370-Degree View: Two Years After Losing Statehood, J&K Still Looking For Gains

A few days ahead of the second anniversary of the August 5, 2019, abrogation of Article 370, Kashmiri poet and actor Bashir Ahmad Dada talks of “living in fear”. “It’s not just the government that is responsible for the Kashmiri’s fear-ridden existence. We, the people, are also spreading fear,” he says, recalling how his friends asked him to delete a Facebook post critical of the government. “They thought the police would arrest me otherwise. This is what has changed in the past two years. Poets have given up poetry, columns by independent writers have disappeared from local newspapers and everyone is afraid of talking,” Dada explains.

In Dada’s native town Anantnag, Abdul Qayoom Dar rues that nobody speaks about the police killing his son Imran in an alleged “staged encounter” in Kulgam district on July 24. “We called many journalists, but no one is reporting our side of the story,” he says. “I had talked with my son just a day ­before the police showed me his ­photograph and said he was a militant killed in an encounter. They didn’t let us see his body and buried him quietly in north Kashmir.” Dar has written to the Anantnag district magistrate, ­asking for a probe.

In Gurez, near the Line of Control in north Kashmir, people protested on July 30 after the army handed over the body of a 52-year-old man, Muha­mmad Abdullah Hajam, to his family. Locals ­allege he was tortured to death in a military camp, but the army claims he slipped into a stream while helping in a search operation in a forest. Political parties and human rights groups, which used to take up such ­issues in the past and sought accoun­tability from the security forces, have been silent this time.

CPI(M) state secretary Yousuf Tarigami attributes this silence to the “erosion of democracy” in Jammu and Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370. “Whatever space there was for democratic expression, civil liberties and rule of law has shrunk to unimaginable levels,” he says. “Direct rule from New Delhi has ensured complete ­silence on the ground. Land and ­domicile laws are being enacted without talking to us. We don’t matter.”

Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, however, has been claiming that things have changed for the better in the past two years. In the “new J&K”, according to Sinha, stone-pelting has become hist­ory, there is a higher footfall of tourists, and government forces have an upper hand over militants. The tricolour has been unfurled outside every office in Srinagar, with the army participating in some of the flag-hoisting ceremonies. Srinagar Municipal Corporation councillor Aqib Renzu has even said he will ­unfurl the tricolour at the Hurriyat Conference office in Rajbagh on August 14, Pakistan’s independence day.

“The government says people aren’t angry, but how do you quantify anger?” asks Ifra Jan, spokesperson of the National Conference. “Are people happy in non-democratic countries where ­nobody protests? In democracies, ­people show anger through public ­protest, which is a democratic right. Will the current dispensation allow ­anyone to come out and say anything? A father who demanded his son’s body was charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. If people were to ­protest on the streets, won’t their lives be in danger? A government muzzling people’s voices is not a sign of people being happy, it is a sign of the government being tyrannical.”

The biggest political achievement since the abrogation of Article 370 was a meeting of Kashmiri politicians with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 24. Tarigami says they were keen to see progress on the restoration of statehood before assembly elections are held, but nothing is happening. Instead, he says, the ­government put an end to the 149-year practice of Darbar Move, dismissed ­government employees without notice or inquiry, made amendments in the domicile law that make it easier to ­acquire a J&K residency and made CID verification for employment more ­stringent, making a large number of ­people ineligible for jobs.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Valley of Silence")

By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar