Police and CRPF personnel were deployed in strength across the valley to ensure that the plans of the separatists to disturb peace did not succeed, officials said.

They said police vehicles, fitted with public address systems, went around localities announcing imposition of strict curfew for two days.

“People are requested not to violate the law and stay indoors, ” the police said.

Barricades have been set up at hundreds of places in Kashmir, including Srinagar city, to regulate movement of essential services and emergencies while concertina wires have been also been laid, the officials said.

Srinagar District Magistrate Shahid Iqbal Choudhary issued an order that any such mass gathering would also be detrimental to efforts related to COVID containment.

He added that, movement and crowd gathering have been prohibited to avoid the spread of infection, particularly in the wake of recent surge in COVID cases.

“Therefore, after having considered the material facts in said report and examining the situation in backdrop of prevailing factors, I, District Magistrate, Srinagar, by virtue of powers vested in me u/s 144 Cr PC hereby order complete restrictions on public movement/curfew in territorial jurisdiction of District Srinagar,” the order read.

The Centre had repealed provisions of the article that gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcated it into union territories of Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir.

“Our conservative estimates put the losses to the Kashmir economy due to the situation after August 5 at ₹15,000 crore. We will be coming up with comprehensive data about the losses within a week,” Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) president Sheikh Ashiq Hussain told PTI.

More than the losses to the economy, job loss due to clampdown on Internet services, protests and strikes was more worrying, he said.

The handicraft, tourism and e-commerce sectors were the worst hit by the situation post the Centre’s decision, Mr. Hussain said.

Though most restrictions have been lifted, the clampdown, which started on August 5, on internet services across all platforms and prepaid mobile phone still remains.

Postpaid cellphones and landlines are working in the Valley. SMS on postpaid phones are shut.

“The handicraft sector alone has witnessed over 50,000 people losing their jobs. The artisans were not getting any fresh orders in the absence of communication facilities. Even, the highly skilled artisans have been forced to look for odd jobs to meet their daily needs,” he said.

Mr. Hussain claimed that the hotel and restaurant industry has seen more than 30,000 people losing their jobs. The e-commerce sector, which includes courier services for purchases made online, has seen 10,000 people losing their jobs, he said.

“The Information Technology industry got some relief after the internet lease lines were restored for this sector but the overall situation of trade in Kashmir is dismal,” he said.

In Kashmir, markets open earlier than usual but close down by 1 pm as part of an undeclared protest programme against the stripping of the erstwhile state’s special status.

The tourism sector suffered the most as the J&K government issued an advisory to all non-locals, including tourists, to leave the Valley ahead of the August 5 announcement.

Though the advisory was revoked, tourists have by and large stayed away from Kashmir, even though there was early snowfall in Kashmir this November, which is a major attraction.

Consequently, a full-blown insurgency, like that in Vietnam, is bound to emerge soon, and then body bags will start coming back.

A time comes to speak the truth, and I suppose that time has come and it is I who will have to bell the cat. So here it is: Kashmir will soon become what Vietnam was for the French and the Americans, Afghanistan for the Russians, and Spain for Napoleon.

Those who are today gloating over their ‘great victory’ of abolishing Article 370 will soon wake up to a nightmare once body bags start coming back in large numbers from Kashmir, like what the Americans saw return from Vietnam.

Internet and mobiles are today a necessity, not a luxury. Depriving a person of these for even one day can make one miserable, so one can imagine the plight of people going without them for almost two months. Added to this are the curfews and other restrictions.

Remove the restrictions, and popular protests will engulf the whole valley. Continue them, and the pot will boil until it explodes. As is said in Hindi, the situation is such that ‘na nigalte bane, na ugalte bane’—one can neither swallow it, nor vomit it.

The truth is that due to the ill-conceived and short-sighted policies of the central governments towards Kashmir for decades, and particularly after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, almost the entire population of Kashmir is today totally alienated and bitterly hostile to India. Consequently, a full-blown insurgency, like that in Vietnam, is bound to emerge soon, and then body bags will start coming back.

An army can fight another army, it cannot fight the masses. A tiger can kill an antelope, it cannot kill a swarm of mosquitoes. Napoleon realised this in Russia (read Tolstoy’s War and Peace), and General Westmoreland in Vietnam.

