Kashmiris express anger at loss of special status

[Pakpak]

Indian-administered Kashmir has been in a state of lockdown ever since the government decided to strip the region of its special status, with mobile phone networks, landlines and internet access cut off. The BBC has been inside Jammu and Kashmir, to hear the voices of those most affected by the change.

Amid the furious debate over the legality and implications of the Indian government's decision to revoke Article 370 - which gave the state of Jammu and Kashmir significant autonomy from the rest of the country - it seemed one key voice was missing. Those of the Kashmiris themselves.

In the days leading up to Monday's parliamentary announcement, the state was swiftly locked down. Tens of thousands of troops were deployed to the region, and two of the state's former chief ministers - Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah - were placed under house arrest.

With most forms of communication cut off, police officers in the region were given satellite phones. Nearly everyone else was effectively cut off from the rest of the country.

Now, shocked residents of the region are beginning to speak out - although many are still struggling to get a full picture of what is going on.

Rashid Alvi, who runs a medicine shop in Srinagar said that the heavy military presence had turned the region into an "open jail".

What happened with Kashmir and why it matters
Kashmir in lockdown after autonomy scrapped
Pakistan vows to fight India's 'illegal' Kashmir move
He told the BBC's Zubair Ahmed that the people of the state would not be quiet for long.

"People are unable to get out of their houses because of the curfew. Once it's lifted, they will take to the streets."

This sentiment was echoed by a Muslim politician from India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who did not wish to be identified.

"Kashmiris are in a state of shock and they are still processing what happened. It seems the valley is going to erupt very soon," he said.

Our correspondent, who has been in Srinagar - the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir - since Monday, says the city resembles a warzone.

"I could see policemen deployed everywhere. Barricades have been put in front of important buildings. Markets, schools and colleges are shut. The city's bus stands are crowded as many tourists are still trying to leave the valley but there aren't enough buses."

Meanwhile, outside Srinagar, the sense of frustration and anger is the same.


Media captionBaramulla resident: 'Our livelihood is affected, nobody is at peace'
The BBC's Aamir Peerzada, who travelled to the town of Baramulla in north Kashmir, found locals bewildered and suspicious about the government's decision.

"There had been no discussion about this move. No-one had expected it. We were shocked when we heard about it. Why would you take such a step in secret? Come out and tell us it's a good move" one resident, Abdul Khali Najar, said.

Another local, identified only as Zaroor, likened the government move to a "marriage that has ended".

"No-one knows what is going to happen," he said.

There have been some sporadic reports of protesters throwing stones at security forces but there has been no official confirmation of any incident to date.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image caption
Kashmir is one of the world's most militarised zones
Some public figures have also been able to circumvent the internet blocks to talk about what is happening on social media.

"People are in shock. Numb. Yet to make sense of what befell them. Everyone is mourning what we lost... it's the loss of statehood that has hurt people deeply. This is being seen as the biggest betrayal by the Indian state in the last 70 years," Shah Faesal, an Indian civil servant who has started his own political party, wrote on Facebook.

Why is Kashmir controversial?
Kashmir is a Himalayan region that both India and Pakistan say is fully theirs.

The area was once a princely state called Jammu and Kashmir, but it joined India in 1947 when the sub-continent was divided up at the end of British rule.

India and Pakistan subsequently went to war over it and each came to control different parts of the territory with a ceasefire line agreed.

There has been violence in the Indian-administered side for 30 years due to a separatist insurgency against Indian rule.

How has Kashmir's status changed?
For many people in Indian-administered Kashmir, Article 370 was the main justification for being a part of India. By revoking it, the BJP-led government has significantly changed Delhi's relationship with the region.

The article allowed the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir a certain amount of autonomy - its own constitution, a separate flag and the freedom to make laws, though foreign affairs, defence and communications remained with the central government.

Under the article, Jammu and Kashmir could make its own rules relating to permanent residency, ownership of property and fundamental rights. It could also bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there.

The government said Article 370 needed to be scrapped to put the state on the same footing as the rest of India.

But many Kashmiris believe that the BJP ultimately wants to change the demographic character of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49261322

 

[Gullycricket]

But But some joshillas and Endians were saying people are happy there.A tiny minority of Ladakhis are happy and they try to fool everyone

 

[AdamM97]

Oppression never lasts forever. Stay strong Kashmiris!

 

[Tiger96]

There is a reason why curfew and blackout was imposed in the state because there will be anger and displeasure at the decision. Too bad, the Kashmiris will have to resign to their fate and accept reality as soon as they can which will be better for them.

Now they have no option but to share their land with Hindus of other Indian states and live with them as citizens of India.

