From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the
Times of India podcast. The Supreme Court today upheld
the Centers move to scrap special status to Jammu and
Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution.
And all of them said yes, abrogating Article 370 was
constitutional. It did not violate Indian laws.
The judgment has argued that Article 370 is a temporary and
transitory provision of the Constitution.
A little over four years after the decision was approved by
Parliament, the Supreme Court cleared the abrogation of
Article 370, which took away the special status granted to the
state of Jammu and Kashmir. In parts of Jammu, Ladakh, Delhi
and Mumbai and other parts of India, there were celebrations
by BJP workers and other groups. But Shakir Meer, who's in
Srinagar, says there was a calm in Kashmir that was in keeping
with people's expectations of the verdict.
On the December 7th, when it was announced that Supreme Court
will deliver its verdict on Article 370, people were already
kind of apprehending that something like this would
happen. You know, I spoke to people a
couple of days ago and they say we already know what is going to
happen and we have resigned to the circumstances.
There was already a concern that something like this would
happen. People were already resigned to
this verdict. So that's why we see no
protests. We see no Section 144.
We saw nothing like that. There was just a small, a
smattering of deployment here at some of the very sensitive parts
of Srinagar. That's it.
Even the police was sure that nothing like that would happen.
And also because prior to the verdict, there was a sweeping
clampdown in which police arrested a lot of people who it
suspected would be kind of potential troublemakers.
They also made sure that no trouble or no law, no
disturbances there. Kashmiri newspapers since 2019
are already not publishing critical stuff.
They're already sort of muted in that sense.
They haven't really commented, applauded or even sort of
expressed any kind of discontent or anger about this.
They have just reported what has simply happened without standing
on judgment of whether it was right or wrong.
The Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India DY
Chandra Chud said the abrogation of Article 370 was just another
step in a series of constitutional orders aimed at
the deeper integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Union of
India. It noted that the legislation
wasn't an exceptional step. The bench also refused to get
into the events that led to the imposition of President's Rule
in Jammu and Kashmir, which was one of the main points raised by
the petitioners opposed to the abrogation of Article 370.
Shakir Mir, who you heard earlier, writes on Kashmir for
Times of India Plus and has written over the years on the
situation in Kashmir since Article 370 cease to exist.
In today's episode, he's in conversation with my colleague
Jayaraj Singh and me about the situation in Kashmir 4 years
since the state lost its special status and where things are at
presently. Shakur says that in the run up
to the constitutional provision being nullified, the state's
residents were completely in the dark, at least when it came to
communications. When the questions were put to
the governor at the times, at the Palmalik as to what was
going to happen, he would say no.
I can assure you that Article 370 won't be repealed.
So he those assurances are there on the record How do?
You see the present situation of human.
Management. It's normal.
Only rumor mongering is going on.
It's a very routine thing here. If you sneeze at Lal Chowk, it
becomes an explosion when it comes here.
So unnecessary panic is being created by some wasted interest
and especially some political parties.
Otherwise there is nothing new. But of course, people were in a
sense, not expecting something like that would happen.
There were different kind of rumors going around.
Some would say that Kashmir will be reduced to a Union territory,
but Article 370 would be preserved.
Others would say that capital would be permanently shifted to
Jammu and Senegal would be deprived of that Individual
Kashmiris were believing individual theories about what
was going to happen. You were unsure what was going
to happen and then suddenly we see the mobile connectivity
going out, landline phones were not working, Internet stopped
working and you had paramilitary forces deployed everywhere
outside every house in in Kashmir.
So and the next day you realize we watch televisions and and we
see what was happening. Article 370 was being completely
revoked and every provision of the Indian Constitution was now
applicable to the Jammu and Kashmir.
Anuchek timso sattar ke. Sabi Khan Lagunahi Honge Siva
Khan ke. Since Article 370 was struck
down, one argument that has been made is that there's been
normalcy in the Kashmir Valley. Shakur admits that there have
been visible changes in the Union territory since 2019, but
says it has come at a cost. Definitely.
I would definitely call it normal.
It's relatively good. We have increasing tourism.
We have more and more private players coming up and setting up
hotels. Acres of land have been given to
the industrial estates so that new industries could be set up,
although they haven't yet materialized.
