Tag Archive for: Kashmir

Kashmir endures another year of utter despair

Two years ago, on 5 August 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir as a state (the only Muslim-majority one in India) and redesignated it as two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh, which are governed directly from Delhi. He also scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which had allowed J&K to make its own laws, and cancelled Article 35A, which gave its legislature the power to determine who was a permanent resident of the state.

The effective annexation of J&K was overwhelmingly rejected by Kashmiri Muslims. Pakistan virulently opposed it, arguing that because J&K was considered by the United Nations Security Council to be disputed territory, its annexation violated international law.

Modi claimed that this unilateral move would bring peace and development to J&K. Not surprisingly, this action by his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has only brought more misery and more violence. And, sadly, the future doesn’t look promising.

Within a year, the impact on the economy of J&K was disastrous. Another year later, and notwithstanding the Modi government’s assertions that the political changes had brought socioeconomic development to the region, economic activity has come to a standstill. A double lockdown, political and Covid-driven, has hit the tourism industry very hard. Starved of international tourists, those running the famous house boats on Dal Lake in Srinagar are desperately struggling to survive.

Many of the political leaders arrested two years ago are still under house arrest or in jail. The BJP has made rampant use of a particularly harsh piece of legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act—which permits detention without charge for up to six months—to crack down on all forms of dissent. Torture and mistreatment of detainees, including teenagers, is common practice. Fewer than 1% of arrests under the act have resulted in a conviction in the past 10 years. Modi has used the law to silence civil-society organisations, in particular, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society—the only two groups documenting human rights abuses in J&K.

India’s harsh and uncompromising approach to J&K has come to the attention of the UN. In March 2021, five UN special rapporteurs wrote a letter to the Modi government expressing their concerns over arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in J&K. That letter and five previous communications by other UN rapporteurs since 5 August 2019 have been ignored.

In June 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, concerned by grave human rights violations in J&K, asked the Indian government to end the use of shotgun pellets against children. The dire situation in J&K has also come to the attention of the EU. A number of members of the European Parliament have written to the president and vice president of the European Commission expressing concern about the human rights violations in J&K.

Kashmiri political leaders­—most of whom have lost all credibility with Kashmiris—have demanded that J&K’s statehood be restored. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai has said in the Indian parliament that statehood would be ‘granted at an appropriate time after normalcy is restored’. The Indian government’s response begs more questions about Kashmir’s future.

In the meantime, Delhi has extended until March 2022 the role of the Delimitation Commission established to redraw the electoral constituencies of J&K. Most Kashmiris fear that the commission’s real task is to redraw the electoral map to make it easier for the BJP to win the next election, whenever that will be.

But more worrisome to Kashmiris is that since the legislative changes in August 2019, well over three million domicile certificates have been granted to non-Kashmiris, most of them non-Muslims. Moreover, there’s a fear that Delhi will apply to Kashmir the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which requires Muslims to prove their citizenship. Many would not be able to do so because they have no official papers to confirm their legal status.

The Modi government has been keen to assist the return to Kashmir of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) who left because of the security situation in the 1990s. As former J&K finance minister Haseeb Drabu noted, Kashmiris are worried that through the use of legislative and administrative actions the Modi government is trying ‘to convert a demographic majority into a political minority’.

Despite the misery Kashmiris endure daily, the international community has no appetite to confront Modi on this. And he knows it.

There are critical strategic issues to deal with, notably the growing tension between the West and China and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, in which India could play an important role. India’s geostrategic importance is further strengthened by its membership, along with the US, Japan and Australia, of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Given that context, Kashmir simply doesn’t make it onto the agenda.

On his recent visit to India, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not allow Kashmir and other human rights issues, such as the poor treatment of Muslims in India, to complicate the bilateral meeting. When asked to comment on the wobbliness of India’s democracy, Blinken stated: ‘We view Indian democracy as a force for good in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific …  We also recognize that every democracy, starting with our own, is a work in progress.’ This would have been sweet music to his host, India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar.

Sadly, once again, realpolitik takes precedence over human rights issues. There’s no expectation that anything will change soon for Kashmiris because there’s absolutely no international pressure on Modi to relent.

India looks westwards

Recent conciliatory moves by India’s nationalist government on its western flank have rightly aroused global interest. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s calculus appears relatively simple. Faced with continued Chinese aggression on India’s northern frontier and a likely Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, improving relations on the country’s western flank, with Pakistan, seems prudent.

In recent weeks, there have been reports of secret back-channel talks between Indian and Pakistani security officials—facilitated by the United Arab Emirates—aimed at easing bilateral tensions. A February 2021 ceasefire along the Line of Control separating Indian and Pakistani forces in the disputed Kashmir region has so far held, permitting an atmosphere of near-normality in the area.

India has also been talking to the Taliban, which it long derided as surrogates for the Pakistani army, reflecting the increasing likelihood that the mullahs will reclaim power in Kabul following the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in September. Furthermore, India has kept two of its consulates in Afghanistan closed since last year, a long-standing Pakistani demand that it had resisted for two decades.

And in late June, Modi’s government held surprisingly amicable talks in New Delhi with 14 mainstream Kashmiri political leaders. Almost all of them had been arrested during the government’s crackdown in the state of Jammu and Kashmir that began in August 2019, and had been demonised by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party since then.

All of this points to a policy shift by a government conscious of the pressures on India’s northern frontier. Chinese troops have failed to disengage since the spring of 2020, when they advanced across disputed territory in the Ladakh region and later provoked a military encounter that took the lives of 20 Indian soldiers. With China doggedly refusing to withdraw, despite 11 rounds of talks, India’s insistence on restoring the status quo ante looks increasingly forlorn.

