Democracy Denied

The Kashmir conflict, though not a thousand years old, as Donald Trump has claimed, does have a long and tortuous history. The rulers of Kashmir, before, during, and after British colonization, have always considered the political aspirations of Kashmiris secondary to the geopolitical and strategic importance of the land.

The hollowing out of the Instrument of Accession (IOA) is a case in point. The local ruler, the Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, signed the IOA when he capitulated and agreed that Kashmir would become part of India’s territory during the partition.

Central to the IOA was the constitutional provision of Article 370, which assured the Kashmiri people autonomy over all matters besides those pertaining to defense, external affairs, and communications. The article was supposed to be temporary and provisional because there was a promise of a referendum by which the people of Kashmir would decide their own political fate — to remain part of India, to join up with Pakistan, or to become an independent state.

In reality, successive Indian governments never intended to carry out the plebiscite. The history of Jammu and Kashmir since independence has seen the installation of puppet state governments, typically via rigged elections, that acted at the behest of the central government in Delhi, with the territorial integrity of India always taking precedence over the aspirations of Kashmiris.

The thwarting of all democratic political struggles by the Kashmiri people laid the ground for the emergence of armed resistance, which began in earnest in the late 1980s. Led by the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), this movement was secular in orientation and wanted to form an independent Kashmir. Both the Indian and Pakistani governments were hostile to the JKLF because it did not fit into their strategic territorial schemes, and it was eventually quashed.

The vision of both the Indian and Pakistani governments have been to control the land regardless of the impact on the people. Successive Indian governments have suppressed any and all dissenting voices in Kashmir, carrying out grave human rights violations to keep the population in check. These include killings, disappearances, use of rape as an instrument of punishment, use of human shields, and punitive laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) or the Public Safety Act (PSA).

While governments led by the Indian National Congress put in place puppet regimes and turned the Kashmir valley into one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world, the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)–led government has turbocharged some of these long-standing repressive tendencies. In 2019, Narendra Modi’s administration unconstitutionally abrogated Article 370, which had promised autonomy to the people of Kashmir.

Long before 2019, a succession of presidential orders had hollowed out the article, legally and politically, but its formal abrogation was still a major escalation. In addition, the Modi government repealed Article 35A, the Permanent Residents Law, which opened the door to non-Kashmiris buying land in the state.

Major protests erupted across Kashmir in response. The government clamped down on dissent by incarcerating prominent opposition leaders, blocking 4G internet services, and hounding journalists, as with the shutting down of the Srinagar office of the Kashmir Times in 2020.

Islamophobia and Hypernationalism

The Pahalgam attack of April 22 is ghastly by itself. Additionally, it is counterproductive from the standpoint of the people of Kashmir. In fact, it has brought a large portion of the Indian opposition to stand behind the BJP-led government. It has created a climate of hypernationalism where it has become imperative for citizens to stand behind the actions of the Indian army.

The existing forms of Islamophobia across the country have widened and manifested themselves in the ugliest forms possible. Kashmiri students in universities across the country have been subjected to harassment and violence.

In a similar way, attacks by the Indian military resulting in the deaths of Pakistani civilians are likely to shore up support for an otherwise unpopular army. The fighting has created a fertile ground for the most reactionary tendencies to come to the fore, with the deaths of innocent civilians on either side of the border.

The Indian authorities have demolished the houses of nine suspected terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir since the attack in Pahalgam. This is a form of collective punishment that is akin to the Israeli approach, and can only breed more anger, with the potential to turn disgruntled civilians into future militants.

It was not surprising that the Indian National Congress and a number of other opposition parties quickly rallied behind the far-right BJP and the actions of the army. However, even the parliamentary Communist Parties — the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) — have endorsed the government’s decision to launch military action.

The Indian parliamentary left takes a nationalistic line, at least when it comes to Kashmir, and elevates the territorial integrity of India over Kashmiri aspirations to self-determination. The main position of the parliamentary left since 2019 has been to call for the reinstatement of Article 370, which avoids the question of self-determination by prioritizing autonomy within India.

The CPI(M)’s statement endorsed the army’s claim that the strikes were “focused, measured, and non-escalatory,” and stressed the need to protect “the [territorial] integrity of the country” instead of calling for immediate de-escalation. This is lamentable, but consistent with the party’s recent stance. In the aftermath of the Pulwama attack in 2019, the Kerala state assembly, where the left bloc led by the CPI(M) has a majority, passed a unanimous resolution extending support and congratulating the Indian Army for its surgical strikes in Balakot.

Operation Sindoor

US mediation was key to securing the cease-fire and preventing a larger catastrophe. This was also the case in 2019, when diplomacy helped avert a full-scale war, as noted by the former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in his memoir.

The much-vaunted Operation Sindoor achieved little. The perpetrators of the Pahalgam tragedy remain at large. Even if some militant sites were destroyed by the strikes, it is likely that they were rudimentary and easily replaceable. However, the cost to India could be more significant.

