Sumantra Bose
The message from the 2024 Indian general election in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, liquidated and dismembered in August 2019, is clear enough. There are few takers for the Hindu nationalist government’s approach and policy in the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, and the Hindu majority of the Jammu region is increasingly divided on the matter.
It is as yet too early to determine if Modi’s relative flop-show in the 2024 general election – meaning the loss of the BJP’s parliamentary majority after ten years – represents a bad stumble from which recovery is possible, or whether it signals the beginning of the end, with the final unravelling of the Modi era now visible on the horizon.
In the first scenario – of a BJP-led coalition government with Modi at the helm steadying itself, maintaining a degree of popularity, and pressing on until 2029 – there is little if any prospect of positive change in Kashmir. Modi is constitutionally incapable of changing the authoritarian style of functioning that is his hallmark, and all indications are that he intends to run his third government in the same autocratic, leader-centred style as the previous two terms, with the cabal of two – he and Shah – continuing to call the shots. But this will be difficult to pull off.
The BJP has suffered a bloody nose if not a mortal injury by losing its parliamentary majority, the Modi personality cult no longer looks unassailable, and the opposition spectrum – disparate and fragmented as it is – is bolstered in numbers as well as confidence, in parliament and on the streets.
The other scenario is that Modi and Shah are unable to arrest the slide, and the government that took office in June 2024 limps on as the Modi era – and aura – unravels.
In case it becomes clear that the BJP is on a downward spiral and the Modi brand no longer has the currency it commanded, the situation of Modi’s third government could become precarious. The prime minister of already diminished aura is propped up by an assortment of small parties from northern, western and southern India, almost none of which subscribe to Hindu nationalist ideology and some of whose leaders are notorious chameleons.
But even a beleaguered BJP-led government is unlikely to ‘bend’ on Kashmir. As this book shows, the Kashmir policy under implementation since August 2019 stems from an ideological belief system, and any retreat would amount to back-pedalling deeply held principles of the Hindu nationalist political faith. Perhaps even more important, Modi and Shah have immense personal and political capital invested in the Kashmir ‘solution’ they have crafted. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act was the flagship initiative of the second Modi premiership, and Modi touted it as one of his proudest achievements during the 2024 general election campaign.
What if an alternative coalition government consisting of the BJP’s opponents replaces the third Modi government in 2029, or possibly earlier, perhaps even much earlier? That too would not lead to any dramatic turn for the better in Kashmir. For one, the BJP would remain in play as the major opposition party – and indeed as the nation’s single largest party – and would pounce on any real or imagined ‘climbdowns’ and ‘concessions’ to agitate against the return of ‘appeasement politics’ and pandering to terrorists and Pakistan. A non-BJP government would be naturally wary of such a political hot potato.
But that is not the only reason to not expect much from a change of government in New Delhi. Any such government would be led by the Congress party, which managed a limited revival in the 2024 general election, rising to 99 of the 543-member Lok Sabha from 44 in 2014 and 52 in 2019. As this book shows, the erstwhile Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has been subject to a permanent state of emergency since the 1950s, with draconian laws in operation and carte blanche to the police and military. This regime was established quite early in Jawaharlal Nehru’s long tenure as prime minister and its toxic effects were compounded by the subsequent policies of his dynastic successors, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.
In the second half of the 2000s, a Congress-led government in New Delhi missed an opportunity to take forward a Kashmir peace process whose foundations had been laid by Vajpayee, whether out of strategic caution or an intrinsic conservatism (or both). It would be naive to expect any change of outlook and practice from a new generation of the Nehru family. As for the ‘regional’ (one-state) parties which would populate any non-BJP coalition government led by the Congress, their leaderships – also comprised of proprietary families – are pitifully limited and myopic, absorbed with petty agendas of their own. These politicians typically have little or no understanding of nor any serious interest in Kashmir, an issue of national, subcontinental and global importance.
These caveats aside, the Kashmir ‘solution’ crafted by the government of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah does have an element which makes it distinctive from the approach of past Indian governments. Those governments, regardless of their specific political colouring, focused on a strategy of control of Kashmir, using a variable mix of coercion and manipulative tactics. The Modi–Shah approach is altogether more ambitious and drastic, and has sought to erase Kashmir as a political question, by denying that it has any political context or content and reducing it to simply a problem of unruliness (stone-pelting) and terrorism (insurgency), to be eradicated through an iron-fist policy of discipline and punishment. This is the most extreme securitization of a political conflict that is possible. It entailed the criminalization and effective outlawing of all political positions on Kashmir – including pro-Indian ones – barring one, the Hindu nationalist view.