Hostility with China is likely to endure, which means India can’t afford escalating tensions to its west. Indian–Pakistani relations are at their lowest level in recent times, owing to a series of incidents, beginning with the terrorist attack on Mumbai in November 2008 and culminating in the 2019 Indian airstrike on Balakot in Pakistan. And the Indian government outraged Pakistan with its August 2019 decision to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its constitutionally guaranteed autonomy and reduce its status to a ‘union territory’, directly administered from Delhi. The Pakistani government subsequently mounted a worldwide campaign, working especially with Islamic countries but also at the United Nations, to censure India and force it to rescind the move.

Modi had remained implacable until recently, so the three-and-a-half-hour meeting with Kashmiri leaders was a surprise development. The leaders, who included four former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, spanned the spectrum of the region’s main political parties. The Modi government had previously denounced some of them as corrupt dynasts, accusing them of milking the state for their own benefit. But now they were welcomed with sweet words and deferential protocol by Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah (India’s second most powerful politician) and other senior officials.

The government’s crackdown in Jammu and Kashmir has not achieved any of its proclaimed objectives—namely, to inaugurate a new era of peace and development, eliminate terrorism, break the political grip of a few families, and hasten the region’s integration with the rest of the country. But it would be wrong to see the government’s recent talks with the Kashmiri leaders as an admission of defeat.

The discussions focused on three issues. One was an agreement to carry out, with the Kashmiri parties’ cooperation, a new demarcation of the state’s political constituencies, which will likely enhance the Jammu region’s representation in the state assembly. The other agenda items were elections across Jammu and Kashmir, and restoration of its statehood.

Rather than a defeat for the Indian government, therefore, the talks seem to have shifted the goalposts. The earth-shattering news in August 2019 was the abolition of Article 370 of India’s constitution, which guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir’s special autonomous status. But that matter wasn’t even discussed, because it was deemed to be sub judice (petitions on the matter are pending before the supreme court). Instead, the main issue was restoration of statehood, which the government had in any case promised ‘at an appropriate time’.

This could lead to a politically viable trade-off, whereby the central government gives Jammu and Kashmir statehood if state leaders agree to go quiet on Article 370 and leave the matter to the judiciary. If that happens, as seems likely, Kashmiris will have the illusion of wresting a concession while the Modi government’s real victory—the revocation of autonomy two years ago—goes unchallenged by the Kashmiri parties.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s global campaign against India to restore the state’s autonomy has gone nowhere. Pakistan’s leaders have their own reasons for wanting to resume dialogue with India, but they needed to see some movement from Modi’s government to justify it. Talks with Kashmiri leaders leading to something like the restoration of statehood may constitute enough progress to warrant further discussions. The Indian government will thus chalk up another win if it enters new bilateral talks without making any real concession on the preconditions that Pakistan has been loudly declaiming for two years.

These recent developments are early moves in a slowly unfolding regional chess game. The situation in Afghanistan, the implications of China’s close economic ties with Pakistan through the Belt and Road Initiative, and the evolution of the insurgencies led by both the Afghan Taliban and its Pakistani equivalent, have yet to play themselves out. Simmering Kashmiri militancy could boil over, while Pakistan—if it is unable or unwilling to stem terror attacks from its territory on Indian targets—could again prove duplicitous in its peace overtures.

There are too many unknowns for any side to have victory in sight. But for now, at least, India appears to be making the right moves.

Kashmir: A year of utter misery

On 5 August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which allowed the state of Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws, and cancelled Article 35A, which gave the state’s legislature the power to determine who was a permanent resident.

The Indian government then sent about 40,000 additional troops into the territory—already the most militarised zone on earth—to deal with the inevitable negative reaction to Modi’s decision. A curfew was imposed, schools and universities were closed, the internet was shut down, thousands of tourists and pilgrims were told to leave, and politicians were put under house arrest.

Last, but probably most consequential, Jammu and Kashmir was abolished as a state (the only Muslim-majority one in India) and replaced by two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, which are governed directly from Delhi.

Not surprisingly, this unilateral action by the Modi government was rejected by the majority of Kashmiris and opposed by two of India’s neighbours, Pakistan and China.

The Modi government claimed that the move was meant to bring peace and development to Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, it has only brought more violence, more misery and more uncertainty, particularly to the seven million Muslims living in the Kashmir Valley. And, because of Covid-19, Kashmir is now effectively under a double lockdown.

All aspects of society in Kashmir have been severely affected by these measures.

Undoubtedly, the greatest hardship for Kashmiris over the past year has been the very limited access they’ve had to the internet. While broadband was restored intermittently a few months ago after India’s supreme court ruled that the internet shutdown violated people’s freedom of speech and expression, mobile users are still limited to 2G networks and internet shutdowns are frequent.

Having limited internet access has been particularly onerous during the Covid-19 lockdown as healthcare workers try to deal with the fallout of the pandemic, and Amnesty International has called for services to be fully restored. It has also severely impeded the daily lives of students, traders and journalists.

The Kashmiri economy, which relies heavily on tourism, has been completely gutted. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry projects a loss of about US$6 billion. Unemployment has soared to 18%, twice the national average; youth unemployment is a staggering 70%.

Security forces continue to behave appallingly and with impunity towards civilians, particularly during raids on homes in search of militants. According to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association, nearly 13,000 people are still in detention without having been tried.

Last, but not least, 400,000 domicile certificates were granted to non-Kashmiri Indians in May alone, strongly suggesting that the Indian government intends to change the ethnic composition of Kashmir.

As would be expected, in neighbouring nuclear-armed Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan labelled Modi’s revocation of Article 370 ‘illegal’ and warned that it would ‘destroy regional peace and security’. The Pakistani foreign ministry stressed that ‘Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized disputed territory’ and that ‘no unilateral step’ by the Indian government could ‘change this disputed status’.

On the first anniversary of India’s actions, the Pakistani government unveiled a new political map of the country which integrated ‘Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir’ with the rest of the country for the first time since 1947. Oddly, but not surprisingly, the new map leaves the India–China border and Ladakh undefined. India’s reaction to the new map was immediate and predictable. It denounced the map as ‘an exercise in political absurdity’, stressing that ‘these ridiculous assertions have neither legal validity nor international credibility’.

