If there was ever a fig leaf to cover Indian designs on Kashmir, it came off on 5 Aug 2019, when India unilaterally abrogated article 370 of its constitution, and annulled article 35 A as well. This did away with the limited autonomy of Kashmir, which was a condition precedent to Maharaja Hari Singh signing the Instrument of Accession to India. Legally it could be argued therefore that when the condition precedent to the Instrument of Accession has been knocked down, the said instrument has been knocked down with it; and that therefore the situation that now obtains in Kashmir has reverted to status quo ante i.e the situation as it stood before the Instrument of Accession came into force. This should logically mean that Kashmir never did accede to India.
From the time that India took the Kashmir case to the United Nations, obtained a ceasefire, and promised a plebiscite to the people of Kashmir to determine if they wanted to join India or Pakistan, there has been a progressive erosion of article 370. India’s bad faith was always apparent as this plebiscite was continually put off on one excuse or the other, while the provisions of article 370 were eroded apace. India’s assurances to the people of Kashmir were neither solemn nor sincere at any time. Indeed, Hindu India’s bad faith was etched into stone well before partition. But for this well demonstrated bad faith, there would have been no partition.
The Lucknow Pact was signed between Tilak and Jinnah in 1916. Under the provisions of this pact Muslims were not only guaranteed separate electorates, but a representation in the legislature weighted above the proportion of Muslim population. Jinnah was satisfied that these constitutional guarantees were enough to safeguard Muslim interests. More importantly, they were symbolic of Hindu goodwill, and so, whittled down Muslim fears of a permanent Hindu majority. But the Nehru report of 1928 repudiated these provisions, and in the process lost Jinnah’s trust. This loss of trust was reinforced when the Congress won a thumping majority in the elections of 1937, and immediately repudiated its prior understanding with the Muslim League that irrespective of election results, coalition governments will be formed with the League in every province. And to make matters worse, Congress governments in all provinces in which they came to power, generally subjected Muslims to mistreatment. And last, both Congress and the League signed on to the Cabinet Mission Plan. This would have kept India undivided with no inter-provincial migration of populations. The very next day Congress had second thoughts, and made its acceptance of the Plan conditional, thus killing it. These successive demonstrations of rank bad faith by Hindu India left only the option of partition of India.
But bad faith on the part of India was never in danger of running low in reserves. Immediately after partition, when Junagarh opted for Pakistan, and Hyderabad Deccan opted not to join either country, both being states with Hindu majorities under Muslim rulers, India marched its troops into both these states, forcing a shot gun marriage upon both of them. And in the case of Kashmir India chose to play it by a different rule book, because in this instance it was a case of a Hindu ruler ruling over a large Muslim majority.
Irrespective of any signing of the Instrument of Accession by Hari Singh, Pakistan’s position should always have been that Kashmiris had the same right to get rid of the rule of Hari Singh and his government, that the people of India exercised to get rid of rule by the King-Emperor. If the latter was right, so was the former. And this should be the position of the Kashmiris now, instead of getting mired into the technical intricacies of the Instrument of Accession, notwithstanding the invalidation of this instrument in view of the annulment of article 370.
That this annulment, given India’s devoted duplicity, was always on the cards, cannot be doubted. But what was it that precipitated the fall of the fig leaf so that India chose to bare its nakedness to the world with such brazen insensitivity? Why do this at a time when Pakistan has the least anti Indian prime minister in office, and an army chief who is not obsessed with India, but who sees in regional peace a promise of prosperity for both India and Pakistan?
I think what triggered this Indian fall from affected grace was Trump’s offer of mediation in Kashmir. India’s was an act of preemption to present Trump with a fait accompli. I also believe that Pakistan’s stunning diplomatic coup of opening the Kartarpur Corridor had a part to play in India’s decision. Given the minds of Ajit Doval and Modi, they would not have seen behind this gesture a hand of genuine friendship, but a ploy to drive a wedge between India and a Sikh population increasingly wary of a rising tide of benighted Hindu nationalism. But the greatest spur to Modi would have come from the fragile state of Pakistan DELIBERATELY readied for the kill by a decade of maladministration which has left hardly a functioning institution in the state, nor a penny in its depleted coffers-in short a friendless state which had few national security options left but to bleat in forlorn wilderness.
It is time now to look ahead and spot what may lie in store for the people of Kashmir. It is the recent past which should furnish clues to the unfurling future. In the last decade or so one has seen a “secular shining India, the world’s largest democracy,” descend into the rape capital of the world, where lynching members of the minority communities is the most fun to be had by a fairly large number of its young men, encouraged onward by “democratically” elected political leaders, and given immunity by the police which seems to be universal, and by the courts, which is alarming. There is a momentum of hate which has been built up which will need being assuaged. The Hinduvta beast will need being constantly fed to keep Modi government’s popularity graph on the up.
The declarations of intent are open and encouragement from people of the rank of chief ministers is hardly hidden. Expressions of “marrying” the fair maidens of Kashmir, which is a euphemism for rape, and taking land from the people of this colony, which means dispossession, is the currency of the day. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and demographic change in Kashmir is on the cards.
The next strategic objective of India will be to divest Pakistan of its water rights. This will be done in the form of a tactical creep against which red lines will be very difficult to draw.
But unless these are drawn and made known Pakistan’s will be a toothless deterrence–a bluff which will be called. To work, it will have to be a cogent deterrence for which a resolve has to find a way to be projected. This will not be easy in a situation where we have yet to decide whether the economic hit men who readied Pakistan for the kill are to be given air conditioners in their jail cells or not.
It is a tragedy dripping with irony that a Pakistani Prime Minister who genuinely wanted an equitable peace with India, and made this offer in his very first speech to the nation, may not now have an option left but to rely for the defense of his country on a ” Samson Option” i.e to go down fighting while ensuring that the enemy, and perhaps the rest of the world, will not get up either, after the strikes are done. Only if the world at large is jolted into the reality of such a possibility, will it awaken to it. And only when it is fully alive to it, will it be moved to push the Hindutva genie back into the bottle.