Angad Singh
In the cacophony of news headlines, credible information gets buried underneath opinion. Fact becomes a narrative and an individual’s agenda becomes law. Particularly in Kashmir, India, the coverage by the news is incredibly skillful at displaying one perspective. I hope this viewpoint, through historical analysis, might scribble some fact on the backside of Kashmir’s heavily opinionated canvas.
In 1947, India was liberated from colonialist rule, taking a vast majority of the nation’s wealth and creating communal disarray. The region was mostly divided into two countries, India and Pakistan. Due to confusion during the division, the ownership of Kashmir, a landlocked area of land between China, Pakistan and India, remains a source of contention between India and Pakistan. Four wars have been fought for the region.
The history of the contention went as follows: the region was originally sanctioned as part of India, but with a unique twist. Led by the first Prime Minister Nehru, India instituted Article 370, giving autonomy to the region. With a separate flag and a separate constitution, it was like a country within a country. Now, India has abolished Article 370 spurring widespread disgust at Indian’s misused authority. Western mainstream media chides the current government because the abolishment of the article removes the region’s ‘autonomy.’
The details of a country within a country were, and still are, confusing. Only Kashmiris could buy land and hold business properties. A person’s family had to have been living in the valley for 70 years, since before the partition of Hindustan, in order to be considered a resident of the state of Kashmir. When 300,000 people from outside Kashmir (from mainland India) decided to make Kashmir their home, they were essentially stripped of all their rights as are made available in a democratic state — such as having the right to vote — due to Kashmir’s “autonomous” distinction. These rights were only restored to these 300,000 people after the abrogation of the Article 370. Furthermore, the removal of Article 370 also resulted in these people being able to own land, start businesses, and essentially be productive for Kashmir’s economy. Additionally, there is not a single mention of minority rights or clauses under the article. Essentially you had a population of 300,000 people unemployed, persecuted as outsiders and unprotected. Last week when I read the viewpoint of a fellow student who said that the removal of autonomy of Kashmir was a diplomatic failure, it angered me because he was peddling the same opinion disguised as fact and the same agenda covered, camouflaged in law.
Kashmir accounts for about one percent of the Indian population, but ten percent of the central government’s budget is spent on the region. But now comes the most interesting metric: the grants which the central government gives to Kashmir account for about 54 percent of the state’s budget. So to summarize, ten percent of the taxes paid by 99 percent of Indians outside of Kashmir account for about 54 percent of the revenue of the state government of Kashmir. This is because the Kashmir region is so economically challenged that self-sustainability of the region is a faraway dream. The region comes in the bottom two states in terms of literacy in India. One of the reasons for this is that premier government universities like the Indian Institute of Technology, the All India Medical College, the India Institute of Sciences and the Indian Institute of Management cannot open their universities because of the restrictions which were caused by Article 370.
Crunching Kashmiris into statistics and metrics seems almost robotic and emotionless. So, let’s talk law. By abolishing Article 370, homosexuality was legalized in Kashmir and instances of polygamy, sexual rape by religion and honor killings which, previously legal, have been criminalized. 43,500 Kashmiri Indians were killed during the absence of these laws, and further deaths now will be legally prevented by incorporating Kashmir within India.
It makes one wonder why mainstream media does not ascertain these facts. The media, like last week’s viewpoint, is stuck on one critical observation: the severing of network connections in the region. The government’s reasoning for doing so is because the region is wrought with terrorists who are foreign fighters posing as freedom fighters, that have been proved to be funded by an external nation. 40 soldiers were also martyred by these terrorists because this precaution was previously not undertaken.
Is ensuring that 300,000 people have the right to vote, to work, to educate themselves and to be protected a diplomatic failure? Is making it legal for any person to love another human-being — irrespective of caste, creed, race and gender — a diplomatic failure? Is making sure that a child in Kashmir can have a mother who isn’t sexually assaulted, murdered or burnt alive as a victim of honor killing a diplomatic failure? Is making sure that a soldier’s family doesn’t receive a letter that their son, father or husband died in the line of action a diplomatic failure? If these are diplomatic failures, then I would want to stay as far away from what [the Western media] would describe as “diplomatic excellence.”