Like Pakistan, China also opposed the change to Jammu and Kashmir’s status because of its own claims on Ladakh. China’s foreign ministry reiterated this position last week, stating that ‘any unilateral change to the status quo in the Kashmir region is illegal and invalid’.

More importantly, however, Modi’s decision on Jammu and Kashmir was also one of the reasons that China decided in May and June to forcefully challenge the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto Sino-Indian border in Ladakh. While the situation has calmed down on the LAC—at least for the moment—China’s actions sent a powerful message to New Delhi: Beijing also has a stake in Kashmir. So now India has two fronts to contend with in that region.

With a few notable exceptions, such as Malaysia, Turkey and Iran, most of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries have been reluctant to publicly criticise Modi on developments in Kashmir. India is a potentially massive market for the OIC, and no country is interested in jeopardising rich commercial ties. This reluctance to publicly support the Kashmiris’ plight has caused friction between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, a country with which Islamabad has deep historical, religious, military and commercial ties.

European leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, the UK’s Boris Johnson and France’s Emmanuel Macron, were initially slightly more forthcoming with their criticism of Modi, but not much has been heard from them since.

As for the other three members of the ‘Quad’—the US, Japan and Australia—their public silence on the Kashmir issue has been deafening. They don’t want to unnecessarily upset a critical—and at times wobbly—member of the quadrilateral security grouping. And after the recent clashes between India and China in Ladakh, there’s no appetite to ruffle Modi’s feathers on this issue.

It’s clear that the dreadful situation in Kashmir cannot continue indefinitely—nor should it, in the world’s largest democracy. Eventually, the Indian government will need to negotiate with Kashmiris and find a peaceful way forward.

But Modi is absolutely in no mood to do that right now. He has a majority in both legislative chambers and he’s liked by most Indians. Except for the scathing criticism from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, there is virtually no external pressure on the Indian government to change its ways.

Kashmiris will continue to suffer for some time yet.

The battle for India’s soul

As India prepares to celebrate the 73rd anniversary of its independence on 15 August, a growing number of Indians are coming to believe that the battle to preserve the essence of the country born in 1947 is already lost. Many commentators have concluded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has already, in effect, inaugurated a ‘second republic’ by upending the key assumptions of the first.

According to these despairing analysts, this ‘refounding’ began on 5 August 2019, when Article 370 of the Indian constitution was abrogated and Jammu and Kashmir was stripped of its autonomy, and was completed in Ayodhya earlier this month, exactly one year later. There, in an hours-long grand ceremony televised to adoring millions, Modi performed a bhoomi poojan (worship of the earth) and laid a 40-kilogram silver brick into the foundation of a future temple to the Hindu god Rama, on the site of the demolished Babri mosque.

Even before the construction of the temple had begun, this ceremony (and Modi’s participation in it) set the seal on the grand Hindutva project of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Many feared that India, which from its foundation has been a secular state, had turned a corner to becoming a Hindu Rashtra, a state of and for its Hindu majority.

From the moment of its electoral victory in 2014, Modi’s government embarked on its project of transforming the polity, consolidating its hold on the state machinery during its first term. Meanwhile, it sought to keep its supporters mobilised through reconversion to the mother faith, vigilantism and lynching of non-Hindus for supposed transgressions against cows, and outrage over minority appeasement and the allegedly anti-national statements and actions of dissenters, ranging from students to secularists, Kashmiris and Pakistani terrorists.

With the groundwork laid, BJP’s bigger electoral victory of 2019 launched the next stage of the national project. It started with the criminalisation of the Muslim divorce practice known as triple talaq (an unmistakable warning shot across the bow of the Muslim community). It continued with the stripping of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy (a clear signal that constitutional assurances were also up for grabs and that federalism could be overridden) and the passage of the amendment to the Citizenship Act (a direct challenge to the secular, non-religious assumptions of the constitution).

Next came the temple in Ayodhya, by which Modi’s government signalled that it was dismantling another relic of the first republic—interfaith accommodation. As the political scientist Suhas Palshikar put it, ‘The [Supreme Court] ruling in the Ayodhya case, ordering that Muslims be given an “alternative” site, formalised the peripheralisation of the Muslims both spatially and politically, while the celebrations openly involving state machinery underscore the officialisation of the status of Hindu religion as the basis of the new republic.’  If secularism, pluralism and diversity had been the catechism of the first republic, the BJP’s Hindutva is the liturgy of the second.

The BJP has been able to do all this because it has the necessary legislative majority. But, as Palshikar points out, it has gone well beyond such formalities with ‘the transformation of the Indian state into a repository of repression’ through ‘a politicised and poisonous administration—particularly in the case of the enforcement and investigation machineries’. Since 2014, the government has delegitimised dissent and criticism as hostile to the national interest, and every liberal thought and contrarian idea as undermining national pride and unity. The equation of opposition to the government—indeed, of liberal democracy itself—with ‘anti-national’ behaviour has inevitably followed.

There has clearly been a failure on the part of India’s independent institutions—the judiciary, opposition political parties, the media, the Election Commission and universities—to stanch the tide of militant majoritarianism. The Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgement, condemning the destruction of the mosque but nonetheless awarding the disputed site to Hindus, was in many ways emblematic of the judiciary’s complicity in enabling this surrender.

In many other cases, the court has obligingly declined to hear challenges to government actions (including on habeas corpus petitions, the constitutionality of the Article 370 abrogation and the detention of political leaders) or acquiesced in them (like the prolonged internet cut-off in Kashmir) with scarcely a murmur. The opposition, while articulate, particularly on social media, has been widely, if not always fairly, derided for its tameness. It has also been divided—sometimes even within parties—on such vital issues as Kashmir and Ayodhya.

But the battle to define the Indian state is not yet over. Today, the ideals of India’s founders are challenged not only by Modi and the BJP, who prefer their idea of India as a Hindu Rashtra to the diversity and pluralism enshrined in the constitution. They are also contested by stone-throwing youths in the streets of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir’s largest city, and rifle-wielding Maoists in the forests of Chhattisgarh. A narrow-minded, sectarian India will never appeal to these alienated young people. Only an India that ensures full rights and dignity for all—the promise of liberal democracy—can do that.

Over the past six years, the votaries of Hindu nationalism have savoured the illusion of victory, but the struggle for India’s soul is still being waged. A divided India—the India of 5 August—can never fulfill the promise of the united India of 15 August. To succeed in the 21st century, India must remain faithful to its founding values.

The UN must take the lead in Kashmir

After more than 70 years of terror, killings, torture and disappearances, the international community must renew its efforts to end the conflict in Kashmir. In 2018 and 2019, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released reports that documented a wide range of abuses—including kidnappings, the killing of civilians and sexual violence—perpetrated by both sides in the conflict.

The UN needs to take the lead in stopping Kashmir’s torment. Obviously, the UN cannot impose a solution on India and Pakistan. But it can and should appoint a special envoy to help broker a political solution and deliver lasting peace to the region.

The conflict—largely forgotten by the world—has raged since the partition of India in 1947, when the maharaja abandoned the goal of Kashmiri independence and joined India in exchange for its help with fighting an invasion of tribesmen from Pakistan. As a result, Kashmir has since been divided between India-controlled and Pakistan-controlled parts. In the ensuing decades, India and Pakistan have fought two wars and engaged in countless skirmishes over Kashmir, and China has also been involved at times. The situation deteriorated after armed groups began a bombing campaign in the Indian-controlled Kashmir Valley in 1988, marking the beginning of an armed struggle for self-determination that still rages today.

The impact of the ensuing violence has been profound and far-reaching. The conflict has consumed resources that should have been used for development; instead, they were channelled to arms purchases or a regional race to develop weapons of mass destruction. Everyone, regardless of age, religion or ethnicity, has suffered, whether as a result of displacement, family separation, loss of property, the death or disappearance of friends and close relatives, grinding poverty or simply the prospect of a future as bleak and constricted as the present.

The international community has, at times, attempted to mediate between India and Pakistan. The UN has adopted resolutions demanding a referendum on Kashmir’s future status. But, even though it has long been evident that there’s no military solution to the conflict—temporary ceasefire initiatives have never resulted in a lasting agreement—India to this day has resisted a plebiscite.

In 2003, Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, formulated a four-step approach to a political solution. Without insisting on a referendum, India and Pakistan would begin a dialogue, recognise Kashmir as the main source of bilateral hostility, identify and eliminate what was unacceptable to each side, and strive for a solution acceptable to both countries—and especially to the people of Kashmir. A ceasefire was declared, and high-level meetings took place, but, following a terrorist attack, India terminated the talks. In 2012, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tried unsuccessfully to revive the process.

I have been personally engaged with the Kashmir issue for some time. Last year, I held meetings with senior politicians in Pakistan and India. I am well aware that India wants to treat the Kashmir conflict solely as a bilateral issue. But in that case, it should take the initiative in starting talks with Pakistan. If that doesn’t happen, the international community must demand that the parties come together to negotiate a peaceful solution.

Again, it is not up to the UN or anyone else to impose a solution on the parties. The current situation is rooted in a highly complex mix of history and politics, and any viable settlement must reflect Kashmir’s unique circumstances. A major issue to be addressed is the ‘line of control’ separating Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, which hinders the free movement of people, divides families, and impedes business and trade. And, of course, Kashmir’s future status is the main question that must be resolved.

During my last visit to Kashmir, I saw firsthand the level of violence and the severity of human-rights violations. Conditions have deteriorated further since India repealed Jammu and Kashmir’s special status in October 2019, dissolved it as a state and reorganised it as two ‘union territories’—all enforced by the security forces with a wave of arrests, a ban on assembly, and an internet and media blackout.

At a time of war in Syria and Yemen, and heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, it’s difficult to get the international community to focus on Kashmir. But it is crucial that the conflict not be allowed to spiral out of control, especially given that both countries are nuclear powers.

Above all, the people of Kashmir deserve a ceasefire, reconciliation and stability, and it is the duty of the UN to advance those goals. I urge the UN to appoint a special envoy to Kashmir. And I appeal to UN Secretary-General António Guterres to seize the initiative and help deliver a long-overdue and lasting peace to this region.

Kashmir: the international dimension

India’s decision last month to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy and statehood, break it into two union territories and merge them fully with the Indian union caught everyone unawares. The changes give effect to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s vision of India as one nation and one people under one constitution. Indians have reacted with jubilation (majority), concern at the lack of consultation and the military lockdown in Kashmir (many), and criticism of the threat to Kashmir’s cultural identity, especially if India’s sole Muslim-majority state’s demographic balance is altered (minority).

India’s protestations notwithstanding, Kashmir has been internationally recognised as disputed territory. The surprise development might cause immediate diplomatic ructions, but in time the integration of Kashmir will help consolidate the argument that the issue is purely internal. In the military skirmishes with Pakistan in February, the self-defeating neglect of public diplomacy cost India dearly in the global coverage of the competing narratives. Learning from that, the government has decided to engage with the foreign media, but its performance remains amateurish.

From the beginning, Pakistan has taken the initiative on Kashmir and India has had to react. Suddenly Pakistan is in the unaccustomed position of reacting to India’s audacious initiative. A rattled Prime Minister Imran Khan lashed out in an over-the-top tweet on 25 August: ‘India has been captured, as Germany had been captured by Nazis, by a fascist, racist Hindu Supremacist ideology and leadership.’

Muslims comprise more than 14% of Indians and Hindu and Muslim populations increased by 17% and 25%, respectively, between 2001 and 2011. Hindus comprise under 2% of Pakistan’s population, down from around 20% at independence. Indian diplomats have been bafflingly reticent in hammering home this telling statistic every time Pakistan raises the plight of Indian Muslims.