Pravin Sawhney is a prominent Indian military commentator whose videos the Modi government has banned, along with numerous other critical news outlets, ostensibly on grounds of national security. According to Sawhney, these strikes have been counterproductive, exposing weaknesses in India’s defense capabilities.

Pakistan deployed Chinese J-10 jets equipped with longer-range radars, armed with PL-15 missiles, which, Sawhney reports, can target aircraft beyond visual range. This may explain how the four Indian planes, including French-made Rafale jets, were hit without their pilots noticing it.

This experience undermines India’s security claims. Modern warfare hinges on possession of a technological edge, particularly aerial superiority. If Pakistan’s Chinese-equipped air force can outmatch India’s, Operation Sindoor offers no real deterrence, as with the earlier “surgical strikes.”

The Indus Waters Treaty

It seems the only thing the two sides have agreed to is a cessation of military activities. India has confirmed that its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) — imposed immediately after the Pahalgam tragedy with the pledge that “not even a drop of water” would go to Pakistan — remains in effect. This is a matter of grave concern.

The IWT is a landmark water-sharing arrangement between India and Pakistan. It apportions the waters of three western rivers (the Indus, the Chenab, and the Jhelum) for Pakistan’s use, and those of three eastern ones (the Ravi, the Beas, and the Sutlej) for India.

David Michel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has described how important the Indus is for Pakistan:

Nine in every ten Pakistanis live within the Indus Basin. Major cities such as Karachi and Lahore rely upon the river — or on groundwater aquifers that the Indus helps replenish — for their drinking water. Agriculture claims 94 percent of water withdrawals in Pakistan. The sector constitutes the backbone of the economy, representing 22.9 percent of GDP, accounting for 24.4 percent of exports, providing livelihoods for two-thirds of the rural population, and employing 37.4 percent of the total labor force. The Indus system waters more than 90 percent of the nation’s crops.

India is the upper riparian with a history of shutting down the water flow once before in 1948, which caused intense panic in Pakistan. Depriving a lower riparian country of water, as India has threatened, would be a form of collective punishment, and could be described as a crime against humanity.

However, India does not really have the capacity to prevent water flowing to Pakistan. In order to do so, construction projects that could take decades to complete would be necessary. The “not even a single drop” pledge is, thankfully, bluster. However, India can nonetheless harm Pakistan in significant ways.

Under the treaty regulations, India is required to share hydrological data that is essential for planning to deal with floods and/or droughts during monsoon seasons. Denying Pakistan access to this data would have a damaging impact.

Moreover, because of the limited storage capacity, India can change the timing of the water flow, which is crucial for many crops during sowing seasons. The Indian government has been wanting to renegotiate the IWT, which might be necessary given the changed concerns of global climate change. However, threats to suspend the treaty should not be used as a way of gaining leverage.

Not a Security Issue — a Political One

The Kashmir problem is not a security issue; it is a political conflict. India shares borders with Nepal and Bhutan, yet we do not have a security issue with those borders. A political problem cannot have a military solution. On the contrary, military approaches to conflicts are only going to create future political problems. Moreover, a military conflict between two nuclear-armed states is inherently fraught with unimaginable dangers.

There has not yet been any investigation after the Pahalgam attacks, and the Indian claims of Pakistani involvement have yet to be backed by evidence. Even if they are true, India must exhaust diplomatic and legal avenues instead of resorting to a military approach. Similarly, Pakistan must come clean and carry out an investigation to make sure those involved in planning and carrying out an attack against civilians at Pahalgam are held accountable.

The Kashmir conflict is a history of the suppression of the political aspirations of the Kashmiris. India insists the conflict is a bilateral issue, which means that neither the UN nor any other body should be able to involve themselves, with only India and Pakistan — not the people of Kashmir — having any say on the conflict. Pakistan does not object to third-party intervention, which would allow it to raise the fact that there was no plebiscite held in Kashmir. However, in all its machinations, Islamabad is committed to suppress the voices of Kashmiris who do not want to join Pakistan.

Legal mechanisms will not solve the Kashmir conflict, either. Consider the IWT. It is a legal framework that completely suppresses any Kashmiri claims, in the present or resulting from future negotiations. In fact, the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for the review of the treaty in 2003, but its vote was ignored.

It is imperative for India and Pakistan to resume diplomatic dialogue and pay heed to Kashmiri political aspirations. Yet Modi’s government, in a show of extraordinary bellicosity, has announced that it will consider “every instance of terrorism directed against it as an ‘act of war.’”

Modi has further announced an eleven-day Tiranga Yatra (tricolor march) as a nationwide outreach effort to appease its ultranationalist supporters who are upset about the cease-fire and view US mediation as having undermined Modi’s self-styled strongman image. Significantly, the BJP leader has planned the march with an eye to the upcoming state elections in Bihar.

These political gambits once again relegate the Kashmir conflict to the margins. True and lasting peace can only come when the political rights of Kashmiris do not receive short shrift. Kashmiris have a right to self-determination — to choose a future of their liking, whatever that might be.