris are conversant in army raids. However now nattily dressed sleuths from the Nationwide Investigation Company rummage by bed room closets, spice cupboards, bookcases, toy bins, and shoe racks, and seize materials as innocuous as flash drives, laborious drives, laptops, cell telephones, books, and spiral-bound dissertations. Safety forces harass teams as various as businessmen, activists, journalists, and preachers. Tons of have been incarcerated. In 2021 the famous human rights activist Khurram Parvez, who has tirelessly uncovered atrocities dedicated by Indian troops, was himself put in jail below the fraudulent cost of getting hyperlinks to guerrillas.¹

In 2022 the Indian authorities shut down the Kashmir Press Membership. It was the one place the place journalists might meet, speaking store over biryani and tea below the shade of a chinar tree. That is a part of a wider marketing campaign to dam crucial reportage. They raid our properties, summon us to police stations for questioning, and the Legal Investigation Division calls us for “background” checks. Final November Fahad Shah, a journalist, was launched after almost two years in jail. This February Asif Sultan, one other journalist, was launched after 5 years. Irfan Mehraj has been in a New Delhi jail for greater than a yr now. All of them have been arrested below India’s anti-terror legal guidelines.

In March Modi addressed a rally in Srinagar’s Bakshi Stadium, only a mile or so away from the spot the place, the earlier month, a insurgent had killed two migrant staff. It was the prime minister’s first go to to the territory since Article 370 was revoked; the occasion was clearly a spectacle for his Hindu nationalist constituency. Seven thousand authorities staff have been herded onto buses and pushed to the venue. NC chief Omar Abdullah wrote on X that these “who don’t show up are being threatened with disciplinary action by their department heads.” They waited hours within the chilly for Modi to make his entry. 

On a stage bedecked with flowers, Modi gave a thirty-minute speech extolling his personal achievements: a record-breaking two million vacationers had visited the state in 2023. Indians, he mentioned, ought to maintain weddings there and “spend lavishly.” Kashmiris listened with a combination of bemusement and revulsion. Each phrase felt like a lash, a college pupil who watched the speech at residence advised me. A number of years in the past, he had taken to social media when a state worker was fired for supporting the resistance. The police summoned him and threatened a protracted jail keep except he stopped posting “seditious” content material. He complied.

Ordinarily there are protests and road clashes when Indian leaders go to Kashmir. However Srinagar was uncannily calm throughout Modi’s go to, its streets lined with policemen and paramilitary forces. Cutouts of the prime minister and BJP flags hung from electrical poles and cables. Beneath them Indian vacationers strutted round in thick jackets and woolen caps, posing for images with grinning troopers, whereas Kashmiris regarded on with disbelief—we had by no means seen troops behaving this humanely earlier than.

The go to got here within the run-up to the Could federal elections, that are all the time a controversial affair in Kashmir. India portrays them as a referendum on its rule; the resistance motion rejects them. This election, nevertheless, was unusually fraught, not least as a result of the BJP didn’t discipline candidates within the three seats, which is uncommon for a celebration in energy. As an alternative it tacitly supported fringe Kashmiri politicians—a transfer that betrayed a sure apprehension. 

Modi had good motive to be apprehensive. Kashmir’s political events, that are usually fractious, got here collectively on a standard platform. The 2 main unionist outfits—NC and the Folks’s Democratic Social gathering (PDP)—ran on reinstating Article 370. In Could, at a public assembly in Srinagar, NC supporters even raised slogans in opposition to Bharat sarkar (Indian authorities). Sagar himself tramped by the slim streets of Srinagar’s previous metropolis, urging folks to “make the BJP bite the dust.” The language of resistance appeared to go down nicely with the separatist and guerilla management, which didn’t concern its traditional name for a boycott. The outcome was a file turnout, the best in thirty-five years. 

NC held two seats. The third went to Abdul Rashid, popularly often known as “Engineer Rashid,” an impartial candidate who, for the previous 5 years, has been in jail on bogus “terror funding” costs; his son and volunteers ran his marketing campaign. Rashid trounced NC’s chief, Omar Abdullah. The BJP’s proxy candidates misplaced terribly.

It was bracing to see Kashmiris put aside their variations and ship a transparent message to the Indian authorities. However the political future stays unsure. After many years of compromise, NC has regained one thing of its previous preventing spirit. By campaigning to revive semiautonomous standing, it dangers being criminalized, simply as Abdullah was imprisoned in 1953. Such defiance has strengthened its relevance to Kashmiri political life, however subverting India’s colonial mission would require much more than profitable elections. “This land is ours since thousands of years,” Sagar advised me in 2023, “and nobody can take it away from us.”