Pakistan has downgraded its diplomatic ties and suspended trade with India, but has met with little success in courting global support. The use of state-sponsored terrorists has become a major liability for Pakistan in polite global society. India’s military is more powerful and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government raised the cost of sub-conventional hybrid warfare significantly by launching retaliatory missile strikes deep inside Pakistan in February. Ironically, writes Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on Pakistan’s military, India’s actions in Kashmir could help to change the governance balance in Pakistan by underlining the limited military options and the need for civilian-led diplomacy in countering India.

China and Pakistan have extolled their all-weather friendship as ‘higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the deepest ocean, and sweeter than honey’. China took the Kashmir problem to the UN Security Council but failed to get traction from anyone else in the closed-door meeting. Its support for Pakistan was conditioned by caution in not wanting unfavourable attention directed towards its own significantly harsher treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Amid the protracted anti-China protests in Hong Kong, Beijing would also want to retain freedom to act robustly there. So it was content to argue that the mere fact of placing the item on the Security Council’s agenda was proof that the dispute was international and India has obligations to the world community. Its greater potential concern is likely to be Indian military preparations in Ladakh, which borders China directly.

Pakistani-American scholar Adil Najam makes a plausible case for US mediation. President Donald Trump had earlier offered to mediate the Kashmir dispute, but India denied that Modi had requested US arbitration. The imminence of a Pakistan-brokered US–Taliban deal on Afghanistan affected India’s Kashmir calculus. That gives Pakistan leverage in persuading the US to intercede in Kashmir and has raised the prospect of Afghanistan-origin insurgents and arms flooding into Kashmir after America’s withdrawal.

Trump and Modi met on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. Modi’s presence and Khan’s absence were a telling indicator of the gulf in diplomatic heft. At the joint press conference, Trump said he was good friends with both PMs, that ‘they can manage it themselves’ and that Modi feels he has the Kashmir situation under control.

The foreign ministry of Bangladesh, the third populous Muslim country on the subcontinent, said the matter was ‘an internal issue of India’. Russia washed its hands of the dispute on the same argument. With the Gulf states, ‘Pakistan is likely to interpret neutrality as an implicitly pro-Indian position’. The United Arab Emirates ambassador fully endorsed India’s case, saying the decision would ‘improve social justice and security and confidence of the people in the local governance and will encourage further stability and peace’. On 24 August, Modi received the UAE’s highest civilian award for boosting bilateral relations.

As Kashmir’s indigenous insurgency was captured by Islamists and the call for independence was displaced by the agenda to establish a Sharia-dominated state, the world lost interest in supporting the creation of a semi-independent Islamist enclave at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. The key to a successful Kashmir policy is a successful economic policy that lifts Kashmir’s boat on the tide of India’s prosperity. This is where the Modi government has fallen short. Its policy failures and timidity are now starting to decelerate growth, hurt business and consumer confidence, deter investment and damage job prospects.

The second potential problem for India is the spectre of mass civilian unrest, resurgent insurgency and Pakistan-sponsored asymmetric warfare that provokes a repressive crackdown, keeps Kashmir on the boil and draws international condemnation. Disaffection and distrust among Kashmiris have been rising alarmingly.

Last year’s report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on abuses in Kashmir was damning. It noted the effective impunity for deaths, disappearances, sexual offences and other abuses due to various laws that have ‘created structures that obstruct the normal course of law, impede accountability and jeopardize the right to remedy for victims of human rights violations’. The promises of development, investment, jobs and security might placate Kashmiris temporarily, but only delivery on the promises will help to restore normality.

Barring a major unravelling of the internal security situation, world powers will remain preoccupied with major international issues like nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, the possible collapse of the global nuclear order, Brexit, the China–US trade war, and the Amazon fires and climate change. Few countries will waste political capital in pressuring India on Kashmir.

If India succeeds in stabilising the internal situation, restoring normality and promoting economic growth and development, most countries will accept that Kashmir is an internal matter.

India’s actions in Kashmir (part 2): What happens next?

‘A new era has begun in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Article 370 was a hurdle for development of Kashmir … Article 370 and Article 35A gave only separatism, nepotism and corruption to the people of Jammu and Kashmir … I assure the people of J&K that things will return to normalcy.’ — Narendra Modi, 8 August 2019

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to the nation explaining his government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 was addressed not only to the people of Kashmir, but to the international community at large. In one stroke, Modi has attempted to redefine the geostrategic dynamics of South Asia. But it has opened a Pandora’s box, as I discussed in part 1 of this series.

Though the Indian government was able to get the constitutional change through the parliament thanks to its overwhelming majority, the legality of the move has been challenged in the supreme court. If New Delhi can overcome this hurdle, the newly created union territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir will be integrated with the Indian union and administered under Indian laws (while the latter will have a separate legislature under the Indian federation, Ladakh won’t).

It’s worth noting that the revocation of Kashmir’s special status, although a momentous decision, means little in practical terms, as the essence of Article 370 had long been eroded. The state had had virtually no autonomy and had existed in the limbo of a constitutional aberration, allowing a vitriolic political environment to flourish for decades.

If upheld, the Indian government’s decision will mean that Kashmiris will be able to enjoy the same rights and benefits guaranteed to other citizens, including the extension of welfare measures and reservation for weaker sections of society in educational institutions and government jobs. It will also end the discriminatory practice of barring Kashmiri women (and children) from exercising their property rights in Kashmir if they marry non-Kashmiris. Article 35A will become redundant, which will enable Indians from other states to settle and buy property in the two union territories.

Meanwhile, the lockdown and communications blackout imposed by the Indian government continue, though there have been reports of partial restoration of mobile and landline services in some areas. The mood on the ground is sombre, with reports of sporadic protests and at least two deaths in clashes with police. There’s a great degree of local discontentment with Indian armed forces and policies within Kashmir, especially among Kashmiri Sunni Muslims—some of it fanned by Pakistan, some of it born out of genuine grievances.