 

[Varun]

Kashmiris need to have hard and soft skills to ensure that their opinions carry weight on forums - both domestic and worldwide.

If there was oil underneath the surface there, or if Kashmiris had awesome business acumen, then we're talking.

 

[jadaja]

Why should Kashmir have special status, that is utter nonsense which happened 70 years ago.That wrong has been rectified now.

 

[Runner Up]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Now Marry Fair Kashmiri Women": BJP Lawmaker's Article 370 Shocker <a href="https://t.co/iHHhWldA9p">https://t.co/iHHhWldA9p</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NDTVNewsBeeps?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NDTVNewsBeeps</a> <a href="https://t.co/V0vUh1uhYO">pic.twitter.com/V0vUh1uhYO</a></p>— NDTV (@ndtv) <a href="https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/1159112949304365058?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[MenInG]

Leh, Ladakh – When the Indian government last year abrogated the special status and partial autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir and divided the region into two federal territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh – the Buddhists in Ladakh cheered the move.

A year later, that sense of celebration in Ladakh has given way to uncertainty and apprehension among residents of the Himalayan desert. The euphoria over becoming a federal territory has been replaced by a fear of losing lands, jobs and identity.

Buddhists and other non-Muslim communities in the Himalayan region had long demanded a union territory status, alleging they were discriminated against by the politicians and bureaucrats in the partially autonomous Jammu and Kashmir, which was the only Muslim-majority state administered by India.

Situated at an altitude of 5,730 metres (18,799 feet) above the sea level, Ladakh is home to nearly 300,000 people living in two districts – the main city of Leh which is predominantly Buddhist, and Kargil, which is mainly Muslim.

On August 5 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which provided a degree of autonomy to the part of the disputed Kashmir region that India administers, while Pakistan administers the other part. Both countries claim Kashmir in full.

The resolution also bifurcated the state into two union territories, effectively bringing the region under the direct control of Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

A day later, on August 6, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, a BJP member of parliament from Ladakh, praised the move in a fiery speech in parliament, saying his community had long called for it.

“If Ladakh is today underdeveloped, then Article 370 and [the opposition] Congress party are responsible for it,” the 35-year-old leader said, drawing compliments from Modi, who called it “an outstanding speech” that presented the “aspiration of our sisters and brothers from Ladakh”.

Article 370 ensured the protection of jobs, land and culture of Jammu and Kashmir. Its accompanying provision – Article 35A – barred outsiders from buying land or applying for jobs in the semi-autonomous region.

With the special status gone, even Ladakh’s BJP leaders are furious.

“Earlier, like the people of Jammu and Kashmir divisions, we Ladakhis were also protected from outsiders by Article 35A. Now that the protection is gone after the bifurcation of the state, we are vulnerable to outsiders who will come and buy our land and take our jobs as well,” Chering Dorge, former Ladakh BJP president, told Al Jazeera.

Development Council (LAHDC), an elected body that controls public land in Leh, had been reduced to a “toothless tiger” after the region was turned into a union territory.
“Currently the state land rests with the council, not with the union territory administration and we fear that this land may be transferred to industrialists or the army without the consent of the council,” he said.

Amid such fears and anxieties, Ladakh residents are demanding constitutional safeguards.

In a surprise move last month, the BJP’s Leh unit passed a resolution in the LAHDC, seeking the protection of jobs, land rights, businesses, environment and cultural resources for the locals.

That protection, they say, can be ensured either by their inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of India’s constitution, which gives special rights to the country’s tribes or by extending Article 371, which provides a degree of autonomy to the tribal regions mainly in India’s northeast.

According to official data, 97 percent of Ladakh’s population is tribal.

India’s tribal affairs ministry also endorsed the suggestion shortly after the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was scrapped last year.

“Sixth Schedule is the only safeguard provision within Indian constitution which seriously protects the tribal communities,” president of the opposition Congress party in Leh, Tsering Namgyal Tsangpa, told Al Jazeera.

Dorge said people in Ladakh fear that New Delhi can change or pass new laws without their approval since “most of the people running the show of the union territory administration are not from Ladakh”.

A different story in Kargil
However, as the demands for the Sixth Schedule and other constitutional safeguards gain momentum in Leh, there is little support for the movement in the Kargil district of the region.

Contrary to the popularly held idea within India that Kashmir has a Muslim majority while Jammu is mostly Hindu and Ladakh is mostly Buddhist, Buddhists form 39.7 percent and Hindus 12.1 percent of Ladakh’s population.

Muslims, an overwhelming majority of them Shia, comprise 46.4 percent of Ladakh’s population.

Last year, Kargil protested against the Modi government’s decision to bifurcate Indian-administered Kashmir, fearing that Muslims would find their demands ignored under the Ladakh union territory administration.

Asghar Ali Karbalai, former state legislator from Kargil and twice the chairman of the district’s autonomous council, told Al Jazeera the people in Kargil will not support the demands for the Sixth Schedule or constitutional safeguards as demanded by the Buddhists in Leh.

“In the existing circumstances, we are not for any domicile law or anything else but a full-fledged statehood to Ladakh,” Karbalai said.

“The government of India wants to implement the RSS agenda here which is to divide the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in the name of region, religion and language,” he said.

The RSS stands for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the far-right ideological mentor of the BJP, which was formed in 1925 on the lines of the German Nazis and aims to make India an ethnic Hindu state.

Nasir Munshi, a Congress party leader in Kargil who is also the secretary of the Kargil Joint Action Committee formed to protect the region’s autonomy, accused the BJP government of ignoring their voices and only “giving importance” to Leh.

“Leaders, ministers and policymakers from New Delhi only visit Leh. Nobody is coming to Kargil and asking us what we want,” he said.

“As far as the perspective of people in Kargil is concerned, we never accepted the union territory status. It was enforced on us.”

‘Greater centralisation than decentralisation’
Recently, several political parties and social organisations in Leh came together to form the People’s Movement for Sixth Schedule for Ladakh.

On September 22, the group passed a resolution, threatening to boycott the council election in Ladakh which would be held on October 16 unless constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule are announced.

The People’s Movement resolution forced New Delhi to send senior BJP leader Ram Madhav to Leh to cool tempers.

But Madhav was welcomed in Leh on September 24 with a shutdown in protest against local BJP leader Ashok Kaul’s remarks that the resolution was “nonsense”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kaul claimed people in Leh were “very happy” with last year’s decision to remove the special status of the region and that only a few people were protesting the move.

“The central government has assured [a delegation from Leh] that Ladakh will be granted constitutional safeguards which would be more than the Sixth Schedule,” he said.

Political commentator and analyst Siddiq Wahid told Al Jazeera that people in Ladakh had demanded union territory status along with an elected legislature.

“The surprise people in Ladakh got was in the fact that the union territory was not what they thought it was. It was greater centralisation than decentralisation,” he said.

“Buddhists in Ladakh were made to feel as if they were exploited by the Kashmir Valley, which was a centrally engineered divide to segregate Ladakh from Kashmir,” Professor Sheikh Showkat, who teaches law at the Central University of Kashmir, told Al Jazeera.

“Ladakhis thought once they will get the union territory status, they will be the masters of their own land. But that has proved to be a nightmare for them because a union territory has very little power and most of the decision-making happens in New Delhi.”

Leh, Ladakh – When the Indian government last year abrogated the special status and partial autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir and divided the region into two federal territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh – the Buddhists in Ladakh cheered the move.

A year later, that sense of celebration in Ladakh has given way to uncertainty and apprehension among residents of the Himalayan desert. The euphoria over becoming a federal territory has been replaced by a fear of losing lands, jobs and identity.

Buddhists and other non-Muslim communities in the Himalayan region had long demanded a union territory status, alleging they were discriminated against by the politicians and bureaucrats in the partially autonomous Jammu and Kashmir, which was the only Muslim-majority state administered by India.

Situated at an altitude of 5,730 metres (18,799 feet) above the sea level, Ladakh is home to nearly 300,000 people living in two districts – the main city of Leh which is predominantly Buddhist, and Kargil, which is mainly Muslim.

On August 5 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which provided a degree of autonomy to the part of the disputed Kashmir region that India administers, while Pakistan administers the other part. Both countries claim Kashmir in full.

The resolution also bifurcated the state into two union territories, effectively bringing the region under the direct control of Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

A day later, on August 6, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, a BJP member of parliament from Ladakh, praised the move in a fiery speech in parliament, saying his community had long called for it.

“If Ladakh is today underdeveloped, then Article 370 and [the opposition] Congress party are responsible for it,” the 35-year-old leader said, drawing compliments from Modi, who called it “an outstanding speech” that presented the “aspiration of our sisters and brothers from Ladakh”.

Article 370 ensured the protection of jobs, land and culture of Jammu and Kashmir. Its accompanying provision – Article 35A – barred outsiders from buying land or applying for jobs in the semi-autonomous region.

With the special status gone, even Ladakh’s BJP leaders are furious.

“Earlier, like the people of Jammu and Kashmir divisions, we Ladakhis were also protected from outsiders by Article 35A. Now that the protection is gone after the bifurcation of the state, we are vulnerable to outsiders who will come and buy our land and take our jobs as well,” Chering Dorge, former Ladakh BJP president, told Al Jazeera.

