Last week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah made an extraordinary claim. He said that the Indian government was finally able to uproot ‘separatism’ in J&K. “Separatism has become history in Kashmir,” Shah posted on social media, in reference to two Kashmir-based organisations renouncing their connections to the Hurriyat Conference. “The unifying policies of the Modi government have tossed separatism out of J&K.”
The statement carries enormous weight because those familiar with the deeply contentious history of the region would know out of what factors ‘separatism’ has historically originated.
Far from the popular view that sees ‘separatism’ as a post-Partition crises into which J&K was pushed - chiefly on account of external factors, a closer study will suggest that not only do the processes that animate the issue predate 1947, it is also an outcome of dynamics that have emerged, for most part, domestically.
Since 1947, ‘separatism’ appears to have had its own ebbs and flows, but it has largely persisted side by side with the Indian government’s determined efforts to bring about J&K’s complete assimilation with the rest of the country.
Seen in this scheme, the 2019 move to strike down Article 370 is not a culmination, but a continuation of those efforts. After all, there are several legal instruments currently operational in Kashmir - Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Public Safety Act, Enemy Agents Ordinance and more - that continue to make J&K a state of exception in India, the “integration” discourse notwithstanding.
How convincing, then, is the claim that ‘separatism’ or plebiscitary politics in Kashmir has reached the end of tether?
Christopher Snedden, among the foremost historians of South Asia, in his book ‘Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration’ adds much texture and fresh perspective to this evolving debate.
While Snedden agrees that the Indian government has successfully repressed the pro-freedom aspirations among the Kashmiris, he believes that there could be a possibility of a ‘black-swan’ event, a cataclysmic occurrence that “shatters the India-Pakistan shibboleth.” The borders between South Asian nations have changed 15 times since 1947. For Snedden, there’s every possibility more would happen, but he isn’t sure about the specifics of it.
There’s a whole history behind why the politics in Kashmir coalesced around ‘separatism’ in Kashmir.
The memories of Kashmiris chasing the idea of separate nationhood runs as far back as to the year 1587 when the Mughal Empire folded the region into its domain, ending what Kashmiris believe was the acme of their national ascent.
Since then, they have been ruled by a host of foreign dynasts; the Afghans, the Sikhs and the Dogras. This agonising feeling over the lack of self-rule seeped into events surrounding the Partition that led to creation of new nation states of India and Pakistan, but without Kashmiris getting the chance to determine their own fate.
Snedden approaches the subject with a remarkable novelty as he sketches out a fresh trajectory for his theme.
It was the year 1929 through the Indian States Committee report that the Indian princes had signalled their dismay over having to loosen the grip over their dominions - a stand that some princes including that of Kashmir held on to until the final hours of Partition.
The British, however, had already made it clear that the paramountcy will lapse to the two emerging dominions alone, effectively making States the war bounties waiting to be exploited. While Pakistan tried to woo the princes by promising that their authority won’t be undermined, India, on the other hand, offered them a stern warning. In J&K’s case, the Congress threw its lot behind Sheikh Abdullah, hoping that the region’s tallest leader would guarantee its smooth accession.
In narrating the story of how senior functionaries in Dogra administration continued to resist the union with India, Snedden creates one of the finest portraits of Ram Chandra Kak, the Pandit Prime Minister of J&K, who was removed from office for obstructing the accession. Also discussed in detail is Hari Singh’s scandal in Paris where he is alleged to have paid £ 300,000 to an English prostitute as ‘hush money.”
Two major things happened in the run up to Partition that had far-reaching consequences. First, the decision of Travancore to abandon its desire for independence and join India demoralised a large majority of these uppity princes, and pulled a plug on their ambitions to remain separate. Second, sensing that India was resolved to raking up as many of such disintegrating princedoms as possible, Pakistan ended its appeasement and chose decisive action, a part of which would involve tribal raids over J&K.
Separate from the decision-making behind these imperial machinations, however, were Kashmiris, who had their own legitimate reasons to feel aggrieved. In a heartless treaty which had spurned them, Kashmiris had been sold en masse to the Dogra chieftain by the British in the year 1846.
Once in power, Dogras created new mechanisms of legitimation that drew largely on Hindu religious symbolism, with the monarchy elevating the interests of their Hindu subjects at the altar of Muslims.
To illustrate the nature of the structural bias: As of 1947, of the 66 senior-most officials in Dogra court, only 12 were Muslims; of 525 Gazetted officials, only 159; of 91,000 J&K soldiers (in 1939), only 25 percent; and of 15,073 total number of persons employed in State Services (1931 census), only 5,052.
It was to rectify this disparity of numbers, and to end other forms of discrimination pertaining to better wages, employment and education that Kashmiri Muslims had begun to agitate; first with the Silk Factory protests, followed by a popular episode when a memorandum was submitted to Lord Reading, the viceroy of India - which the Dogras saw as a highly impertinent act on part of Kashmiris - and ultimately the 1931 uprising, which came as a bolt from the blue.