But the land acquisition has happened.
The Smart Steep project has given a sort of a new lease of
life to the state, especially the main state areas that were
previously the hotbeds of pro freedom separatist sentiments
like Mysuma. You wouldn't really recognize
that Mysuma is the same mysuma where JKLF would take
processions. It's absolutely different place
today, but my point is that this normalcy is also happening at
the cost of not giving political freedoms to the people.
There have been questions raised about the freedom of speech and
media freedom in Kashmir since 2019.
Take for instance the case of Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah,
who was arrested in February 2022.
Shah was arrested and booked under the stringent Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act, or UAPA and Public Safety Act or
PSA, allegedly for an article he wrote well before 2019.
He was granted bail by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in
November with a court criticizing the order for his
arrest. Shakey says that this has been a
pattern since 2019, and like he said earlier, there is little
commentary about the decision to nullify the region's special
status or the Supreme Court's endorsement.
Post 2019, we have seen the sustained clampdown.
The manner in which the government is preventing this
sentiment from emerging is only through tough laws like UAP and
PSA. These are being used to stifle
any argument about Article 370. Like Shakir said earlier, there
is greater normalcy in parts of Kashmir, which is perhaps
exemplified by tourism in the state.
Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had said earlier this year that
there was a 350% rise in tourist footfall compared to 2022.
In 2022, the number of tourists visiting the state was said to
be 1.22 crore, which itself was a new record.
Shakir says that while Kashmir is featuring in a lot more
pictures and reels, the spike in tourism doesn't mean a booming
regional economy. There are deals on Instagram, on
Twitter that Kashmir is recovering.
Its normal army conditions are calling celebrities, inviting
them and touring them around Kashmir to portray a sense of
normalcy. When it comes to optics, it's
going really well. There's an impression that
everything is going really well. But overall, tourism contributes
to only 6% of Kashmir's GDP, J&K GDP.
Even if tourism is exceedingly doing well, it won't still
change the economy radically. Shakir says what drives the
economy of the Union territory is agriculture and some very
specific crops, but those have been hit by a variety of
factors. What contributes to the economy
of Kashmir is is agriculture, particularly the horticulture
sector, the apple, the beer walnut almonds.
Kashmir is lurching from crisis to crisis in this case because
firstly, there's a climate change, early rainfall, early
snowfall is devastating the crops, which has happened since
2014 consistently. Secondly, we have seen that the
Union government has taken 2 specific measures.
This year. They waived the surcharges over
apple imports from Iran and US. So that makes those apples which
are higher quality of course relatively cheaper when they
come to the Indian markets which makes Kashmiri apple very
expensive and that discourages the buyer from purchasing the
Kashmiri apple. We are not in a position to say
what will happen, but over the last 2-3 years, we have seen
Kashmiri economy has received one blow after another.
First it was shut down due to abrogation of Article 370, then
it was the COVID. After that it was the early
snowfall and now it is Indian government waiving surcharges
over the imported apples. And this is this is not good
news for the Kashmiri economy overall.
Since the abrogation of Article 370, the government has also
pointed out that the number of terror attacks in Kashmir have
fallen and that is borne out by the numbers as well.
But Shakir, who has been documenting the changing face of
militancy in the region, says the way militancy operates in
Kashmir is quite different even from last decade.
Now, militants are no longer announcing that they will join
this organization. What happens is that teenagers
from 14 to 18, they're recruited through shadowy social Media
Group groups on WhatsApp, Telegram.
They identify these young boys and they recruit them, and then
they give them activities. First, they are assessed based
on on the extent that they are willing to participate, followed
by the handler giving them the pistols and then then telling
them to assassinate a particular person.
It could be a policeman, It could be a person from the
minority community, a pundit or a Sikh.
That person assassinates his victim and then drops the weapon
where he had picked it from. And when the police investigates
it, it finds that neither that person has any record of adverse
activities. That person does not even know
who he was talking to. He has a mobile device.
But the person is somebody based in Pakistan, he's not in
Kashmir. They can't arrest him, so this
is a shadowy militancy. Shaker says the worry for
security forces is that the shadowy nature of militancy
makes it harder to track, which in turn also makes it difficult
for them to assess how much it has spread.