India hopes that opening Kashmir to outside investment will pave the way for employment opportunities and development that benefit Kashmiris and reduce the grounds and incentives to radicalise. The abrogation of Article 370 won’t be a panacea for crossborder or home-grown terrorism, but it’s likely to enable India to better mobilise its troops in the region and achieve greater control over the law and order situation.

Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus), Sikhs and Buddhists have overwhelmingly welcomed the decision, particularly the Pandits, most of whom were driven out of their lands in the early 1990s by the rise in Pakistan-enabled militancy. Also, the separation and conversion of Ladakh into a union territory had been a long-held demand of the residents of Ladakh. As analysts have noted, the partition of Kashmir and Ladakh gives New Delhi the opportunity to treat its disputes with Pakistan and China separately (Aksai Chin was originally part of Ladakh), giving it greater flexibility.

The Indian government says it plans to hold elections in Jammu and Kashmir as soon as practicable; Modi has pledged that local leadership with a commitment to effective governance is the endgame. The proposal envisions greater political representation for the region’s minority communities, particularly the Hindus, through a delimitation of constituencies to reflect demographic changes in the past two decades.

Pakistan has now approached the International Court of Justice to protest against human rights violations and ‘genocide’ committed by India in Kashmir, although the action is being seen as aimed more at pacifying Prime Minister Imran Khan’s domestic constituency. Any ICJ rulings in the matter would be advisory in nature given its jurisdictional restrictions. Nonetheless, Pakistan hopes that this move will help keep the Kashmir issue alive and draw attention to India’s alleged atrocities in Kashmir.

Islamabad has downgraded diplomatic relations and suspended bilateral trade with India, recalled its high commissioner, and threatened retaliation in all forms. However, its hands are tied because of its delicate situation vis-à-vis the Financial Action Task Force ruling in October 2018.

India’s move has also generated a wide backlash from China (egged on by Pakistan), which led the call for a formal joint statement criticising India’s actions at a UN Security Council closed-door discussion last week. While the UK sided with China, the US and France supported India; Russia’s position remained surprisingly ambiguous. In the end, the Security Council decided that this was a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan that they needed to sort out themselves.

India has claimed that the decision is an entirely domestic one—and it is in the narrow sense that the changes it has effected now apply only to the territories that India has administered since 1947. The decision, as India sees it, has no bearing on Pakistani-administered or Chinese-administered Kashmir and so the international situation with Pakistan and China remains the same. India’s home affairs minister, Amit Shah, reiterated nonetheless that India maintains its longstanding claim over the entirety of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, including territories disputed with Pakistan and China.

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh declared this week that any negotiations between India and Pakistan will take place only with regard to the territories Pakistan currently administers. Some observers, though, are still hoping that, in the long run, India’s revocation of Article 370 could become the basis for a peace agreement between India and Pakistan, with the current de facto line of control between Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmir being transformed into an international border de jure.

The only way Islamabad could galvanise international opinion is by hoping for bloody protests on the streets of Kashmir and incidents of brutal suppression by the Indian armed forces. There’s a real fear of a terrorist strike in India backed by the Pakistani military and intelligence. It’s hard to predict how India would respond to any provocations, but Modi has shown that he has the appetite to escalate beyond India’s traditional norms of strategic patience. Whether Pakistan will dare to establish new thresholds is key.

India’s actions in Kashmir (part 1): How did we get here?

India announced the abrogation of certain provisions of Article 370 from its constitution last week, ending the special status enjoyed by Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. India also decided to split the erstwhile state into two union territories: Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir (although it’s set to be a temporary measure for Jammu and Kashmir, which will become a state once the situation is deemed to be ‘stable’). New Delhi’s heavy-handedness in orchestrating this move has damaged India’s democratic credentials and credibility.

Why did the Indian government embark on this path, and why now?

The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947 after Pakistani guerrilla fighters moved in and occupied a part of the kingdom. Indian forces thwarted the advance but were unable to drive Pakistani forces out completely. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru then opted to take the matter to the United Nations. The UN resolved to hold a plebiscite to allow the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide whether they wanted to join India or Pakistan or become independent, but it was conditional on Pakistani forces withdrawing from the region, and never took place.

Jammu and Kashmir sent its representatives to India’s constituent assembly and the Indian constitution came into effect in 1950. Article 370 was enacted through a presidential order in the same year, granting autonomy to the state on all matters except foreign policy, defence, finance and communications. It was amended in 1954 to extend Indian citizenship to all residents of Jammu and Kashmir.

Although the state had acceded to India, New Delhi had entered into a ‘solemn pact’, granting it special status until its state constituent assembly could decide upon the extent to which it wanted to merge with India. The state constituent assembly dissolved in 1957 without deciding on abrogation or amendment and thus the matter remained unresolved.

In the 70 years since the subcontinent’s partition, Pakistan has consolidated control over the territories it administers in Kashmir and has waged a low-level proxy war against India through non-state and sometimes state actors. Convinced that Pakistan would never withdraw from the territories it controls in Kashmir, India has long felt that the question of a plebiscite was moot.

The last meaningful dialogue on Kashmir between New Delhi and Islamabad took place in Agra in 2001. During those talks, a four-point plan was devised to bring greater autonomy to Kashmiris on both sides. Negotiations ultimately fell through, with the two sides naturally blaming each other for creating roadblocks, but Pakistan’s perceived intransigence at Agra left an indelible imprint on Indian thinking.

To be sure, the revocation of Article 370 had been a longstanding aspiration of India’s Hindu nationalists and was a campaign promise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2014 and 2019 elections. The government refrained from making good on this promise during Narendra Modi’s first term as prime minister, and Modi tried reaching out to Pakistan in his early days in the top job. But, citing repeated betrayals by Pakistan and the contested nature of Islamabad’s civilian and military ties, India ceased all dialogue with Pakistan..

In 2016, the rising number of local militants professing allegiance to Islamic State, and the protests following the death of local home-grown terrorist Burhan Wani at the hands of Indian security forces, which reverberated across India, opened New Delhi’s eyes to the fact that militancy in Kashmir had become a domestic problem. The local political leadership backed both by New Delhi and Islamabad had failed to act as a safety valve to contain Sunni sub-nationalism. The year 2016 thus marked an inflection point for Indian policy on Kashmir.

There was also a recognition that Article 370 had allowed a vicious political environment to develop inside Kashmir that boiled down to a corrupt power-sharing arrangement between New Delhi and a few local political parties with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Kashmir was suspended in the crosshairs of the conflict between India and Pakistan as local parties, including the People’s Democratic Party and the National Conference, flirted with both countries. The breakdown of the BJP’s electoral alliance with the PDP in 2018, and the PDP’s and the National Conference’s increasingly soft stances on separatists, dealt another blow to the Indian government’s ability to work with them.

The immediate trigger for the move, though, was Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the US in July and President Donald Trump’s remark about India seeking mediation on Kashmir. There’s a real fear in New Delhi that the expected ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the US withdraws will lead Pakistan to further the jihadi cause in Kashmir, as it did in the 1990s when the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan enabled Islamabad to redirect the mujahideen to fight in Kashmir.

To offset the risk of Kashmir’s falling victim to Trump’s transactionalism and, more importantly, to take advantage of Pakistan’s dire economic situation (especially in light of the upcoming Financial Action Task Force ruling in October, which could see it blacklisted and levied with heavy financial penalties for its financing of terrorist entities), the Modi government probably felt now was the right time to take this decision.

Finally, there’s an undeniable domestic impulse behind the Modi government’s decision. The Pulwama attack in February and the subsequent Balakot airstrikes gave Modi a boost with the electorate and helped to sideline his poor economic record during the election campaign.

Having returned to power with a massive mandate in May, the BJP feels it now must fulfil the promises it’s been making for a long time—the banning of ‘triple talaq’  or instant divorce (an Islamic practice now banned in several countries) and Article 370 are two examples. Some observers contend that the next item on the BJP’s agenda may be the imposition a uniform civil code and then, most problematically, a push to build the controversial temple at Ayodhya, which has sparked massive and bloody riots in the past.

Modi’s critics argue that the BJP’s revocation of Article 370 is part of the Hindu nationalist project of converting India into a Hindu Rashtra, or a nation for Hindus. That’s seen as undermining India’s secular character, calling into question the very basis of its creation as a free, multi-religious and diverse country in 1947, and narrowing the margin of difference with theocratic Pakistan.

Unless the Modi government reaches out to Kashmiris, restores their dignity and statehood, and ensures their wellbeing and religious freedom, it will continue to face bitter resistance and criticism, both domestically and internationally.

India’s bad bet in Kashmir

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has decided to strip Kashmir of its special status—which granted considerable autonomy to the disputed Muslim-majority territory—and split it into two union territories (a status below that of states) that India will govern more directly. Kashmir’s special status, granted under Article 370 of India’s constitution, was essential to facilitate its accession to newly independent India over seven decades ago. In transforming its relationship with the territory, which Pakistan also claims, the Indian government has jeopardised regional peace and stability.

The Modi government is well aware that the move will not be well received in Kashmir and Pakistan. In the days preceding the announcement, it deployed thousands more troops to the territory. After the announcement, it imposed a curfew on residents, evacuated tourists and pilgrims, placed prominent local politicians (who immediately denounced the move) under house arrest, and imposed media and telecoms blackouts.

But, as members of most Indian opposition parties recognise, the Modi government’s capacity to quell resistance in Kashmir, which has endured decades of violence, is limited. Ominously, Pakistan has already rejected the move ‘unequivocally’, calling it illegal, and pledged to ‘exercise all possible options’ to counter it. This raises the spectre of another military clash between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

There are three reasons why the dispute over Kashmir has proved so intractable—and why India’s unilateral attempt to force a shift in its own favour may not work.

The first reason relates to identity. Kashmir represents the unfinished business from the 1947 partition of India that created Pakistan. On the one hand, the existence of a Muslim-majority Indian province contradicts Pakistan’s raison d’être as the homeland for all the subcontinent’s Muslims. On the other, the loss of India’s only Muslim-majority province would undermine its core identity as a secular republic and leave its remaining 180 million Muslims vulnerable.

Kashmir lies at the nexus of these conflicting imperatives, because, unlike other former princely states, Kashmir acceded to, but did not merge with, the Union of India. In doing so, it secured autonomy on all matters except defence, foreign affairs and communications. Under Article 35A, added to the Indian constitution in 1954, Kashmiri citizens were afforded additional special rights and privileges, including with regard to property ownership and government jobs.

Second, Pakistan has the will and the means to create small-scale mischief essentially indefinitely—or at least for the foreseeable future—but knows that it would lose a full-scale war. India knows that it could defeat Pakistan on the battlefield, but not decisively enough to cripple its ability to resume its cross-border incursions. This military balance naturally leads to stalemate rather than decisive resolution.

Lastly, India is effectively trapped in a policy prison cell that is largely of its own making. To Indian voters, the government claims that there’s no dispute at all. Kashmir is an integral part of India, it insists, so no negotiations are needed.

To the world, Indian leaders point to Pakistan’s perfidy in supporting jihadist groups that launch terrorist attacks on India, and reject any effort to internationalise discussions of the issue. Just weeks before the recent announcement, when US President Donald Trump offered to mediate the dispute over Kashmir, Modi flatly refused, reiterating that any discussion of the subject would involve only India and Pakistan.

India refuses to engage with Pakistan until attacks are brought to a halt—a stance that has pushed the country into a corner. But it is Pakistan that closes the cell door, owing to the nature of its state, in which the military, rather than the civilian government, decides key policies, including on Kashmir. And the policy the military has chosen has been to exploit the Kashmir insurgency as part of its effort to ‘bleed India with a thousand cuts’.

