Comment

Kashmiriyat and what it means to me

THE notion of Kashmiriyat was not handed down to me as an unachievable and abstract construct. On the contrary, it was crystallized for me as the eradication of a feudal structure; the right of the tiller to the land he worked on; the unacceptability of any political solution that did not take the aspirations and demands of the people of J&K into consideration; the right of the people of J&K to high offices in education, the bureaucracy, and government; the availability of medical and educational facilities in Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh; the preservation of literatures, shrines, and historical artifacts that defined an important aspect of Kashmiriyat; formation of the Constituent Assembly of J&K to institutionalize the constitution of the state in 1951, which was an enormous leap toward the democratic process; the fundamental right of both women and men to free education up to the university level; equal opportunities afforded to both sexes in the workplace; the nurturing of social, political, and intellectual ideologies and institutions; and pride in a cultural identity that was generated in a democratic space. This significant concept does not attempt to simplify the complexity of religious, social, and cultural identities. At a time of political and social upheaval in the state, this notion engendered a consciousness of place, territory and culture that offered a critical perspective from which to formulate alternatives to ultra right-wing nationalist discourses.

My understanding of pluralism is that we set our house in order by the creation of responsible government. The first condition to achieve responsible government is the participation of all people, not just the Muslims alone, nor the Hindus and the Sikhs alone, nor the untouchables or Buddhists alone, but all those who live in this state. The demand for responsible government should extend not just to the Muslims of J&K, but all state subjects. A representative government would enable the devolution of administrative responsibilities to districts and villages. Pluralism in J&K emphasized the necessity of abolishing exploitative landlordism without compensation, enfranchising tillers by granting them the lands they worked on, and establishing cooperatives. It would address issues of gender, and institute educational and social schemes for marginalized sections of society. A pluralistic government would create a more democratic and responsible form of government. On 13 July 1950, the new government headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah made a landmark decision:

‘Between 1950 and 1952, 700,000 landless peasants, mostly Muslims in the valley but including 250,000 lower-caste Hindus in the Jammu region, became peasant proprietors as over a million acres were directly transferred to them, while another sizeable chunk of land passed to government-run collective farms. By the early 1960s, 2.8 million acres of farmland (rice being the principal crop in the valley) and fruit orchards were under cultivation, worked by 2.8 million smallholding peasant-proprietor households.’ (Bose 2003: 27-28)

Women citizens were accorded equal rights with men in all fields of national life: economic, cultural, political, and in the state services.

‘These rights shall be realized by affording women the right to work in every employment upon equal terms and for equal wages with men. Women shall be ensured rest, social insurance and education equally with men. The law shall give special protection to the interests of mother and child.’ (quoted in Bhattacharjea 2008: 74)

This metamorphosis of the agrarian economy had ground-breaking political consequences. The revolutionary economic agenda of the 1950s in a previously feudal economy enabled the abolition of landlordism, allocation of land to the tiller, cooperative guilds of peasants, people’s control of forests, organized and planned cultivation of land, development of sericulture, pisciculture and fruit orchards, and the utilization of forest and mineral wealth for the betterment of the populace. Tillers were assured of the right to work on the land without incurring the wrath of creditors and were guaranteed material, social, and health benefits. (Korbel 1954/2002: 204) These measures signalled the end of the chapter of peasant exploitation and subservience and opened a new chapter of peasant emancipation.

The purportedly autonomous status of J&K under Abdullah’s government provoked the ire of ultra right-wing nationalist parties, which sought the unequivocal integration of the state into the Indian Union. The unitary concept of nationalism that such organizations subscribed to challenged the basic principle that the nation was founded on: democracy. In this nationalist project, one of the forms that the nullification of past and present histories takes is the subjection of religious minorities to a centralized and authoritarian state. The unequivocal aim of the supporters of the integration of J&K into the Indian Union was to expunge the political autonomy endowed on the state by India’s constitutional provisions. According to the unitary discourse of sovereignty disseminated by ultra right-wing nationalists, J&K wasn’t entitled to the signifiers of statehood – prime minister, flag, and constitution. (Bose 2003: 58)

In October 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India reinforced the stipulation that New Delhi’s jurisdiction in the state would remain limited to the categories of defence, foreign affairs, and communications, which had been underlined in the Instrument of Accession. Subsequent to India acquiring the status of a republic in 1950, this constitutional provision enabled the incorporation of Article 370 into the Indian Constitution which ratified the autonomous status of J&K within the Indian Union. Article 370 stipulates that New Delhi can legislate on the subjects of defence, foreign affairs, and communications only in just and equitable consultation with the Government of Jammu and Kashmir state, and can intervene on other subjects only with the consent of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.

