Saffron colonialism

Modi’s goal is to change the demographics of the Kashmir valley by flooding it with a Hindu majority

What is past is prologue.

Seventy-three years after the sun set on British colonial rule in India, colonialism’s shadow still haunts the people of Kashmir. The face of the coloniser has changed, but the domination of the indigenous people of Kashmir is being done using a playbook that was perfected 73 years ago.

On August 5, 2019, Narendra Modi manipulated the Indian constitution to revoke the special status granted to Kashmir through Article 370 and Article 35A. Both of these provisions protected the people of the valley from Indian settlers moving into their land. This move was supplemented by the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, which split the territories into two regions to be controlled by New Delhi.

None of these actions took place with the consent of the people of Kashmir.

Modi’s goal is simple: settler colonialism. This involves changing the demographics of the Kashmir valley by flooding it with a Hindu majority to ultimately transform it into another pliant Hindutva state. One year later, this agenda is proceeding at breakneck speed.

Under a new law, authorities in India now issue ‘domicile certificates’ to Indians which grant them residency rights in Kashmir. Saiba Varma, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, sums it up: “Given the history of Indian state intervention in Kashmir, these are efforts to destroy the local, distinctive cultural identity of Kashmiris and forcibly assimilate Kashmiri Muslims into a Hindu, Indian polity.”

And thus India, once colonised, now colonises in turn.

It is remarkable just how much in common Modi’s project has to the strategy adopted by the British to colonise India. Much like the British, this settler colonial project is achieved, first, by establishing political institutions in such a way that there is no need to obtain the consent of colonial subjects before any action against them is taken. The revocation of Article 370 is an example of this happening.

Article 370 stated that it could only be removed by a Presidential Order if the consent of the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir was obtained. This was a problem for Modi: the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir had not been functional since 1957, leading to a series of judgments from the Indian courts that held that Article 370 had gained permanent status under the Constitution. Modi’s Presidential Order, however, amended the constitution to change the meaning of Article 370 to say ‘legislative assembly of Jammu and Kashmir’ as opposed to Constituent Assembly.

This still wasn’t enough, because Modi would still require the consent of the legislative assembly of Kashmir which hadn’t been functional since late 2018 — Kashmir had been functioning under Governor’s rule ever since. But the Modi-controlled Indian parliament decided to substitute their own consent for the consent of the people of Kashmir and repealed Article 370.

With this move, Modi has already allowed thousands of Hindu settlers into the valley. The Indian government has mandated that the grant of domicile certificates be fast-tracked, with a 50,000 rupee fine on any government official who delays the process. Some reports indicate that over 400,000 domicile certificates have been issued already.

Any form of colonialism uses violence as an integral part of its process to achieve dominance. Modi’s settler colonialism is no different. Soon after August 5, 2019, Kashmir became a killing field. UN reports point to the use of rape as an instrument of oppression with even children not being spared. Pellet guns are used to blind, maim, and silence. Kashmir has been called a ‘giant prison camp’ and an example of the ‘world’s first mass blinding’ via pellet guns; and, a land of ‘mass rape’. A report on the ‘Impact of Lockdown on Human Rights’ has called the situation in Kashmir ‘disastrous’, with more than 6,000 people being taken into preventive custody.

Finally, as there is in any colonial project, a different rule of law applies for the coloniser and the indigenous people. The Supreme Court of India has ignored more than 600 habeas petitions filed on behalf of Kashmiris. State statutory oversight bodies such as the Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Commission and the Jammu and Kashmir Women and Child Rights Commission were rendered defunct soon after the actions of August 5, with no clarity given on what would become of the cases pending before them.

A number of UN experts on human rights have issued a statement saying: “Urgent action is needed” in Kashmir. “If India will not take any genuine and immediate steps to resolve the situation, meet their obligations to investigate historic and recent cases of human rights violations and prevent future violations, then the international community should step up.” It is unlikely that this will happen. We have after all built a world where economic power grants nations impunity despite human rights abuse. The situation in Kashmir has been deteriorating for over a year now, yet little has been done by the international community to curb Modi’s colonial ambitions. Modi is using the same formula that Israel has been using in the West Bank, and if history is anything to go by, that means the world is likely to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

But the world should know that there is an even more insidious purpose underlying Modi’s attempts at demographic change. Long have the people of Kashmir been promised a plebiscite over their future, long has this been denied to them. With a new Hindu majority, Modi can hold a plebiscite and obtain a result that favours his little colonial project. This erasure of Kashmiri identity, if nothing else, should galvanise the world to act.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2020.

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