To some extent, however, India is losing the credibility it needs to push back, as the government, ruled by Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, threatens to transform the country into a kind of Hindu Pakistan. The BJP government’s religious chauvinism, together with its handling of the Kashmir conflict, has severely damaged India’s reputation.

Still, the damage to Pakistan’s international standing has been more extreme, given the country’s consistent support for jihadists. As former secretary of state Hillary Clinton famously warned in 2011, Pakistan couldn’t keep snakes in its backyard and expect only its neighbours to be bitten.

The combination of surging Hindu nationalism in India, Kashmiri grievances against India’s government, Pakistan-backed jihadist groups waging hybrid warfare in Indian Kashmir, the new normal of India’s retaliatory military strikes on Pakistan, and growing nuclear stockpiles has turned Kashmir into a tinderbox. India’s decision to withdraw Kashmir’s special status threatens to be the spark that ignites it.

Instead of moving forward with this dangerous policy, India should agree with Pakistan to transform the de facto international border—which has barely shifted over 70 years of conflict—into an official, open one, across which Indians and Pakistanis could travel freely. This would facilitate people-to-people connections, increased market integration, and cooperation in a range of areas, from tourism to environmental management.

By boosting shared prosperity, such a step would enable both countries to invest more in social security, welfare and economic development. Closer integration across South Asia would likely follow.

India has one foot on the ladder to global prominence. But as long as its other foot is stuck in the quagmire of conflict with Pakistan, it won’t be able to climb very high.

Lack of interest and intransigence stop India and Pakistan from solving the Kashmir conflict

In May, The Strategist published an article titled ‘What’s stopping India and Pakistan from solving the Kashmir conflict?’ That headline led me to believe that the authors would offer reasons why both nations have been unable to resolve their longstanding dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Disappointingly, they offered no such suggestions.

There are many reasons for Indian–Pakistani indifference to, or even intransigence over, the ‘Kashmir conflict’. For a start, there’s no need, or compelling reason, for either nation to resolve this issue. Economically, both have developed without resolving it. Neither has ever confronted significant domestic pressure to resolve it. The UN Security Council, to which India took the dispute in 1948, has chosen to forget about it. Since 1965, the ‘India–Pakistan question’ (that is, ‘the Kashmir conflict’) hasn’t appeared as an agenda item for Security Council meetings. The only UN involvement in J&K now is its small Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan, which monitors the Line of Control.

In 1971, a big change came after India and Pakistan fought their third war, the result of which was the creation of Bangladesh. The postwar Simla Agreement of 1972 essentially stated that all India–Pakistan issues thereafter would be dealt with bilaterally. There would be no third-party involvement. This empowered India and made it intransigent—except when it wanted external assistance. For example, India was happy that US President Bill Clinton pressured Pakistan during the 1999 Kargil ‘war’. Most recently, India has sought International Court of Justice intervention to prevent Pakistan from executing an Indian ‘spy’, Kulbhushan Jadhav. Meanwhile, with equal intransigence, Pakistan continues to call for a UN-supervised plebiscite to enable the people of J&K to determine whether ‘their’ state, in its entirety, would join India or Pakistan. Problematically, India has been uninterested in this poll since the mid-1950s.

Concurrently, the Kashmir dispute changed from being about which nation would govern J&K in its entirety to how, and where, India and Pakistan would divide the former princely state. The area of contestation was, and remains, the Kashmir Valley—the real Kashmir from which the ‘Kashmir conflict’ takes its name. India holds this strongly Muslim-majority area, where an anti-India insurgency, supported by Pakistan, has continued since 1988. India wants Kashmir simply in order to deny it to Pakistan. Pakistan wants Kashmir, if only because the ‘k’ in the acronym ‘Pakistan’ stands for ‘Kashmir’. Arguably, most Kashmiris don’t want either nation. They want azadi, a loose term meaning independence, autonomy or freedom.

My other issue with the article is the authors’ statement that ‘Even as the maharaja dithered about joining India or Pakistan or remaining independent, the Pakistan Army dispatched a band of guerrilla raiders, who infiltrated Kashmir in October 1947.’ ‘Raiders’ from Pakistan’s neighbouring North-West Frontier Province certainly invaded J&K on 22 October 1947. Significantly, their action finally compelled the dithering Maharaja of J&K, Hari Singh, to accede to India on 26 October 1947.

However, Hari Singh’s subjects had taken three significant actions before his accession. In southwestern J&K, pro-Pakistan Muslim elements mounted an anti-Maharaja uprising soon after partition on 15 August 1947. Fairly quickly, the ruler lost control of J&K’s Poonch and Mirpur areas. Concurrently, in Jammu Province, there was serious inter-religious violence, including a possible massacre of Muslims that partially inspired the ‘raiders’ to invade J&K. However, they invaded Kashmir Province, where Hari Singh was then staying, and not Jammu Province, where Muslims (and Hindus and Sikhs) were being slaughtered. It was a naked attempt to capture the ruler and obtain his accession to Pakistan before snows made it difficult for India to physically support pro-India Kashmiri elements in the Kashmir Valley. On 24 October, the Poonch and Mirpur rebels declared the creation of the provisional government of Azad (‘Free’) Kashmir in their ‘liberated’ areas. Supposedly, it was the ‘true’ government for J&K. India has never set foot in this area, or in Gilgit–Baltistan, even though it claims that all of J&K is ‘an integral part of India’.

Many Indians and Pakistanis don’t know about these three pre-accession events—or they choose to ignore them. This negates the fact that the people of J&K instigated the Kashmir dispute, and not external ‘guerrilla raiders from Pakistan’, as India has long claimed and to which claim Pakistan has surprisingly acquiesced. Consequently, both nations have effectively disempowered the people of J&K in all attempts to resolve the Kashmir conflict. This means that the party with significant interest and will to resolve this issue—the people of J&K—has been sidelined.

Since 1947, both India and Pakistan have shown that they are either unable or unwilling to resolve the conflict. Given their lack of interest, I agree with the authors’ final statement that ‘the issue isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon’.