Dissecting govt’s approach on J&K at a New Delhi meeting

The story of Kashmir — its history as well as well as the reasons advanced by the Narendra Modi government to end the so-called special status of J&K — which has by now been internalised by the common Indian is a story that has little to do with well-documented facts. And this includes the repetition from the highest levels of government and the ruling party the canard that Article 370 of the Constitution was a “temporary” provision.

The official narrative rests on a deliberately distorted premise, and aims to make the ordinary Indian demonise the ordinary Kashmiri as India-hating and Pakistan-loving. This is for no reason other than that both are followers of the same religious faith.

A conscious effort seems to be behind this approach. The project seems to be to exploit the latent communal sentiments of the country’s religious majority. And it is this which makes the whole thing vicious, irrational and hard to reverse when circumstances dictate a change of course.

Ordinary folk, who have little knowledge of any state or region other than their own, have been led by their nose. They have readily come to accept the purveyed falsehood as the truth. This is on account of the fact that the manufactured communalised narrative is presented on a sustained basis by the mass media, especially television.

Important sections of the media have, willy-nilly, reneged on their professional responsibilities and credo and appear to have become willing allies of the manufacturers of communal propaganda against the people of Kashmir. The people of the Kashmir Valley have practically been rendered “enemies of the people” of India in this telling.

A conference in New Delhi last Saturday dissected the government’s approach, pointed up the blatant inaccuracies in the motivated governmental propaganda which permits the justification in the public’s eyes of the siege of the Kashmir Valley and parts of Jammu, the suppression of human rights and the right of expression, and the seven-week long communications and media lockdown which has become an international talking point.

This was the first discussion held in the nation’s capital to express solidarity with the people of Kashmir — 55 days after the commencement of the suppression. It is a sorry comment that the first gathering, in which participants were drawn not just from Delhi but also Jammu and the Kashmir Valley, and one in which the official narrative was interrogated, was convened by the Kolkata-based Centre for Peace and Progress headed by the veteran activist O.P. Shah, and not a group situated in Delhi.

Babu Singh from Jammu, a former finance and power minister of J&K, explained some history and the constitutional nuances that unravel the propaganda that Article 370 was “temporary”, and had outlived its purpose. He spoke of the two Supreme Court judgments — of 1968 and 2016 — which gave cogent reasons to explain that the use of the expression “temporary” has no substantive basis.

Hashim Qureshi, the former hijacker of an Indian Airlines plane who was jailed and tortured by the Z.A. Bhutto regime in Pakistan, brought consensus around the view that all regions of J&K had acceded to India as one unit and could not now be sundered into different parts. That would destroy the rationale of J&K’s accession to India.

A former chief of India’s external intelligence, the R&AW, who served long in Kashmir and has written on the subject with clarity and understanding, A.S. Dulat, called the August 5 step “wrong”. He spoke as a pessimist and advocated India-Pakistan talks to calm the situation.

Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Kapil Kak explained that Article 35-A, which the RSS opposed and the government has removed on the ground that it was not passed by Parliament but came from a presidential order, was rooted in the Delhi Agreement of 1952 which was ratified by Parliament. As a participant, the present writer cautioned that the government’s action could invite unwarranted foreign intervention in Kashmir.

The participants from both Jammu and the Valley spoke emotionally, denouncing the government’s actions and foretelling a gathering anger. The protests had begun already. It was pointed out that the people were themselves not coming out of their homes to deny the government the satisfaction of claiming normality. Grave uncertainties lie ahead. The government has just not thought this through.