As I put it in an interview to Aditi Phadnis of the Business Standard newspaper in August 2022, ‘what has resulted is a strange limbo, a complete paralysis of political processes. The institutional framework for such processes has been liquidated, and normal politics at the grassroots has been throttled by fear and persecution … I would say that the central political issue in J&K is precisely the restoration of normal politics – with all its flaws and defects, as is the case everywhere in India. But that is not something the Centre’s strategy can permit, without [risking] derailing the entire strategy.’
In August 2019, Prime Minister Modi promised early elections to constitute a legislature (assembly) for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir – provided for in the J&K Reorganisation Act – and by extension a ministerial executive for the UT. This would be a toothless legislature and executive, as UT assemblies and governments have very limited powers – even when directly elected, as in Delhi and Puducherry. These UTs have a powerful viceregal figure called the Lieutenant-Governor, an appointee of the central government, and are subject to the central government’s overarching authority. In Jammu and Kashmir, elected UT institutions would be even weaker due to the clout of the central government’s enforcers, the bureaucracy and the security apparatus.
Five years have passed and there has been no election to constitute a legislature (and government) in the J&K UT – quite predictably, as even such an inherently limited exercise risks bringing back some degree of political contestation and contention. In December 2023, a five-judge bench of India’s Supreme Court, headed by its chief justice, unanimously upheld the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act as lawful and constitutional, and dismissed more than two dozen petitions challenging its constitutionality which had been pending before the court for four years. As if to compensate, the court directed the Union government to conduct the UT assembly election by 30 September 2024.
The first significant restoration of competitive politics in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh happened in the Indian general election of 2024. Not holding the Lok Sabha election in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir would have undermined the central government’s narrative of normalcy and progress. The UT election would be another small step towards restoring political activity and competition. The BJP central government has sponsored a gerrymandering exercise to increase the representation of the Hindu-majority areas of the Jammu region in a UT legislature, but given the results of the Lok Sabha election a BJP-controlled UT assembly and government looks unlikely.
The Modi–Shah government has moved the goalposts and altered the parameters of the Kashmir question in a manner that will be difficult to undo. But in the event of a non-BJP coalition government replacing the government led by the Modi–Shah duo in 2029 – or, optimistically, earlier – there are two matters on which an alternative government could act, if it finds the courage to do so.
Jammu and Kashmir’s print and digital media, flourishing and vibrant until 2019, have been completely decimated since then by an avalanche of repression. Restoring media freedoms in J&K is both possible and essential. Second, large numbers of political detainees incarcerated since 2019 continue to rot in prisons, many outside Jammu and Kashmir. Their cases can and must be examined, and the practice of detaining and holding prisoners under laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the J&K Public Safety Act (PSA) can and must be curtailed.
The world is experiencing acute economic and geopolitical turmoil. Wars are raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with the focal points in Ukraine and Palestine. The crime of genocide, perpetrated by a sovereign state, Israel, has returned to haunt international politics and humanity. Conflict in Asia involving China and the United States is no longer a remote prospect. In such an unstable and grim global context, any escalation of the Kashmir conflict and a subcontinental crisis on the lines of 1999 and 2002 – and very nearly in February–March 2019 – is in nobody’s interest.
Yet, as this book has shown, the simmering cauldron of Kashmir remains highly flammable. There have not been large-casualty insurgent attacks in Kashmir after February 2019, nor have there been significant Kashmir-related terror incidents in India in recent years, as happened in Mumbai in November 2008. But it would be a mistake to think that these risks no longer exist – they do. The danger of escalation triggered by a major insurgent or terrorist strike is present and real. Of the volatile frontiers of conflict, the Line of Control has been quiet since 2021, but there is no guarantee it will stay so indefinitely if the India–Pakistan relationship remains in a deep freeze. Meanwhile, the military face-off between India and China, ongoing since 2020 on the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, continues.
(Excerpted from the Epilogue of latest edition of “Kashmir at the Crossroads” by Sumantra Bose, Picador India, 5 August 2024)
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