Acknowledgements
When I joined the Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir, as a student I would often hear from the distinguished Kashmir experts that the Kashmir issue was no doubt basically a political problem, but the patterns of rule, right from the demise of the princely order, had added fuel to the fire. At that stage I could not appreciate the import of this observation. But when my PhD supervisor, Professor Gull Mohammad Wani, suggested that I work on governance in Kashmir, the significance of the observation I used to hear during my novitiate days started unfolding with my reading of secondary works followed by a variety of primary sources. Thus the intellectual seeds of this book were sown during my PhD work. Immediately after the award of my degree in early 2014, I started to build upon my research in order to transform it into a book. I approached Oxford University Press for its publication. As per their set procedure, the publisher sent the manuscript to two anonymous reviewers who, while recommending it for publication, made some significant suggestions for its improvement. While making improvements in the light of their suggestions, the work has emerged as a substantial improvement over the original one, and I have no words to express my heartfelt thanks to the reviewers who unfortunately continue to remain anonymous to me.
This work is the outcome of the immense help I received from my teachers, friends, family, and well-wishers. It is my pleasure to thank them all. Professor Gull Mohammad Wani and his family
Acknowledgements
always treated me as a family member besides having groomed me for a serious role in academics. I have no words to express my heartfelt gratitude to them.
I owe an immense debt to Professor Ayesha Jalal, Professor of History at Tufts University, USA, and Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU, for their graciousness in accepting my request to opine on this book. I am greatly thankful to Professor Mark Bevir, Professor Rod Rhodes, Professor Haley Duschinski, Professor Amit Prakash, Alexander Evans, Professor K. C. Suri, Professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Professor Rekha Chowdhary, and Professor G. R. Malik for their help and guidance.
To my teachers and colleagues at the Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir, Professor Noor Ahmad Baba, Professor Asifa Jan, Professor Ravinderjit Kour, Professor Irshad Ahmad Shah, Dr Naseema, