9 Years of Modi Government: How Centre seems resolute to fully integrate Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian Union

The BJP Government under PM Narendra Modi has accomplished a successful 9 years tenure at the Union level. Needless to say his astute leadership has brought India to a position of power, internally and internationally. One of the greatest achievements of the present Union Government would be standing as a bulwark against the separatist tendencies sponsored by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir and the latter, making it a hotspot of conflicts.  Thus threatening the internal security and the integrity of India. A headway towards national integration The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019 which under provision of the same Act would abrogate Article 370 and  Article 35A of the Indian Constitution, shall be considered as a landmark legislation in the constitutional history of  post-Independence India.  Amit Shah, the Union home minister, introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill in the Rajya Sabha on 5 August 2019, and the Bill was passed on the same day in Rajya Sabha and passed in the Lok Sabha on 6 August 2019. After getting the assent of the President, the bill became the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019. Transient methodology abrogated for firmer state intervention Article 370 of the Constitution of India has been described as a “temporary provision” that grants the state of Jammu and Kashmir a special autonomous status within the Indian union. It granted exceptional independence and autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir. It comes under Part XXI of the Constitution of India, which oversees Brief, Transitional and Special plans for the different areas of the nation. Abrogation of the Article 370 is a reasonable headway made by the Indian government.  This transitional methodology already exceeded a comprehensively longer time parcel. The abrogation of Article 370 needed resolute political will towards reinstating ‘One Nation, One Constitution’ theory into practice. Indian solid laws needed to replace the J&K laws to deal with the terrorists as the former made it a spot to sustain for the terrorists. Article 370 was a code that led to a bundle of complications and unwarranted exceptions. Under article 370(1)(b), the Union Parliament can only make laws for the state, in consultation with the Government of the State (J&K) on certain matters that were specified in the Instrument of Accession, i.e. defense, foreign affairs, and communications. Other matters in the legislative subject lists can apply to Jammu and Kashmir only with the “concurrence of the Government of the State” through a presidential order. Article 370(1)(d) stipulates that other constitutional provisions may be applied to the state from time to time, “subject to such modifications or exceptions” made by the president of India, also through a presidential order, as long as they do not fall within the matters referred to above and except with the concurrence of the state government. All the arrangements of the Constitution which are material to different states are not relevant to J&K. As a result of this status, the state of Jammu and Kashmir enacted its own Constitution, which was formally adopted by a Constituent Assembly on November 17, 1956, and entered into force on January 26, 1957. Another important part of Article 370 is the power of the President to amend or repeal Article 370, which can be done if the Constituent Assembly of the State gives recommendations before the president issues notification. The Union government can not along these lines  announce a crisis on grounds of inside unsettling influence/ external aggression or approaching risk except if it is made at the solicitation or with the simultaneousness of the state government. And the successive governments in J&K have been having an attitude not to be integrated with the rest of the nation. To integrate the country more and to stop foreign interference, a strong unified governing structure is a sine qua non for the entire country, with no exceptions. Now after the abrogation of Art 370, Jammu and Kashmir will not have its separate flag, no dual Citizenship will prevail in the state i.e. a citizen of Jammu and Kashmir will be a citizen of India, Indians from other states will register themselves in the voter’s list of Jammu and Kashmir, orders of the Supreme Court will apply to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, any Indian citizen will be able to purchase land in the state and the Parliament will have all the rights to make laws for the state, restoration of normalised federal financial relation, Central Government’s power to declare National Emergency under Art 352 and now women would be able to buy properties in J&K. Thus the repeal of Art 370 is constitutionally, the most viable weapon of national integration. Article 35(A): A contravention of the Basic Structure of the Constitution Article 35A of the Constitution of India provides special rights and privileges to the ‘permanent residents’ of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. This article was added to the Constitution of India by Presidential Order in 1954 and got issued under Article 370 of the Constitution. India used Article 370 at least 45 times to extend the provision of the Constitution of India to Jammu and Kashmir. The abrogation of Art 370, also cleared the path to override Article 35A, which stands in contravention of many rights guaranteed to the citizens of India for example  under Article 14,15, 16, 19 and 21. Insurgency and secessionism: It has been 34 years since a violent armed insurgency erupted in Kashmir, completely paralysing its politics and crippling its economy. Since 1989,  J&K has been a hotbed of conflict and has become the  most critical issue in India’s internal security scenario. After three unsuccessful attempts to seize the territory by force (1947, 1965 and 1999), Pakistan has largely refrained from making any direct attempt at challenging the sovereign control of India over J&K. A defeated Pakistan, in all its efforts to seize J&K, channelled it’s efforts through the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), on aiding Pakistan-based militant groups to wage incessant proxy wars against India involving huge civilian damage. The hostility between the two neighbours could be perceived as a global nuclear flashpoint as both the  neighbours are overtly nuclear enabled states. The statistics of violence are huge and uncontrollable hence a strong governmental intervention was needed. The proxy war has claimed 26226 lives between 1988 and 2000 in an estimated 43956 incidents of terrorist violence. Of these casualties 10310 (40 per cent) were civilians, 3520 (13 per cent) were security forces personnel, and 12396 (47 per cent) terrorists. The emergence of the protracted insurgency in J&K, began with two explosions in 1988 (in Srinagar, the State capital). Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988 has been a watershed, marking the beginning of a protracted proxy war  to be waged by Pakistan against the Indian government targeting J&K. The Islamic parties came against the elected coalition government of NC and the Congress. Most of these Islamic groups were separatist groups. Pakistan prepared in the model of Afghan Mujahideens among the disaffected elements against India. Their main agenda was to challenge India’s sovereignty over J&K.  The ISI, the master breeder of militancy, initially used the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF),formed in 1965, originally a Pakistan based militant outfit committed to challenge India’s control over J&K to   mobilise and radicalise the disaffected youth. They would make them cross the border over to Pakistan, train them there and send them back to India to stir up insurgency. JKLF was the first militant group to advocate secession of J&K from India. From the time of its inception till 1988, the JKLF focussed on propagating its secessionist cause, and building its militant base through indoctrination and arms training. Genocide of Kashmiri Pundits The targeted killings of the Kashmiri Pandits based on their religious identity is a dark chapter of the Indian secular state and is a textbook example of sub-conventional civilization war. The Kashmiri Pandits were asked by the militants  to choose between “raliv, galiv ya chaliv” (convert, die or escape) and it was the diktat of Pakistan.    Farooq Ahmed Dar, also known as Bitta Karate who headed the JKLF for years now was the main assassin of the Kashmiri Pandits who alone killed as per his own version, 20 or 30-40 Kashmiri Pandits and was called as the ‘panditon ka kasai’. He led the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits and have confessed of receiving orders from high Command of JKLF, Ashfaq Majeed Wani in Pakistan. The kidnapping of the then Union home minister, Mufti Muhammad Sayyeed’s daughter Rubaiya is a watershed in the growth of militancy in the state as it led to the release of dreaded terrorists by the Centre.     The successive governments in Delhi were in fact either dismissive or  permissive to the institutionalisation and acceptance of secessionism as legitimate sentiment among the Kashmiri Muslims.  In March 1990, top bureaucrats of Kashmir, including Ashok Jaitley, sought intervention from  the United Nations to stop ‘human rights abuse’ by the Indian security forces. By demanding Kashmir’s solution through the UN resolutions and by criminalising the state actions against the militants, they validated the demand of azadi. These killings or these terror attempts were not ethnic cleansing but genocide (as described by the UNHRC), as only the latter qualifies to describe this  international crime. Despite this insidious campaign being labelled as a ‘genocide’ by the UNHRC,  the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits have gone unnoticed by the international community without any censure or action in support of the victim community. The victim community suffered in silence.  J&K is India’s sole Muslim majority state. It was plagued by turmoil since Pakistan sponsored insurgency fomented against the Indian state in 1989. Indigenous minorities include Hindu brahmins, widely referred to as Kashmiri Pandits, as well as Sikhs and Buddhists. While most Pandits fled Kashmir when the conflict was at its peak in the 1990s, host of them were killed, a few remained and some have returned.  Now this small community is at the receiving end of a spate of violence, while other lesser-known Hindu communities have also come under attack. In the 1990s, over 300,000 members of the Kashmiri Hindu community became refugees in their own country and still after 30 years, they remain in exile. The tragedy is that now finding Kashmiri Pandits in their own homeland is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The Union government is well equipped to clamp down on militancy and secessionism. Recently,  JKLF, Chairman, Yasin Malik, his terror associate of 1990 Farooq Ahmad Dar aka Bitta Karate,  Massarat Alam Bhat, the present Chairman of All Parties Huriyat Conference (Geelani) is, hardliner separatist who led the campaign again Indian army after the death of the notorious terrorist Burhan Wani, commander of Hijbul Mukahedeen,  separatist-turned-MLA Sheikh Abdul Rashid aka Engineer Rashid, influential businessman Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali and the Hizbul Mujahideen chief Mohammad Yousuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin are among 20 odd people against whom the court in New Delhi has ordered framing of charges in terror-funding cases. The NIA is filing charges against them. The Union Government seems resolute in its attempts to unite Kashmir with India and also to open doors for growth and development of the valley by opening job opportunities and business avenues other than tourism, ensuring transparency in governance and making it investment friendly and making J&K safer  for the Indian Citizens. The author is a senior faculty in the Department of History, ARSD College, University of Delhi. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.