The Kashmir Valley was roiled in rumors last week about possible announcements that the Indian government would make on August 5, the sixth anniversary of the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)’s autonomy. Speculation was rife over whether New Delhi would use the anniversary to announce restoration of statehood to J&K. There were rumors too of the government splitting J&K to grant full statehood to Jammu while keeping Kashmir a Union Territory (UT), or even announcing fresh elections to the J&K assembly.
As it turns out, none of these rumors materialized that day.
“The hopes of the Kashmiri people regarding restoration of statehood were dashed again,” a legislator of the ruling National Conference (NC) in J&K told The Diplomat.
Instead, the J&K administration’s home department, which is under the direct control of Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir, announced a ban on 25 books on Kashmir, including those by acclaimed public intellectuals, academics, and journalists like Arundhati Roy, A. G. Noorani, Victoria Schofield, Sugata Bose, Ayesha Jalal, and Anuradha Bhasin.
The 25 books were “found to excite secessionism” and were “endangering sovereignty and integrity of India,” the government notification said, claiming that their content had “contributed to the radicalization of youth in J&K” by distorting “historical facts, glorifying terrorists and vilifying security forces, and promoting violence and terrorism.”
In the days since the notification was issued, police have raided dozens of bookstores in Srinagar, J&K’s summer capital.
It was on August 5, 2019, that India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government unilaterally abrogated Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that guaranteed autonomy to J&K. Simultaneously, J&K was stripped of its statehood and bifurcated into two UTs — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
Since the assembly elections in October last year, J&K has had an elected government. That government, however, is largely powerless. In a UT, it is the Union Ministry of Home Affairs that effectively governs, through the lieutenant governor. In the case of J&K, direct rule from New Delhi is all the more pronounced.
That the center remains reluctant to loosen its hold over J&K is evident from the fact that although Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a “solemn promise” to restore J&K’s statehood after the assembly elections, he has yet to fulfil that pledge.
The BJP government justified its abrogation of Article 370 on the grounds that it sowed the seeds of separatism in J&K. Fully integrating J&K into the Indian Union by revoking J&K’s autonomy would put an end to separatist aspirations and terrorism there, its ministers claimed. Besides, with uncertainty over the status of J&K removed, investment would flow in, contributing to its economic development. Normalcy would return as a result, the government has said frequently.
Six years after the abrogation of J&K’s autonomy, how has the government fared in ushering in peace and normalcy in J&K?
To quell unrest and protest against its controversial decision to revoke J&K’s autonomy, the Modi government acted swiftly to prevent political and mass mobilization by detaining hundreds of political leaders and activists. Political activity was brought to a standstill. With last year’s assembly elections, in which Kashmiris participated more enthusiastically than they have since the eruption of militancy in 1990, political activity was revived and democratic politics received a fillip.
However, the Modi government has not taken the successful electoral exercise to its logical conclusion by vesting real power with J&K’s elected government. Its reluctance to heed the J&K government’s repeated calls for restoration of J&K’s statehood is not only diminishing the government’s credibility, but also it is fueling mass frustration with democratic politics again.
On the security front, the Modi government jailed political separatists and Islamists on the grounds that they were involved in the hawala trade and financing militancy. Its crackdown on terrorism included military operations, measures against terrorist financing, and the banning of several terrorist outfits.
Home Minister Amit Shah has repeatedly claimed that the “zero-tolerance policy” of the government has resulted in a drastic fall in terrorist attacks and in fatalities of civilians and security forces in terrorism-related incidents. However, the terrorist attack at Pahalgam on April 22 this year, which resulted in the death of 26 men, mainly tourists, laid bare the hollowness of the government’s claims to have restored normalcy in the Kashmir Valley. Worse, it exposed gaps in security preparedness, especially in tourist areas.
Yet it is a fact that a semblance of normalcy has returned to the lives of ordinary people in Kashmir. Stone pelting, strikes, and endless shutdowns of schools and businesses, which were common in the valley, “have now become a thing of the past,” the NC legislator said, adding that this “has become possible because most of the separatists — shutdown schedules were announced and enforced by them — are in jail.”
“People are happy to shop when they want and to see their children go to school regularly,” he said.
Soon after the attack at Pahalgam, thousands of Kashmiris returned to the streets, this time not to vent their anger against the Indian state but to condemn the terrorists and their targeting of unarmed civilians. This was unprecedented. However, New Delhi, once again, failed to build on the Kashmiri public mood, “instead choosing to double down on the families of suspected militants by bulldozing their homes,” the NC legislator pointed out. Such measures are fueling anti-India sentiment again.
The 25 books that the government has banned may have a different narrative from that propagated by the Indian state. But it is not the content of these books that is fueling separatist sentiment or encouraging violence in the Kashmir Valley today.
As Bhasin, author of “A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370,” one of the 25 banned books, observes in a post on X, “I’ve read most of these books & written one. They’re well researched & not one glorifies terrorism which this govt claims to have ended.”
Rather, it is New Delhi’s policies that oppress and distance the Kashmiri people that are stirring anger again.
Post-Pahalgam and post-Sindoor, the Modi government is on shaky ground in J&K. Its propaganda that its muscular policies in Kashmir were successful has been exposed. It is this insecurity that underlies the government’s decision to ban the 25 books.
As Bhasin wrote in her X post, the government is “scared of words challenging… [its] lies!”
Six years after the Modi government revoked J&K’s autonomy, its insecurities have deepened.