The subsequent negotiations in June and July 1952 between a delegation of the J&K government led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Mirza Afzal Beg, and a delegation of the Indian government led by Nehru resulted in the Delhi Agreement, which maintained the status quo on the autonomous status of J&K. In his public speech made on 11 August, Abdullah declared that his aim had been to preserve ‘maximum autonomy for the local organs of state power, while discharging obligations as a unit of the [Indian] Union.’ (quoted in Soz 1995: 128) At the talks held between the representatives of the state government and the Indian government, the Kashmiri delegation relented on just one issue: it conceded the extension of the Indian Supreme Court’s arbitrating jurisdiction to the state in case of disputes between the federal government and the state government or between J&K and another state of the Indian Union.

But the Kashmiri delegation shrewdly disallowed an extension of the Indian Supreme Court’s purview to the state as the ultimate arbitrator in all civil and criminal cases before J&K courts. The delegation was also careful to prevent the financial and fiscal integration of the state with the Indian Union. The representatives of the J&K government ruled out any modifications to their land reform programme, which had dispossessed the feudal class without any right to claim compensation. It was also agreed that as opposed to the other units in the Union, the residual powers of legislation would be vested in the state assembly instead of in the Centre.

Despite the ephemeral victory, it became increasingly clear over the years that the autonomy issue remained unresolved and anti-autonomy factions in the state did not lose their political clout. Abdullah tried to defuse this complicated situation in 1953 by proposing a plan for devolution of authority to provinces within the state through the Constituent Assembly’s basic principles committee: according to the plan, the Kashmir valley and Jammu regions would be entitled to elected assemblies and separate councils of ministers with the authority to debate and legislate on certain affairs of local and regional importance. This multi-pronged devolution was intended to maintain the threatened autonomy of Jammu & Kashmir while appeasing regional and sectarian opposition in Jammu and Ladakh regions. (Bose 2003: 63) The politically unwise demand of the secession of Jammu from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley negates the social, religious, and cultural complexities of the Jammu province. If this demand were fulfilled, the three Muslim-majority districts – Doda, Rajouri, and Poonch – of Jammu’s six districts would, ‘almost certainly refuse to be bracketed with Dogra Hindus and prefer to stay with the valley Muslims?’ (Bazaz 1967/2005: 151)

The autonomy of the state within the Indian Union had been proclaimed in 1950 by a constitutional order formally issued in the name of the President of India. But in 1954, the former order was withdrawn by the proclamation of another dictum that legalized the right of the central government to legislate in the state on various issues. As per this dictum, the state was financially and fiscally integrated into the Indian Union; the Indian Supreme Court was given the authority to be the undisputed arbiter in J&K; the fundamental rights that the Indian Constitution guaranteed to its citizens were to apply to the populace of J&K as well, but with a stipulation: those civil liberties were discretionary and could be revoked in the interest of national security. In effect, the authorities had a carte blanche for the operation of unaccountable police brutality in the state.

Such measures expunged the pluralistic and composite culture of J&K in an effort to disseminate the unitary discourse of Indian nationalism. In December 1964, the Union government declared that two highly federalist statutes of the Indian Constitution would be enacted in J&K, Articles 356 and 357. These articles enable the Centre to autocratically dismiss democratically elected state governments if the Centre perceives a dismantling of the law and order machinery. A constitutional order implementing these centralist statutes was decreed by New Delhi. In 1965, the Union government fortified its powers in J&K by getting various corrosive amendments passed in the state assembly: the Sadr-i-Riyasat or titular head of the state was replaced by a governor, a political nominee appointed by the Centre; the title of head of state was changed from prime minister to chief minister, which was the regular title of heads of states within the Indian Union; state representatives to the Lok Sabha would no longer be nominated by the state legislature but would be elected. These constitutional amendments were highly centrist and were designed to corrode the autonomy of J&K provided by Article 370.

In another strategic move, the Delhi Accord of 1975 was designed to reinforce the integration of J&K into the Indian Union, which had occurred in 1953. Although the Centre proclaimed that the state would continue to be governed under Article 370, between 1954 and the mid-1970s New Delhi issued twenty eight constitutional orders ratifying the integration of J&K into the Indian Union, and two hundred and sixty two Union laws had been implemented in the state, thereby eroding its autonomy even further. Indira Gandhi’s government condescended to allow Abdullah’s state government to legislate on issues of culture, religion, and Muslim personal law. (Puri 1981: 151)

On 26 January 1968, Sheikh Abdullah’s disillusionment with Indian democracy created political and personal acrimony:

‘Respect for the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the integrity of the electoral process – are all sought to be guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. It is not surprising that many other countries have drawn upon this constitution, particularly the chapter on fundamental rights. Yet, it must at all times be remembered that the constitution provides the framework, and it is for the men who work it to give it life and meaning. In many ways the provisions of the constitution have been flagrantly violated [in Kashmir] and the ideals it enshrines completely forgotten. Forces have arisen which threaten to carry this saddening and destructive process further still.’ (Speeches and Interviews of Sher-e-Kashmir 1968: 15-16; quoted in Bose 2003: 46)

New Delhi asserts, time and again, that a revitalized Indian federalism will accommodate Kashmiri demands for an autonomous existence. But, historically, federalism hasn’t always adequately redressed the grievances of disaffected ethnic minorities. Here, I concur with Robert G. Wirsing’s observation that, ‘While autonomy seems to imply less self-rule than does the term confederalism, for instance, it is generally understood to imply greater self-rule than federalism, which as in the American case, need not cater to ethnic group minorities at all.’ (2003: 199)

Given Kashmir’s treacherous political climate and the rampant political factionalism in that region, the appeal of an ambiguous ‘autonomy’ remains intact for some groups, but for others, it is a wrong narrative to establish in the case of J&K. Sadly, prolonging the conflictual situation in J&K works in the interests of some of the actors, state as well as non-state, on both sides of the LoC. Some civil and military officials – Indian, Pakistani, and Kashmiri – have been beneficiaries of the militarization of Kashmir and the business of the ‘war on terror’. Also, some militants, armed and unarmed, have cashed in on the political instability in the state to establish lucrative careers. For such individuals and groups, self-determination and autonomy work well as hollow slogans stripped of any substantive content.

A dozen or more summit conferences have been held between the government heads of India and Pakistan toward the resolution of the Kashmir problem, from Nehru-Liaquat to Vajpayee-Musharraf meetings, laced in between with Soviet-American interventions, but nothing worth reporting was ever achieved, primarily because the people of J&K were never made a part of these parleys. The only silver lining to this huge cloud of failures was the signing of the 1952 Delhi Agreement, between two elected prime ministers, Nehru and Abdullah. It is high time that 1952 Delhi Agreement is returned to in letter and spirit.

Nyla Ali Khan

* This paper was presented at a two-day conference on ‘Pluralism and Diversity in Jammu and Kashmir’, organized by Interlocutors for J&K at Jammu on 11-12 July 2011.

 

References:

Prem Nath Bazaz, Kashmir in Crucible, Pamposh Publications, New Delhi, 1967. Reprint, Gulshan Books, Srinagar, 2005, (page references are to the 2005 edition).

Ajit Bhattacharjea, Kashmir: The Wounded Valley. UBS, New Delhi, 1994.

Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2003.

Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1954. Reprint, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002 (page references are to the 2002 edition).

Balraj Puri, Jammu and Kashmir: Triumph and Tragedy of Indian Federalism. Sterling, Delhi, 1981.

Saifuddin Soz, Why Autonomy to Kashmir? India Centre of Asian Studies, New Delhi, 1995.

Robert G. Wirsing, Kashmir in the Shadow of War: Regional Rivalries in a Nuclear Age. M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2003.