No doubt, we have half a million military and paramilitary forces in Kashmir, but how do they fight an enemy who cannot be seen, who moves in the shadows, who is nowhere and everywhere? We have created a situation where large-scale guerrilla war is bound to emerge, and the guerrilla has the advantage of surprise, using hit-and-run tactics, and deciding the place, time and duration of the attack and also of their swift withdrawal.

A guerrilla war is a cruel war, in which none of the rules of conventional war are observed. As it develops, as is bound to happen in Kashmir, more and more non-militants will become militants, for when a non-militant sees his innocent relative or friend killed in a crossfire, he becomes incensed and joins the militants. So the number of militants, presently said to be only a few hundred, is bound to rapidly increase.

Where all this will end no one can say. But, one thing can be said for sure: We are in for the long haul in Kashmir.

Article first published in The Week.

Justice Markandey Katju retired from the Supreme Court in 2011.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

She sat in a corner, beside the door of the doctor’s office, hidden by papers and medicine boxes on the compounder’s table. “I feel frustrated thinking about the future, I feel there is no future for us,” 24-year-old Zahra, told IndiaSpend.

Zahra is a law graduate, who is now preparing for the state civil services (judicial) examination. A patient of depression, she had not required medicines for three years until the removal of Article 370 marked a return of anxiety. “I can’t focus on my studies anymore,” she said.

Zahra was one of 15 patients waiting to see neurophysicist Akash Yusuf Khan at his clinic in Baramulla, 55 km from Srinagar. Housed in a poorly maintained municipal complex, the clinic is open only on Sundays; on other days, he consults at the district hospital.

Doctors predicted a rise in the number of cases presenting with stress and anxiety, as a consequence of the removal of Article 370 and the accompanying communications blockade that has prevented many from talking to their families, or stepping out of home for fear they will be unable to contact their families when out.

IndiaSpend reported on the health crisis that has ensued, as well as the impact on Kashmir’s economy, of the events following August 5, 2019.

The blockade has also resulted in fewer people accessing mental health care in August 2019. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) has shut down mental health services in four districts of Kashmir valley as they are unable to reach their staff.

As a conflict-torn region, Kashmir has historically reported widespread prevalence of mental health issues. Nearly 1.8 million adults in Kashmir Valley–45% of the population–showed symptoms of mental distress, a 2015 survey by the humanitarian organisation MSF said. The survey found that 41% of the population showed signs of depression, 26% showed signs of anxiety and 19% showed probable symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Unemployment, conflict

Currently, people are unable to resume work and there is little distraction or entertainment. Many Kashmiris we spoke to said they did not mind the civil strike–the shutdown of shops and businesses–but were anxious about the uncertainty of what lies next. Many said they felt hurt and humiliated, their sense of identity taken away.

Even outside of times of peak conflict, the unemployment rate in Jammu & Kashmir has been high–in 2015 it was 22.4% in the 18-29 years age group, almost double the India average of 13.2% for this age group, according to the 2016 Economic Survey.

Patients reluctant, unable to access healthcare

Since August 5, 2019, it has been difficult for people to access health facilities, and hospitals have reported a drop in patient numbers, as IndiaSpend reported on September 6, 2019. Even in a normal situation, few people access mental healthcare, in particular.

About 44.5% fewer patients visited the Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (IMHANS), Srinagar, in August, when compared to July, but this data is inconclusive as the number of patients was even lower in May.

On the other hand, in recent weeks, more patients have been visiting general out-patient departments (OPD) with symptoms of anxiety and reporting palpitations since August 5, said a general physician working at the Baramulla district hospital, who did not want to be identified. Such patients are referred to the psychiatric OPD. Chemists outside the hospital said there was an increase in the demand of antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicines, especially in the 16-30 years age-group.

Srinagar’s old town, where IMHANS is, has more restrictions on movement than other areas, which has led to a fall in the number of patients. Patients find it easier to reach district hospitals, such as the one in Baramulla.

The exact impact of the communication blockade and the political decision on people’s mental health will only be known after a few years, said a senior psychiatrist at IMHANS, who wished not to be named. “The average lag between people facing mental health issues and seeking treatment is about 3-5 years.”

This gap is now reducing but people still take a few months before they ask for psychiatric help, the IMHANS psychiatrist said, giving the example of the 2016 unrest in the Valley–when Indian security forces had killed the militant Burhan Wani, causing the state to suffer an estimated loss of more than Rs 16,000 crore between July and November that year.

Patients had started coming in only after a year of that incident, the IMHANS psychiatrist said. People prioritise their basic needs and not mental health during periods of turmoil and seek help after things normalise, he explained, “Also a very minuscule proportion of people seek help, rest find other ways to cope. Human beings are very resilient.”

Kashmiri adults use prayer as a coping strategy, as well as talking to a family member or friend, and “keeping busy”, the MSF study said.

On average, an adult living in the Valley has witnessed or experienced more than seven traumatic events during their lifetime, the MSF survey had found. Exposure to traumatic events is associated with depression, anxiety and PTSD. The MSF survey had found that the most common problems faced by Kashmiris are financial issues, poor health and unemployment.

Because of the constant political conflict and violence, Kashmir has also seen a rise in drug addiction, as IndiaSpend reported in November 2017. 

Children stuck at home are upset, angry

All that Sadiya, 13, has done over the past month is sit at home and visit three relatives’ homes in the neighbourhood. “I feel suffocated, being indoors all the time but what can we do?” said Sadiya, dressed in a yellow salwar-kameez and black headscarf, sitting in an open courtyard near her house.

Sadiya lives in Rainawari, a neighbourhood in the old town area of Srinagar, which is heavily guarded by security forces and faces constant restrictions and curfews. She is prone to fainting spells and headaches, she said, attributing them to constant worrying for her father’s safety. “I am always worried whenever my father goes out to buy vegetables or to the masjid (mosque) to pray, I want him to be safe,” she said.

Sadiya has not been to school since August 4, though the government said August 19 that schools had been reopened. Parents are not sending children to school due to the uncertain security situation. “We were supposed to have our exams now… but now we are stuck where we were,” Sadiya said, adding that her fainting spells and headaches had worsened ever since she had been housebound.

If her father, a washerman, did not go to work, he could not support her education, Sadiya said, adding, “I want to become an engineer so that my papa doesn’t have to toil anymore. I don’t think I can fulfil my dream anymore.” 

Most children we spoke to were aware of the removal of Article 370 as they had read the newspapers and watched TV news.

Among the children we spoke to, muted Eid celebrations and no news of loved ones were frequently cited as factors that had left them disturbed, fearful and anxious. 

Article first published on IndiaSpend.

Yadavar is a special correspondent with IndiaSpend. Parvaiz is an independent journalist based out of Srinagar.

He tweeted, “Spoke to my two good friends, Prime Minister Modi of India, and Prime Minister Khan of Pakistan, regarding Trade, Strategic Partnerships and, most importantly, for India and Pakistan to work towards reducing tensions in Kashmir. A tough situation, but good conversations!”

Spoke to my two good friends, Prime Minister Modi of India, and Prime Minister Khan of Pakistan, regarding Trade, Strategic Partnerships and, most importantly, for India and Pakistan to work towards reducing tensions in Kashmir. A tough situation, but good conversations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2019

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement that, “The president conveyed the importance of reducing tensions between India and Pakistan and maintaining peace in the region.”

“The two leaders further discussed how they will continue to strengthen United States-India economic ties through increased trade, and they look forward to meeting again soon,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Qureshi said that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan expressed serious concerns over a humanitarian crisis triggered in Kashmir and US would probably play its role in resolving the crisis.

“Khan asked President Trump to talk to Indian Prime Minister Modi” about ways to lower tensions between the two countries, Qureshi added.

Indian Government led by Narendra Modi revoked the special provision act Article 370 and 35A from Kashmir on August 5 without the consent of the Kashmiri leaders and people. It triggered a massive criticism world-wide over the house-arrests of local political leaders and complete black-out of the region.

I think that Kashmir is the new Ayodhya. I know that people in Kashmir have now finally understood that their fate has sadly become locked into the electoral games that are played in mainland India.

“Article 370 is a strange thing. In some senses it governs the special relationship between Kashmir and India. Most of those special provisions have been hollowed out. Is abrogation going to mean that people are now going to settle down into some kind of comfortable and defeated relationship with India, I doubt it?”

Sanjay Kak, filmmaker, does not mince any words while talking about the latest developments in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. In this conversation with The Quint, Kak talks about the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two separate Union Territories, and what all of this means for the region in the coming days. The Kashmir Valley remains under mobility and communication restrictions after the announcement on 5 August.

What do you have to say about the Kashmiri Pandit response to this development vis-a-vis the Kashmiri Muslim response to it?

I have seen on the Internet, the videos of small groups of Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Delhi celebrating. I am sure they had some reason to celebrate. My family is in Srinagar right now. My 87-year-old father and 84-year-old mother are there. I doubt if they are celebrating the abrogation of 370. The one brief conversation I have had with them in the last nine days, they were furious. There must be a difference of opinion just like I am sure there is a difference of opinion amongst Muslims. I am sure you could find half  a dozen Kashmiri Muslims who might celebrate the abrogation of 370.

Where do we go from here after the communication lines are open, after free movement is allowed?

I would say that we are going to see much more resistance in Kashmir. It may not necessarily be that the armed resistance gets a boost. It may be other forms of resistance and what will happen to the political cadres? Parties like the National Conference or the PDP or so many other political formations, how they will cope with the new reality, how they will explain it to their cadres? I don’t think it pushes them towards a more empathetic embrace of the Indian position. I would be surprised by that.

The Valley is fertile for the BJP then, is that what you are trying to say?

The decimation of the PDP or National Conference, if you are asking me whether that clears the way for BJP to start winning seats in Kashmir, I would be very surprised. Will there be a BJP governemnt which gets support from the Kashmir valley? I would be very surprised if that happened.

Do you think that it is more emotion than pragmatism which is operating from both sides: the Indian government and the Kashmiris?

You do something because you can do it. The consequences, I don’t think have been worked out. The only parallel I can think of is demonetisation. They have seen what the first step is and catered for it. The first step is that there will be protests so let’s crack down on the protests. But what are the other consequences going to be, I don’t know.

People in Jammu are upset that Punjabis, for example, are gonna come and buy their land and there is already a conversation about domicile provision.

If, for example, the removal of 370 has so many bounties to offer to everybody in the former Jammu and Kashmir, to the people of the Leh, to the people of the Kargil, to the people of the Kashmir valley, then surely this is something that could have been made an election issue and put before the public.

Member of Parliament from Ladakh made a fiery speech in the Parliament and said that it was indeed an election issue.

I think in Ladakh, certainly, there was a movement in favour of Union Territory. But, I don’t think at that time they anticipated that it would be a Union Territory without a Legislative Assembly.

How are people going to express themselves if and when they are allowed to?

I think that Kashmir is the new Ayodhya. I know that people in Kashmir have now finally understood that their fate has sadly become locked into the electoral games that are played in mainland India. There is a complete fog surrounding them. I think we need to insist that things be done for the fog to lift before we start forming opinions on what people are thinking, what they are for and what they are against.

You had once used the word ‘intifada’ in reference to Kashmir. Do you actually feel that there are these parallels with a very specific situation in Kashmir and Israel-Palestine where the word actually has a different connotation?

The word ‘intifada’ apart from the specific connotation in the Palestinian context actually refers to the unshackling. I used the word in the consequence of what happened in Kashmir in 2008, 2009 and 2010. What was the unshackling was that for the first time, the balance between the unarmed public and the armed militancy shifted very, very significantly. And the protests in the Kashmir were being spearheaded not by the armed militancy but by the unarmed masses, so to speak.

But that’s not necessarily true because in many of those protests we saw that the protestors were holding out flags of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al-Badr or most recently the Islamic State.

I think that what happens in a protest, who raises what slogan, what flags are waved will always remain a very, very mysterious and complicated thing in Kashmir. There is a whole business of psy-ops, of who plants what flags in which crowd.

Are you suggesting that it could be actually the establishment that plants these flags?

Well, let’s just put it this way. I will have no evidence with which to say it but this is a very popularly held opinion. It has always been to the advantage of the establishment to make the protest seem much more radical and fanatical than they actually are. Because it helps them to harden public opinion in the larger universe. It helps them to take harsher measures.

If it were to suit the establishment to give a radical colour to a Public protest or to a mass protest. What would be the purpose of denying a video which was put out by BBC where after the Friday prayers, slogans were raised like “Azaadi ka matlab kya, la illaha ilillah” Indian establishment categorically denied that there were any such protests happening.

I am not here to defend what slogans were raised in Srinagar or what it means. The particular slogan you referred to in the BBC program, it’s a very old one. Nobody who has ever followed Kashmir would think that this is the first time they have heard that slogan. I, personally, wouldn’t waste a lot of time analysing the minutiae of what visual materials come or doesn’t come out. I would pay attention to the larger picture and that larger picture is pretty clear to me.

This establishment also intends to put this narrative out about the silent majority which is largely pro-peace, pro-India by extension. What do you have to say to that?

As to whether Kashmiris think that being pro-peace is being pro-India, that’s a complicated question. I think that’s a question that maybe we should first asks Dalits in India you know whether India is peaceful for Dalits? Maybe we can ask Indian Muslims that question.

Let’s grant them all the goodwill that they have been demanding-the Home Minister and the Prime minister-in their speeches. What is going to change in the valley that article 370 abrogation would now facilitate?

Demographic shift doesn’t simply mean that hundreds and thousands of Indians will poring. But what will be the impact on small business? What will happen if for example state government jobs are no more reserved for state subjects. These are real anxieties. And somehow I don’t think that assurances of the government or even the unfolding of a huge bag of promises that the Prime Minister made in his speech, I think none of those promises could not have been put into place without the abrogation of 370, if the welfare of the people of Kashmir valley was the intention.

It’s a clash of egos, would you say?

I don’t think it’s clash of egos at all. It is a very, very serious challenge and I think that is why people in India are so exercised about it because they are seeing in it the potential of a methodology that could be used against people in other part of India as well.

We see Pakistan government getting really worked up in the valley. So where does Pakistan come into the picture?

It would be very difficult to say that Pakistan has nothing to do with anything right from the moment of partition to 1989, armed militancy, there’s no doubt that it was supported by Pakistan and to the present. So, Pakistan has been speaking loudly about it. That’s also because Kashmir has a certain position within the popular imagination in Pakistan.

Article first published on The Quint.

“Even from seven thousand miles away it’s clear that what’s happening in Kashmir is an atrocity. Not much to celebrate this August 15th,” Rushdie tweeted.

Even from seven thousand miles away it’s clear that what’s happening in Kashmir is an atrocity. Not much to celebrate this August 15th.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) August 15, 2019

News18’s senior editor Pallavi Ghosh asked Rushdie, who he is to tell “us” Indian about it.

And 7000 miles Away who r u to tell us that ?

— pallavi ghosh (@_pallavighosh) August 15, 2019

The co-founder of AltNews, Pratik Sinha responded to Ghosh’s comment that, Rushdie is an individual who is expressing what he feels about Kashmir, if people who are sitting far away cannot express, then why PM Modi attend NRI gatherings.

He is an individual who's expressing what he feels about Kashmir. Is there a rule that people who are sitting far away cannot express? Why does the Prime Minister do all the NRI melas then?

— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) August 15, 2019

Rushdie incurred the wrath of the Muslim world for writing “Satanic Verses” in 1988, the Fatwas were issued against him calling for his death. However, British Government then took him under their protection.

Since then, Rushdie enjoyed being the darling of the Hindutva ideology, but his Thursday’s tweet angered them.

A long and bloody war will then ensue and terrorism will spread to the rest of India where there is no dearth of soft targets to attack.

India is split over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to abolish Article 370 by a presidential order. The saffron fold is rejoicing: This government – their government – has had the guts to do what the Congress and its secularists could not. The Kashmir problem is over. There will be a period of unrest, but when it is over, this canker, this anomaly from the past, will have been removed. The building of the modern Indian nation will be complete.

They could not be more wrong. Modi made a huge blunder in November 2016 when he demonetised nine-tenths of the country’s currency in circulation at one stroke, paralysing the Indian economy for months. This did lasting damage to farmers and the rural poor, from which they have not recovered. But he got away with it.

It may be the sense of absolute invulnerability that the recent election has given him that has led him into an even greater blunder now. But this time, he may not get away with it because his action is almost certain to set off repercussions, some of them outside the country, that he will not be able to control.

The first is the reaction of the already deeply alienated Kashmiri youth. Modi correctly anticipated that abolishing Article 370 would make them erupt in even greater paroxysms of anger, than did the death of Burhan Wani in 2016. To preempt this, he moved 75,000 additional troops of the Central armed police into the valley, abruptly cut off the Amarnath yatra, closed all schools and colleges, shut down the internet, blocked mobile telephony and landlines. It was not just ‘separatist’ leaders who were put under house arrest but also, for the first time in Kashmir’s history, leaders of mainstream parties who have never questioned Kashmir’s accession to India.

But what he and home minister Amit Shah seem not to care about is the monstrous sense of betrayal that has swept the rest of the Kashmiri people – that 80-90% of the population who have never wanted a complete separation from India, and to whom azadi has always meant full political autonomy but without the severance of Kashmir’s connection with the rest of India.

