TWO dates will forever remain etched in the minds of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, a once autonomous state. One is Aug 4, when it was placed under total lockdown last year.
Not the lockdown of the Covid-19 kind, but a more nefarious one. Then there is Aug 5, when India abrogated Article 370 of its constitution and suspended the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir.
Just like that, the special rights that came with the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir disappeared. They were turned into two Union territories. Midnight has great meaning for Indians. It was then that they gained independence. Not so for the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The very same midnight, though 72 years later, made them orphans. They lost the special status and statehood like one loses both his parents in an accident.
Only that this wasn't an accident. "Midnight's Orphans" as a sequel to Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie? We needn't wait for the sequel, though. There is already a more damning pile of pulp.
As if to mark the anniversary of the August lockdown and the abrogation, The Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir has released its first report titled Jammu and Kashmir: The Impact of Lockdowns on Human Rights. The report looks back on a year of human rights violations from August 2019 to July 2020.
And the content is not one India will be proud of. The Forum, though an informal group, is made up of eminent jurists, former civil servants, former military officers, academics and human rights experts from India.
The mission of the "concerned citizens" is to ensure "that continuing human rights violations do not go unnoticed". Notice, they did. The Forum put it thus: 38,000 additional troops were brought in to enforce lockdowns, which closed markets, educational institutions and all public spaces for several weeks. "Internet and telephone services were snapped, curfew was declared, public assembly was prohibited and thousands, including minors and almost all the elected legislators of Jammu and Kashmir (excluding those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party), were put under preventive detention." The economic, social and political impact of these actions have been disastrous, says the report.
The Jammu and Kashmir issue is a complex one. India shouldn't make it more complex. The complexity is due to time and space. Let's take time first. The Jammu and Kashmir issue is older than India and Pakistan.
As it always happens, the colonialists leave behind their festering problems for others to solve. And in this case, it was the British, who should have known better from the violent birth of India and Pakistan.
Now the space. Jammu and Kashmir is home to 60 per cent Muslims. It is for this reason a provision of Article 370 prevents outsiders from owning property in Kashmir.
If Indian media reports are right, recently the government has been giving residential status to outsiders. This may be the sign of coming demographic changes. Is the Hindu nationalist BJP-led government creating evidence on the ground for a referendum in the future?
A former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti, said as much to the BBC on the day Article 370 was abrogated. She was not wrong.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir should be given a say in determining their future. Unilateral decisions are dangerous, especially in the tinderbox that the subcontinent is. Sparks light up very easily there.