The civil unrest and protests forced Hari Singh, responding as he was also to the British pressure, to unroll a series of reforms that led to legislative, press and political freedoms in the State for the first time ever. But the Dogras also swiftly managed to subdue the spirit behind these reforms by curtailing the powers of the assembly, promulgating the draconian laws like Ordinance 19-L, Press and Publications Act and Section 124-A of Ranbir Penal Code - all of which reinforced the authoritarian powers of the Dogra ruler.
This only led the Kashmiri protesters under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah to double down on their demands even more aggressively and vociferously, culminating in the showdown of ‘Quit Kashmir’ - a movement, seeking forcible overthrow of the monarchical order.
These events were taking place as Partition was approaching. In its finer details, Snedden’s account of this period is one of the finest I have read so far.
He puts into perspective the larger context behind why Hari Singh and Sheikh Abdullah were prevaricating over the issue of accession which did happen after the raiders from Pakistan launched incursions.
Sheikh was dead set against any decision that would favour Jammu and Kashmir joining Pakistan, chiefly on account of it being a feudal society - a condition that militated against the ideals enshrined in Abdullah’s Naya Kashmir manifesto, whose flagship program was land redistribution. Abdullah also shared this sentiment with his key lieutenant Mirza Afzal Beg, as Snedden records.
During this time, however, Sheikh Abdullah was also telling top officers at Srinagar Secretariat that accession was ‘conditional and subject to plebiscite.’ This understanding was reflected in Governor-General Lord Mountbatten’s response to Hari Singh also wherein he assured him that, “it is my Government’s wish that…the question of the State’s accession by a reference to the people.”
The question of ‘reference’ would become a fixture in the J&K political discourse afterwards and acquire a lasting potency on account of the UN-led mediation.
Soon, Sheikh Abdullah would realise that the kind of latitude he thought he would get from joining India was hard to come by. Although he did succeed in implementing the land reforms, the decision also sparked an agitation by the former Hindu landlords from Jammu, who were supported by India’s far-right leaders.
This took Abdullah by surprise and he responded by harping on the issue of “getting freedom from India.” But the matters were calmed - if only temporarily - after the J&K leaders and Central administration in Delhi signed an agreement in 1952, which further outlined the power-sharing arrangements between the J&K and the Centre.
In the process, Abdullah appears to have been gripped by a post facto remorse over having surrendered too much authority, including giving India’s President powers to proclaim general emergency in the event of war or external aggression - a power that New Delhi would invoke multiple times, including in 2018 in a prelude to Article 370’s revocation.
The suspicion - and his reluctance to implement the Delhi Agreement - only aggravated the mounting acrimony between the two sides, culminating in Abdullah’s dismissal in 1953. The process that led to the installation of Abdullah’s successors was deeply flawed and rode roughshod over all the democratic norms and ethics.
Abdullah was released and rearrested thrice since 1953. Snedden gives an interesting account of a major incident during one session of J&K State Peoples Convention in 1970 when Abdullah, freshly out from his second detention, held public gatherings to chalk out strategies for the resolution of the Kashmir issue.
During one such session, Abdullah was challenged by Kashmir Times’ founding editor Ved Bhasin, who accused him of reneging on his commitment after having secured J&K’s accession to India. “Abdullah responded angrily that he had supported the accession in good faith, but Nehru had wanted to make Kashmir a colony of India, had gone back on his commitments to the UNSC, and had undemocratically jailed him,” Snedden writes.
By 1975, however, Abdullah was humbled by the geo-political realignment in South Asia and beyond, which included the setting up of cordial relations between India and Russia and the dismemberment of Pakistan. Realising that age was catching up on him fast, Abdullah was ready for a settlement as a result of which all the serious diminutions effected upon Article 370 were also acquiesced to.
But while he had reconciled to the reality of Kashmir’s permanent subordination to India, Kashmiris had not. Over the next two decades, J&K lurched from crisis to crisis, and ended up erupting violently in 1989 in response to the election fixing.
One of Snedden’s rather controversial analysis includes his opinion that Kashmiris don’t really have a consensus over what they mean by azaadi, a critical shortcoming that, in his view, undermines their cause. At another point, he appears to accuse Kashmiris of pursuing negative azaadi, by which he means fighting “blindly, violently” for the cause of secession, as opposed to leading a result-oriented, peaceful struggle.
Snedden’s Independent Kashmir weaves a highly complex and layered narrative around the region’s tumultuous history, building a convincing argument for why the independentist emotions remain deeply entrenched into the political, social and cultural fabric of Kashmir, and explaining why these aspirations could never materialise.
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