This is the vast majority that the government has betrayed. It has done so because of blind adherence to an ideology that, like all others that the world has had to endure, shows no respect for history, and steamrolls facts that do not serve its purpose into the ground. This is the ideology of ‘Hindutva’.

The key fact that the Sangh ignores

The key fact that the Sangh parivar chooses to ignore is that Kashmiri Islam is entirely different from the Deobandi and Barelvi Islam practised by Sunnis in the rest of the subcontinent. Called Reshi Islam (after Rishi), it was brought to Kashmir by Sufis from Persia and Central Asia and spread  in the valley by Brahmin disciples, the most famous of whom was Lalded, aka Laleshwari Devi, after whom schools, colleges and hospitals all over the valley are named today.

As a result, Kashmiri Islam is suffused with Hindu practices, so much so that in 1946, when the chief of the Kashmir Muslim conference, Chaudhury Ghulam Abbas, wrote to Mohammed Ali Jinnah asking that his party be inducted into the Muslim League, Jinnah declined because his secretary, Khursheed Ahmad reported from Srinagar that:

“… these people follow a strange form of Islam…. that drives a coach and four through all the tenets that we consider most holy … I fear that it will take a long period of re-education for them to become true Muslims.”

History will confirm that Kashmir was the only princely state in which it was the people, through the National Conference, and not solely the Maharaja, who decided to accede to India.

It will confirm that when armed infiltrators from Pakistan entered Kashmir dressed as peasants in August 1965 at the start of the 1965 war and asked a peasant to point out the way to Srinagar, he sent them on the wrong road and bicycled to Srinagar to warn the government of the presence of the infiltrators. It was this man that the ISI made one of the first targets of the insurgency, in 1990.

Finally, history will also confirm that since the insurgency started in 1989, every Kashmiri separatist leader who has been willing to discuss peace with New Delhi, or even lay out the steps Delhi would have to take if it wanted the insurgency to end, has been assassinated at the behest of the ISI. The list is long: it starts with Mirwaiz Maulvi Farouq, and ends with Abdul Ghani Lone, the father of Sajjad Lone – who joined the alliance with the BJP in 2015, was a minister till the other day, and has now been put under house arrest by the very government he backed. Had these leaders really wanted to break away completely from India, would Pakistan’s ISI have taken such great pains to have them killed?

Tragically, despite the opening of the bus road across the Line of Control, the insurgency in Kashmir dragged on because neither of Modi’s two predecessors knew quite how to end it. But despite this, Kashmiris did not give up hope that Delhi would one day understand what they really wanted and bring them peace. So strong was this hope that as recently as 2009, despite 20 years of insurgency, a survey commissioned by Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs had shown that only 2.5-7.5% of Kashmiris in the worst militancy affected districts of the valley said they wanted Kashmir to belong to Pakistan.

Was Modi aware of Kashmir’s history?

Had Modi been made aware of Kashmir’s history, he would have realised that Kashmir had already achieved a version of what V.D. Savarkar had dreamed of in 1923, when he propounded Hindutva – a civilisation in which the (Muslim) population fully recognised, and indeed prized, its (Hindu) cultural roots. Only the name they gave it differed: they called it Kashmiriyat.

As Yasin Malik, the leader of the JKLF, wrote in a short book, The Real Truth, while in jail in the early 90s, it was the Congress’s decision to lift the ban on the Jamaat-i-Islami that had been imposed by Maharaja Hari Singh that began the erosion of Kashmiriyat in the valley.

Had Modi really wanted to integrate Kashmir, therefore, he would have spared no effort to undo the damage done to Kashmiriyat in the previous 42 years. But he did the exact opposite: instead of easing the armed forces’ iron grip on the valley, he tightened it; instead of offering an amnesty to a budding generation of Kashmiri militants driven to desperation by the incessant harassment of their families by the police, he demanded unconditional surrender and deployed the IB’s newly acquired cyber-espionage capabilities to root them out and kill them.

Finally, instead of opening a dialogue with the Hurriyat and JKLF leaders – as he had himself agreed to do by signing on to the Agenda for Alliance document with the PDP in 2015 – he kept them under almost continuous house arrest, and destroyed the last vestiges of their hold on the youth of the valley. As if that were not enough, by also putting all the leaders of the mainstream parties under house arrest, he has made the Kashmiris leaderless and put them at the mercy of every wave of passion or anger in the valley.

