Kashmir: How Violence Begets Violence
By Rohan Rajesh
On October 27th, 2020, three members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were shot dead in the Kashmir Valley by a militant group known as The Resistance Front (TRF). The Indian government believes that the TRF is a front for the Pakistan-based UN-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The killings come days after the Indian government removed domicile restrictions for Jammu & Kashmir, which would allow non-Kashmiri Indians to buy land in the territory.
This controversial move comes more than a year after the even more controversial move in which the Indian government removed the erstwhile state’s autonomy, demoted it to a union territory, and plunged the Kashmir Valley into a strict security lockdown and widespread internet shutdown. That move came six months after the devastating Pulwama attack against Indian soldiers, which helped propel Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a second term in a landslide. Notice a pattern? Kashmir is the perfect case study in how violence begets violence and on what not to do to achieve your political goals.
When India was a British possession, India was governed through a combination of direct rule and cooptation with native rulers in “Princely States.” One of these states was Jammu & Kashmir. The diverse region includes many ethnic groups (one of whom are Kashmiris). Although the region is majority Muslim, there are also significant populations of Hindus and Sikhs (especially in Jammu) and Tibetan Buddhists (in Ladakh). When the British decided to partition their possessions into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, the princely states were given a choice between joining both countries. Most Muslim-majority princely states joined Pakistan, and most Hindu-majority princely states joined India. There were three exceptions: Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Jammu & Kashmir.
Hyderabad and Junagadh were Hindu-majority but ruled by Muslim kings. They were annexed by India. The latter was Muslim-majority but ruled by a Hindu Dogra king. The king was unpopular among many Muslims in the state. The king did not want to join either India or Pakistan and wanted the state to become an independent country like Nepal and Bhutan. Pakistan eventually lost patience and sent Pashtun tribesmen and irregular Pakistani forces to annex the region. The king requested help from India to repulse the invasion in exchange for the state’s accession to India. The result was the First Indo-Pakistan War. India ended up with two-thirds of the state (including the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley), while Pakistan ended up with the remaining third.
During the war, the UN Security Council issued a resolution that called for Pakistan to first remove all Pakistanis from the state. India would then progressively reduce the number of Indian troops, and a plebiscite was to be held. Neither government accepted these proposals. The Pakistani government was concerned that a referendum would lead to the state’s accession to India because of the human rights abuses committed by the tribesmen against the locals. These anti-Pakistan sentiments were reflected in a speech by Kashmiri political leader Sheikh Abdullah in which he bitterly accused Pakistan of “[wanting] to force [Kashmir] into a position of slavery” and said that Hitler and Goebbels had “transmigrated their souls into Pakistan.”
To maintain peace in the region, India agreed to add Article 370 and Article 35A to the Indian Constitution, which gave the state a measure of autonomy. As part of this autonomy, the state had the right to decide who is a permanent resident and deny land to other Indians (these are the domicile laws). Additionally, laws passed by the Indian Parliament did not immediately apply to the state, including several progressive policies on caste and gender equality. Ever since the Constitution was passed, the Indian government has been chipping away at that autonomy, but most of the important provisions, including the domicile laws, remained. For the most part, the region was peaceful. When Pakistan started the second Indo-Pakistan war in 1965, a major miscalculation on the part of Pakistani military planners was the assumption that Kashmiris would rise up against the Indian government, which did not happen.
Things changed in 1989. The Indian government was accused of rigging the local elections to favor a more pro-India candidate. Disaffected Kashmiri youth joined separatist movements fighting for independence, but Pakistan had other plans. Pakistan, drawing from its successful experiment of using radical groups in Afghanistan, began to support jihadis from Pakistan, who eventually overshadowed the local movement. These jihadis wanted Kashmir to join Pakistan. The result was disastrous for the Kashmir Valley. Kashmiri Hindus were forcibly expelled from their ancient homeland by radical Islamist groups. The Pakistan-backed violence begot a stronger Indian response, and the 1990s ended up being a brutal period in the Kashmir insurgency in which more than 40,000 people died.
The War on Terror let India justify its crackdown in terms of counterinsurgency. It did not help that many of these Pakistan-backed groups committed horrific attacks against not only Indians but also Westerners. Eventually, like other militant movements across India, the situation in Kashmir began to settle down. But, in 2016, the Indian military killed the militant Burhan Wani, the popular leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen. Massive protests ensued in the Valley, pitting stone-pelting youth against armed Indian police forces. This ended exactly as one would expect: the blinding of many protesters by pellets, a rise in militant attacks, and more crackdowns. The situation further worsened in 2019 with the Pulwama attack and the Indian Parliament’s decision to remove Kashmir’s autonomy.
Surprisingly, that move had the support of many opposition parties, along with BJP-allied parties. Although Kashmiris will still have the same representation in Parliament, their say in many matters is subject to central approval, and autonomy is probably a foregone conclusion. The situation has since simmered, and the recent change to Kashmir’s domicile law and the killings of local BJP politicians may be the start of a new wave of violence.
The irony is that in seeking freedom, Kashmiris have instead seen their rights dwindled and autonomy eliminated. Ultimately, Kashmiris need to convince Indians of the righteousness of their cause. Perhaps if Kashmiris had persisted with peaceful demonstrations in the face of a violent security crackdown, their cause would have gained much more sympathy nationally and internationally. For all of its flaws, India is a multiparty, pluralistic democracy with a national conscience that is receptive to persistent peaceful protest. After all, Gandhian methods are how India itself gained global sympathy got independence from a tyrannical Britain.
But the failure of Kashmiris to gain any sympathy lies in the fact that many non-Kashmiri Indians are fed up with the situation. Unlike other recent controversies, this issue is not a Hindu-Muslim issue. The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, for example, fully supported the removal of Kashmir’s autonomy. Its General-Secretary stated in Hindustani, “Kashmir was ours, is ours, and will remain ours.” The expulsion of Kashmiri Hindus, multiple terrorist attacks, and the continued support of Pakistan led many Indians to support any change in the status quo, including the previously unthinkable removal of Kashmiri autonomy. Until activists realize this, violence will simply beget more violence in Kashmir.