The young boys were supposed to be over ground workers, which is
the motivators and sympathizers of of militants are now directly
taking part in the militant operations.
So this is something that had changed over the years and this
shadowy militancy board is more dangerous because we're not able
to by certain what number of people are involved.
You don't know what the recruitment is, how many people
potentially could join such a program.
It could be vast number. While I was working on a story
for Times of India Plus on hybrid militants, one cop in the
downtown area told me when they killed a very dreaded militant
named Abbas Sheikh who was responsible for a lot of
attacks. They found in his device that he
he was connected to at least 25 to 40 over ground workers in a
small two square kilometer area in in state of.
So that gives you an idea of how secretive as well as very
complex and dangerous the situation could be.
We can't really say it with certainty, but we get these
these hints, these impressions that something is going on at
the ground and it's very disturbing article. 370, which
granted special status to Kashmir, has always been
portrayed outside Kashmir as an unnecessary agreement between
the Indian state and the region. 1 which had long outlived its
utility. But within Kashmir, Shakir says
the provision in the constitution was viewed as an
endorsement of Kashmir's politics for self governance
that has existed since before independence.
He says Kashmir's politics before 2019 always centered
around whether it was affecting Kashmir's special status.
It has been the political minister for the last 7 decades.
Every big or small developments that has happened in Kashmir
throughout all these decades is linked to the political process
of emboldening Article 370 or diluting it.
Every big political process whether it's deposition of
Sheikh Abdullah, installation of Bakshibullah Muhammad, another
chief Minister, his removal from power and then installation of
Khajiasham, Sudan as a Chief Minister, every Chief Minister
being evolved and removed has actually been about Article 370,
either diluting it or expanding its scope or completely revoking
it. So you can understand what it
means for Kashmiris. Even votes are being sought to
make sure that Kashmiris has maximum autonomy.
Top leaders of the state, like former chief ministers Omar
Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, were kept in detention for weeks
after the abrogation of Article 370.
They have since formed the Gupta alliance but have had no state
polls to contest. Shakir Meer says the biggest
political leaders of the state have expressed their
disappointment with the Supreme Court's verdict.
The majority of political parties have actually expressed
their disapproval of the judgement.
Some have done it very implicitly.
Some are very overt and explicit in articulating their
disapprovals, Omar Abdullah said.
A very significant thing. He said it took decades to BJP
to arrive at the stage where it could actually abrogate Article
317. Even if Supreme Court
disappointed us, they would still mobilize and keep working
and arrive at a time which is conducive enough when Article
370 could be restored again. She posted a pre recorded
message of herself saying that this is assassination of the
country's soul. While the Gupta alliance has had
little to do since 2019, the Supreme Court has set a deadline
to conduct elections in the state by the end of September
2024. Shakir says that since 2019,
multiple new political parties and leaders have emerged in the
state. New political formations are
coming up, but these are the political formations who have
set of sort of predetermined agenda.
We would know what they they will say.
They won't come up with something that is really
unexpected. This is something that that is
very conducive to what union government expects of people,
political parties here. 1 Abdullah has pledged to boycott
elections because he wouldn't want to be a chief minister of a
union territory. You know, we have seen new faces
coming up like Mehboob, his daughter Umar Abdullah.
He introduced his two sons to the politics recently and
yesterday one of his sons actually tweeted about the
article 370. So these are the new small
developments that are taking place as far as the politics is
concerned. But given there's been
widespread disappointment about the manner in which the
abrogation of Article 370 was carried out in Kashmir, Shakur
says it only makes the political decisions of people and their
leaders harder to predict. The simmering discontent was
already there. People were already apprehending
that this will happen, but somewhere they felt that maybe
it still has a final round to pass.
It still has this last hurdle to cross and let's see what will
happen. But Supreme Court put a stamp of
approval and now what I see is that the simmering discontent
with acquire a new centrality, slowly stream rolling these
decisions over Kashmir without taking somebody on board,
without having a conversation with the local politicians in
the longer and only generate more and more political
resentment. Today's episode was produced by
Jayaraj Singh and Anuja Singh. For a daily spotlight on people,
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