Circa 2019, arguably largest democracy in the world, India gave a massive mandate to a party, whose election manifesto, in all fairness, reiterated its “position since the time of the Jan Sangh to the abrogation of Article 370” and stated its commitment to annul “Article 35A of the Constitution of India.”
The provisions were cited as discriminatory and an obstacle for the development of the state. ‘Commitment to nationalism and national integration’ is also a Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) declared ‘Pancha Nishthas’ or five guiding principles, with self proclaimed philosophy ‘Integral Humanism.’ “Whether in governance or in opposition, BJP is committed to using constitutional means to bring out socio-economic change in the society and is committed to its all-round development on the basis of Integral Humanism with ‘Sab ka Saath, Sab ka Vikas’ as its core belief,” it declares.
Ergo, from this vantage point, nothing was amiss,when the resolution to abrogate Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir was approved in Lok Sabha with 351 members voting in favour and 72 against it. Likewise, the bill to create two UTs -- Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh -- was passed by 370 votes to 70 votes on August 6. Those were final stamps of approval from the Parliament, as the resolution and the bill were approved by Rajya Sabha on Monday.
A most intrepid move and a 'historic blunder' was rectified, were the common refrains, high on nationalism correspondingly boosted with robust numbers in Parliament.
‘A momentous occasion in our Parliamentary democracy, where landmark bills pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir have been passed with overwhelming support!,’ a jubilant Prime Minister tweeted. “Vote bank politics won't work in Kashmir anymore,” trumpeted Amit Shah, the Home Minister and Modi’s partner in execution, purportedly effected to break barriers and ushering a new era of ‘development’ for the state. The irony lost to none, but most people were either too numb to respond or too busy in jubilation to care.
Amid the mixed emotions, if put oneself in the shoes of common citizens in the yonder North – the immediate stakeholders of this paradigmatic policy alteration, the reality is, at best, blurry. In the run-up to the announcement, a panic situation was created and all Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) with extra measures were put in place; the concerns by citizens allayed by ‘concerned authorities.’ Three days after the historic rectification, the citizens, who were purportedly ‘freed’ by the announcement, are under virtual lockdown.
“Kashmir Valley: Markets and shops shut, schools and colleges suspended, roads barricaded and guarded by gun-toting security men and vehicle movement restricted only to emergency hospital services,” informed a news report on August 7.
Academicians, legal luminaries and plebeians alike may exhaustively scrutinise, dissect and possibly fight in court regarding ‘constitutional’ validity of the historic action in coming days.
However, looking from the other vantage point, the bold move executed with the equally brute force, has come about as a comeuppance for the citizens it was supposedly emancipating.
A ‘historic blunder’ rectified and executed with equally ‘historic inhumanity,’ sending apprehensions across many regions, where more or less similar arrangements exist. Numerically justified both in parliament and on the ground, will it break barriers as espoused or create new; that is yet to be settled.
“Sanity is not statistical,” goes a line in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), a dystopian novel by English writer George Orwell, eerily reflecting the zeitgeist.
