[If there was any question about the seriousness of Modi’s intent to transform the world’s largest democracy, such doubts vanished last week. That is when the Modi government discarded seven decades of history and stripped Indian-controlled Kashmir — the country’s only Muslim-majority state — of its autonomy and statehood. The move ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed neighbor, which also claims the disputed Himalayan region.]
By
Joanna Slater
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Prime Minister Narendra
Modi in New Delhi on Thursday before his address
marking India's Independence Day.
(Manish Swarup/AP)
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NEW
DELHI — Standing before the
deep-red ramparts of a centuries-old fort, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
addressed this country of more than 1.3 billion people on its Independence Day
and called on them to join him in building a “new India.”
Modi is the most dominant Indian leader in
nearly five decades, flush with a landslide reelection victory in May that left
his opponents in disarray. He has long embraced a brand of nationalism that
views India as a fundamentally Hindu country rather than a secular republic,
wooing voters with a mixture of hope and fear common to right-leaning populist
leaders around the globe — a group that includes President Trump.
If there was any question about the
seriousness of Modi’s intent to transform the world’s largest democracy, such
doubts vanished last week. That is when the Modi government discarded seven
decades of history and stripped Indian-controlled Kashmir — the country’s only
Muslim-majority state — of its autonomy and statehood. The move ratcheted up
tensions with Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed neighbor, which also claims the
disputed Himalayan region.
The change in status for Kashmir may be just
the start. Stripping the region of its autonomy is one of several key,
long-held demands of Hindu nationalists. They believe this year’s thumping
election victory for Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has paved the
way for them to implement an agenda that emphasizes Hindu primacy in India, a
diverse democracy that is also home to nearly 200 million Muslims.
What’s more, the way Modi executed the
decision on Kashmir indicates what his “new India” might look like. For his
supporters, the step shows Modi to be a leader of courage and ambition,
unfettered by precedent and guided by a direct understanding of the popular
will.
“The work that was not done in the last 70
years has been accomplished within 70 days after this new government came to
power,” Modi said in his address Thursday, speaking in front of a billowing,
oversize Indian flag on a podium garlanded with jasmine flowers. “I have come
to accomplish the task assigned to me by my countrymen. I work selflessly.”
Modi has said the change in Kashmir will
deepen national unity and improve development in the strife-torn region, which
has witnessed an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989. But fearing
violent unrest in response to last week’s decision, the government has
instituted an unprecedented clampdown there — cutting all phone lines, shutting
down Internet access, severely restricting residents’ movement and imprisoning
hundreds of local politicians and party workers.
For his critics, Modi’s move on Kashmir is
proof of his anti-democratic and majoritarian impulses. They say he imposed
radical change on Kashmiris without consulting them or their leaders in a
manner that may contravene the constitution.
“This is not just about Kashmir — it’s about
the future of India,” said Sumantra Bose, a political scientist at the London
School of Economics and the author of two books on Kashmir. Modi and his party
are using Kashmir as a means by which to “advance their broader and ultimate
agenda of turning India into a Hindu republic in all but name,” Bose said.
India became an independent nation 72 years
ago. Pakistan, which was created at the same stroke of midnight, declared
itself to be a home for the Muslims of the subcontinent. But India’s founders
had a contrasting goal — to build a secular republic where people of all faiths
were equal citizens.
The dispute over Kashmir has festered ever
since. Last month, Trump offered to act as a mediator between India and
Pakistan on the question of Kashmir, a proposal swiftly rejected by India.
For Hindu nationalists, there are two major
items on the to-do list in addition to eliminating Kashmir’s unique status.
The first is the construction of a grand
temple to the Hindu god Ram at the contested site of a former mosque in the
town of Ayodhya. The country’s Supreme Court is hearing a case on the land
dispute there and could deliver a verdict later this year. The second priority
is instituting a law that applies to all citizens in matters such as divorce
and inheritance. Different communities have their own such laws, with some
arguing they are an expression of religious freedom.
