Mukul Kesavan - The case made by liberals for abolishing the state of Jammu and Kashmir – and why it’s flawed
Scholars, intellectuals and public figures intervening in policy controversies deserve our attention. Kuldeep Nayar is remembered for his opposition to the Emergency. Nikhil Wagle’s consistent critique of the criminalisation of Maharashtra’s politics has a place of honour in the history of Indian journalism. Gauri Lankesh is a larger than life figure today because she was murdered for her commitment to free speech and a secular politics. The dark side has its own heroes. There’s no shortage of Indians queueing up for a star in Hindutva’s Hall of Fame. The ranks of Modi’s willing enablers are massively oversubscribed.
The government of India’s gutting of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories was endorsed by a number of writers not affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Retired diplomats, engaged entrepreneurs, journalists, South Asian scholars and strategic studies experts lined up behind the National Democratic Alliance government’s radical move. The assumptions and absences that mark their arguments are interesting because they help us understand the extent to which independent thinkers channeling the nation state become proxies for the government of the day.
The government of India’s gutting of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories was endorsed by a number of writers not affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Retired diplomats, engaged entrepreneurs, journalists, South Asian scholars and strategic studies experts lined up behind the National Democratic Alliance government’s radical move. The assumptions and absences that mark their arguments are interesting because they help us understand the extent to which independent thinkers channeling the nation state become proxies for the government of the day.
Amit Shah will need luck to handle what comes next: Former RAW chief AS Dulat on Kashmir
It’s a sad and unfortunate thing because I do not think it was necessary. I was told that even the home minister Amit Shah said in parliament that this erosion [of Article 370] was already taking place; we are only completing the process. He is right there, that erosion was taking place. I have said it many times that 370 is nothing, it’s only a fig leaf. So, why do you want to remove that fig leaf? Why would you want to rub the Kashmiri nose further into the ground?
The arguments in
justification that they offered were hardy perennials, easily summarised.
One, the existence of
Article 370 had cut Kashmir off from the rest of India and acted as a man-made
obstacle to its integration. Its abolition would allow that process to resume.
Two, Kashmir’s special
status and its theoretical autonomy based on the terms of its accession, had
allowed Pakistan to internationalise Kashmir by arguing that those terms had
been violated. Scrapping 370 and re-making Jammu and Kashmir into two Union
Territories would excise that running sore and clarify Kashmir’s status as an
“internal matter”. If the world community were to acquiesce in this, Kashmir’s
new status would become a fait accompli.
Three, the people of
the Kashmir valley might not appreciate this in the heat of the moment but the
scrapping of 370 was good for them. Kashmir was likely to become an
economically more dynamic state because the freedom to acquire land in the
region would encourage trade and industry, reduce corruption, create jobs and
raise living standards. The development that had been stifled by the
restrictions on acquiring property imposed by Article 35A would now resume
apace.
Four, Kashmir would
become a fairer, more equitable place. The political re-organisation of the
province would end the hegemony of Kashmiri Muslims and allow the state to
address the priorities of the Hindus and Buddhists of the region. Caste
reservations would be implemented and women would be allowed to inherit and
transmit property in a way that had been barred earlier by patriarchal laws.
Five, the reduction of
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh to the status of Union Territories would allow the
Centre to tackle cross-border terrorism and local militancy more efficiently.
The Jammu and Kashmir police would report directly to the home minister.
Centralisation would also eliminate interference from corrupt dynastic elites
that had for decades siphoned off the Centre’s largesse and leaked operational
information to Pakistan and its terrorist clients.
Means and ends: The obvious problem
with these arguments is that they were not concerned with the means by which
these ends were to be achieved. The telecommunications blackout, the continuous
curfew, the lack of consultation, the pre-emptive arrests of political leaders,
the shotgun pellet injuries reported, were ignored, regretted in passing or
justified as the necessary cost of moving quickly to maintain the advantage of
surprise.
Such concern as these
commentators did express was raised perfunctorily and in passing: the hope that
this state of collective, muted house arrest would not last longer than was
necessary. The airlifting of troops and the incarceration of an entire
population in peace-time, glossed over by raison d’etat realists
in the name of the nation, ironically made the operation seem more like an
imperial annexation than an assertion of national sovereignty.
The second elision was
the willingness of these commentators to accept the legitimacy of the
government’s legal manoeuvre without considering its political and
constitutional implications. Any precedent that allows a central government to
abolish a state under President’s rule and reincarnate it as a Union Territory
via presidential proclamation and simple majorities in the upper and lower
house of Parliament, needs more scrutiny than a thumbs-up for ingenuity. The
likelihood that this move will be tested in the Supreme Court should not be an
alibi for kicking the issue down the road.
If the state of Jammu
and Kashmir, hedged about as it was with special constitutional protections,
can be reduced to a Union Territory through a constitutional sleight of hand,
what prevents a central government from imposing President’s rule in West
Bengal and then, with a pliant governor’s assent, bifurcating the state into
the Union Territories of Gorkhaland and Dakkhin Bengal? Or Kerala into the
Union Territories of Malabar and Travancore?
Even if – in fact
especially if – the Supreme Court were to sign off on the constitutionality of
the government’s legal manouevre, a raison d’etat realist concerned
about the national interest would assess the trade-off between re-making
Kashmir and de-stabilising the Centre-state balance that underwrites this union
of states... read more:
https://scroll.in/article/933731/the-case-made-by-liberals-for-abolishing-the-state-of-jammu-and-kashmir-and-why-its-flawed
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