By Ahmad Hassan “The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other… Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: ‘I feed on your energy.’” When Frank Herbert wrote those words in his novel Dune Messiah, he observed that elaborate euphemisms are often used by the state to conceal the raw mechanics of power. In Pakistan, August 5 is observed as Youm-e-Istehsal to condemn the 2019 revocation of Article 370 and its supplementary provision, Article 35A. This act of the Indian government removed Kashmir’s separate constitution, its flag and its control over its own affairs. Last week marked seven years since that day. What began as a dramatic constitutional rupture has now, by design, become quietly normalized. Jammu and Kashmir joined India in 1947 on defined terms. The Maharaja handed over defence, foreign affairs and communications. Everything else stayed with the state. The United Nations later called for a plebiscite. It never happened. Instead, over decades, the protections that were supposed to stand in its place were worn down piece by piece, until August 5, 2019, when the government removed what remained in a single stroke. The method deserves more attention than it usually gets. Article 370 was not directly changed. First, the government reached for Article 367, which was intended to aid in the interpretation of the Constitution, and used it to redefine one phrase: “Constituent Assembly” became “Legislative Assembly.” Kashmir had no sitting assembly at the time, and the state was under President’s Rule. So, the government’s own appointee, the Governor, signed off on the change. India’s Supreme Court had already ruled, in 1959 and again in 1969, that Kashmir’s constitutional status could only be changed after the approval of the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir. When that body no longer existed, no institution had the standing to give that consent on Kashmir’s behalf. New Delhi decided that its own Governor could stand in for the people he had not been elected by. That is not consent. It is a government consenting to itself. The Indian government argued that Kashmiris had lived for decades under an insurgency that killed tens of thousands and emptied the Valley of its Pandit community in 1990. It left the region isolated from the investment and policing coordination. That argument would carry more weight if the method had matched it. What followed the revocation was not the language of integration. It was a total communications blackout, landlines and mobile networks and the internet all cut at once. Independent estimates put the troop presence at 600,000 to 800,000, roughly one soldier for every ten Kashmiris. Even pro-India politicians, former chief ministers among them, were placed under detention. Perhaps a security argument can justify counter-insurgency operations. It cannot by itself justify dissolving a state’s constitutional status, its legislature and its statehood in one move. That too with no elected Kashmiri voice given the chance to object. Jawaharlal Nehru warned Parliament about exactly this shortcut in 1952, while Article 370 was still being drafted. No clause in a constitution, he said, could substitute for the will of the Kashmiri people. Real integration, in his words, comes from the mind and the heart, not from a clause imposed from outside. Actually, there is a longer, quieter project behind the legal manoeuvre. Article 35A once barred outsiders from buying land or settling permanently in Kashmir. Since its removal, more than 3.2 million domicile certificates have gone to outsiders, most of them non-Kashmiri Hindus. This alarming thing is that wherever a disputed territory’s demographics are reshaped before its people are asked what they want, the eventual vote, if one ever comes, no longer reflects the population whose future was originally in question. None of this required an invading army, or an open declaration of intent. It required a redefined word, a signature from an appointee, and a great deal of time. The convoluted legalisms that Herbert warned about have become policy in Kashmir: development, integration, correction. Each euphemism has quietly done the work that an honest admission of purpose could never have achieved. Seven years on, Kashmir’s assembly has voted decisively against the BJP that carried out the revocation, and passed its own resolution demanding the restoration of its special status. New Delhi can easily ignore them. Yet, that very power to ignore an elected legislature proves, beyond any doubt, that the “consent” obtained seven years ago was always a legal fiction.
