A DISMANTLED STATE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF KASHMIR AFTER ARTICLE 370; ANURADHA BHASIN; HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS; Rs 699; 2023; PP 385.
BY ARVINDAR SINGH
The revocation of Article 370 and Article 35A, the constitutional clauses which gave autonomy to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir (which was then downgraded into two separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh) on 5 August, 2019, was a step taken by the Modi Government with long term consequences for the country as well as the region of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The author of this book, Anuradha Bhasin, is a journalist of note and Editor of the well known daily of the state, Kashmir Times.
She presents in the volume a critical analysis of the events before and after the abrogation of Article 370. In the fortnight preceding this, thirty-eight thousand additional troops were deployed in Kashmir in addition to the forty thousand troops positioned there during the Amarnath Yatra in May 2019.
She notes with dismay that the abrogation of Article 370 was done at a time when 13.65 million people of the state were under siege, the constituent assembly (which enacted the law at the state level) did not exist and the legislative assembly stood dissolved. Apart from the abrogation, the state was divided into two Union Territories, thus downgraded. This, feels the author, did not go down well with the people already living under conditions that were stifling. She brings out new aspects of NSA Doval`s meal at a roadside stall soon after the abrogation based on interviews later with some of the common folk who participated in the roadside picnic, by which she makes it out to be a show for the television cameras arranged by the police. However, it must be borne in mind that such television shoots are not extraordinary when the government of the day wants to create an image of positive vibes about a certain governmental action.
In a scathing description of the events that followed this action by the Union Government, which changed the political scene in the border state, she states, “The Valley remained insulated for several months after August 5. No one could go out if the government did not want him or her to, and no one could enter till almost the end of 2019. Many Indian politicians and civil society activists had been detained and sent back.” Prominent political luminaries like Rahul Gandhi, Magsaysay Award recipient and Socialist Party Activist Sandeep Pandey, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Sitram Yechury were denied permission to visit the state and were turned back from Srinagar Airport. Azad and Yechury later obtained permission from the Supreme Court and returned but were only allowed limited access to the local populace.
The media also had difficulty in reporting facts according to the author in the post 5 August scenario. She gives expression to the unofficial censorship imposed by the authorities and the problems faced by her newspaper, The Kashmir Times. She highlights the fact that Article 370 had been watered down over the years and it had remained virtually on paper having been hollowed out and reduced by presidential orders which were legitimised by the provincial legislature. She quotes the former Home Minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, in this regard, when he said, “Article 370 is neither a wall nor a mountain, but it is a tunnel. It is through this tunnel that a good deal of traffic has already passed and more will.” She also deals in the volume of incarceration of prominent politicos as well as citizens and the trauma they went through after August 2019.
On the whole, the book gives us an insider`s view the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and, as Bhasin mentions, with due emphasis, a line from the Polish-American Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”