Development Council (LAHDC), an elected body that controls public land in Leh, had been reduced to a “toothless tiger” after the region was turned into a union territory.

“Currently the state land rests with the council, not with the union territory administration and we fear that this land may be transferred to industrialists or the army without the consent of the council,” he said.

Amid such fears and anxieties, Ladakh residents are demanding constitutional safeguards.

In a surprise move last month, the BJP’s Leh unit passed a resolution in the LAHDC, seeking the protection of jobs, land rights, businesses, environment and cultural resources for the locals.

That protection, they say, can be ensured either by their inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of India’s constitution, which gives special rights to the country’s tribes or by extending Article 371, which provides a degree of autonomy to the tribal regions mainly in India’s northeast.

According to official data, 97 percent of Ladakh’s population is tribal.

India’s tribal affairs ministry also endorsed the suggestion shortly after the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was scrapped last year.

“Sixth Schedule is the only safeguard provision within Indian constitution which seriously protects the tribal communities,” president of the opposition Congress party in Leh, Tsering Namgyal Tsangpa, told Al Jazeera.

Dorge said people in Ladakh fear that New Delhi can change or pass new laws without their approval since “most of the people running the show of the union territory administration are not from Ladakh”.

A mosque (white building on the left) in a market in Leh. Muslims comprise 46.4 percent of Ladakh’s population [Bilal Kuchay/Al Jazeera]
A different story in Kargil
However, as the demands for the Sixth Schedule and other constitutional safeguards gain momentum in Leh, there is little support for the movement in the Kargil district of the region.

Contrary to the popularly held idea within India that Kashmir has a Muslim majority while Jammu is mostly Hindu and Ladakh is mostly Buddhist, Buddhists form 39.7 percent and Hindus 12.1 percent of Ladakh’s population.

Muslims, an overwhelming majority of them Shia, comprise 46.4 percent of Ladakh’s population.

Last year, Kargil protested against the Modi government’s decision to bifurcate Indian-administered Kashmir, fearing that Muslims would find their demands ignored under the Ladakh union territory administration.

Asghar Ali Karbalai, former state legislator from Kargil and twice the chairman of the district’s autonomous council, told Al Jazeera the people in Kargil will not support the demands for the Sixth Schedule or constitutional safeguards as demanded by the Buddhists in Leh.

“In the existing circumstances, we are not for any domicile law or anything else but a full-fledged statehood to Ladakh,” Karbalai said.

“The government of India wants to implement the RSS agenda here which is to divide the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in the name of region, religion and language,” he said.

The RSS stands for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the far-right ideological mentor of the BJP, which was formed in 1925 on the lines of the German Nazis and aims to make India an ethnic Hindu state.

Nasir Munshi, a Congress party leader in Kargil who is also the secretary of the Kargil Joint Action Committee formed to protect the region’s autonomy, accused the BJP government of ignoring their voices and only “giving importance” to Leh.

“Leaders, ministers and policymakers from New Delhi only visit Leh. Nobody is coming to Kargil and asking us what we want,” he said.

“As far as the perspective of people in Kargil is concerned, we never accepted the union territory status. It was enforced on us.”

‘Greater centralisation than decentralisation’

Recently, several political parties and social organisations in Leh came together to form the People’s Movement for Sixth Schedule for Ladakh.

On September 22, the group passed a resolution, threatening to boycott the council election in Ladakh which would be held on October 16 unless constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule are announced.

The People’s Movement resolution forced New Delhi to send senior BJP leader Ram Madhav to Leh to cool tempers.

But Madhav was welcomed in Leh on September 24 with a shutdown in protest against local BJP leader Ashok Kaul’s remarks that the resolution was “nonsense”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kaul claimed people in Leh were “very happy” with last year’s decision to remove the special status of the region and that only a few people were protesting the move.

“The central government has assured [a delegation from Leh] that Ladakh will be granted constitutional safeguards which would be more than the Sixth Schedule,” he said.

Political commentator and analyst Siddiq Wahid told Al Jazeera that people in Ladakh had demanded union territory status along with an elected legislature.

“The surprise people in Ladakh got was in the fact that the union territory was not what they thought it was. It was greater centralisation than decentralisation,” he said.

“Buddhists in Ladakh were made to feel as if they were exploited by the Kashmir Valley, which was a centrally engineered divide to segregate Ladakh from Kashmir,” Professor Sheikh Showkat, who teaches law at the Central University of Kashmir, told Al Jazeera.

“Ladakhis thought once they will get the union territory status, they will be the masters of their own land. But that has proved to be a nightmare for them because a union territory has very little power and most of the decision-making happens in New Delhi.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/14/kashmirs-leh-region-demands-constitutional-safeguards