Having closed every root to a peaceful end to the insurgency in Kashmir, Modi has decided to employ legal sleight of hand to make the problem disappear. Unfortunately, it will not disappear. Kashmiris will hold their breath till the Supreme Court passes its verdict on the appeal filed against the revocation of Article 370. The court is unlikely to uphold the presidential order, because doing so would fly in the face of its own decisions of 2017 and 2018 that Article 370 is not a temporary article of the constitution.

All serious observers of Kashmir and the Constitution knew that the word ‘temporary’ had been introduced only to convey the fact that the scope of Article 370 would have to be redefined after the return of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to the state.

By the same token, the abolition of the Kashmir assembly’s right to declare itself a constituent assembly in 1956 was a tacit admission that the legal provisions governing Kashmir’s relations with India could not be kept hostage to Pakistan’s non-compliance with the UN Security Council’s 1948 resolution forever. The Modi government’s attempt to use a General Clauses (India) Act incorporated into the constitution as Article 367 – but passed by the British parliament in 1897 to resolve disputes in the interpretation of words used in the different statutes by which it governed India, at a time when  Kashmir was not a part of India – is unlikely to pass muster with the Supreme Court.

Short lived relief

But even if this surmise proves right, the relief in the valley will be short lived. For the jingoism that Modi and the RSS will stir up – against Kashmiri Muslims, against Indian democrats and against the Supreme court itself – will see it coast to victory in the state elections at the end of this year .

After that, the BJP will acquire a majority in the Rajya Sabha and the road to changing the constitution via parliament will be open. It is only then that all hell will break loose in Kashmir.

As the death toll rises, thousands of young Kashmiris who have so far stayed out of the insurgency will join it. Judging from what ISIS has already announced, and what has happened elsewhere after the destruction of its original stronghold in Syria, jihadis from the Middle East, and perhaps even Europe, may find their way into the Valley despite everything that the security forces will do. Islamabad will also come under increasing pressure from its own public to unleash its jihadi tanzeems, and will claim that it cannot hold them back.

A long and bloody war will then ensue and terrorism will spread to the rest of India where there is no dearth of soft targets to attack. The hunt for terrorists that will follow will turn India into a police state. Carefully staged fake encounters, which became normal in Gujarat after the 2002 riots, will become the order of the day throughout the country. Muslims will be the main victims. Kashmiriyat will become a distant memory. That will be the beginning of the end of the India we have known till today.

Article first published on The Wire.

Prem Shakar Jha lives in New Delhi, he is a Journalist and a Writer for The Wire.

Jathedar Giani Harpreet Singh of Akal Takht urged the Sikhs to defend the honor of Kashmiri girls who are being humiliated by BJP politicians and others on social media after Article 370 and 35A has been revoked by Indian Government, IndianExpress newsagency reported.

“Kashmiri women are part of our society. It is our religious duty to defend their honour. Sikhs should come forward to protect the honour of Kashmiri women. It is our duty and it is our history,” Mr. Singh said.

Without any direct mention of who the mob is, he said “the same mob” who is targeting the Kashmiri women also targeted Sikh women during 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

“God has given equal rights to all human beings and it is a crime to differentiate against anyone on the basis of gender, caste or religion. The kind of commands given by elected representatives on social media against the girls of Kashmir after the removal of special status under Section 370 are not only defamatory but also unforgivable,” he said.

“The manner in which some people are posting pictures of Kashmiri daughters on social media has hurt India’s image. Such comments objectify women. At the same time, these people have forgotten that a woman is also a mother, daughter, sister and a wife. It is women who has the power of creation”, he added.

IndiaToday reported on Saturday, Haryana’s Chief Minister Lal Khattar created controversy with his statement that, “Now we can bring Kashmiri girls for marriage.”

In an aftermath of the abolition of Article 370, social media is buzzing with defamatory comments against Kahsmiri girls.

Indian Government on Monday announced the abolition of Article 370 and 35A that provided special status to Kashmiri citizens. However, China has opposed the decision since it undermines China’s territorial sovereignty,

“China urged India to be cautious on border issues and to strictly abide by the agreements reached by both countries in order to avoid any actions that would further complicate boundary issues,” Hua said.

China holds a thinly populated high-altitude area in the north of Kashmir. So any decision taken by Indian Government will have international ramifications.