On the Ram temple issue, the BJP is
optimistic that the court will deliver a verdict on the land dispute within two
months, said Sudhanshu Trivedi, a party spokesman. But he said that building
the temple would not proceed immediately and that a “positive atmosphere”
between Hindus and Muslims should be created first.
Modi and his powerful right-hand man, Home
Affairs Minister Amit Shah, also have announced other moves that critics say
target religious minorities. The BJP may reintroduce a citizenship bill that
will give refugee status to Hindus and Christians — but not Muslims — who enter
India from neighboring countries. Shah has also indicated he wants to conduct a
nationwide exercise to register citizens in order to identify migrants who have
entered the country illegally, many of them Muslims.
Eradicating Kashmir’s unique status within
India has been a long-held dream of Hindu nationalists. “The State of Jammu
& Kashmir, with its oppressive Muslim-majority character, has been a
headache for our country ever since Independence,” reads a mission statement of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group that is the
ideological parent of the BJP.
The state’s distinct status was guaranteed by
a clause in the constitution known as Article 370. It was a crucial element of
the negotiations that followed Kashmir’s entry to India after the country
became independent in 1947. While the scope of the clause had narrowed over the
subsequent decades, it still allowed Kashmir to opt out of certain federal laws
and to enact regulations preventing nonresidents from buying land.
Modi’s move to end Article 370 is broadly
popular in India, and some opposition parties have supported it. In the rest of
the country, the seemingly never-ending violence in Kashmir is a source of
frustration and fatigue, wrote Ashok Malik, a former adviser to India’s
president. Indians are also concerned by the plight of Kashmiri Hindus who fled
after facing violence when the insurgency began.
But observers were still surprised by the
radical nature of last week’s moves. Modi not only rolled back Article 370 but
also split off the mountainous region of Ladakh into a separate territory. He
then stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its status as a state, downgrading it to a
“union territory,” something that has never been done in India’s history. The
new status will give Delhi more power over Kashmir’s affairs.
The significance of these measures “cannot be
overestimated,” said A.G. Noorani, a lawyer and constitutional expert. “To say
Kashmir is now a colony is not an exaggeration.” Noorani said the government’s
moves were a legal “sleight of hand” that violated the constitution and would
be challenged before India’s Supreme Court.
Trivedi, the BJP spokesman, said that
stripping Kashmir of its statehood was necessary to “take full control of the
security apparatus” at a sensitive juncture: The government anticipates that
militants in Afghanistan will turn more attention to Kashmir if peace talks
between the Taliban and the United States are concluded. Such control over
Kashmir will be necessary “for a year or two at least,” Trivedi said.
In Kashmir, where the clampdown on movement
and communication entered its 11th day on Thursday, there is no illusion about
the degree of control India intends to assert. Gun-wielding police and
paramilitary forces were deployed in heavy numbers and traffic was forbidden on
the road that leads to the stadium where the Indian flag was hoisted on
Independence Day in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar.
As the rest of the country celebrates,
“Kashmiris have been caged like animals and deprived of basic human rights,”
wrote Iltija Mufti, the daughter of Kashmir’s former chief minister, in an open
letter to Shah, India’s home minister. Her mother, Mehbooba Mufti, has been
detained and held incommunicado since Aug. 5. Iltija Mufti said she has been
prevented from leaving her home and threatened for speaking out about the
plight of Kashmiris.
Experts say that it will take months or years
to gauge the impact of such a radical departure from decades of Indian policy.
Navnita Chadha Behera, a political scientist and expert on Kashmir at Delhi
University, said she particularly worried that anger and frustration among
Kashmiri youths could produce an upsurge in violence.
“Predicting the future in Kashmir is a
hazardous task,” she said. “Kashmir being what it is, it makes all your
calculations go haywire.”
Ishfaq Naseem in Srinagar and Niha Masih in
New Delhi contributed to this report.
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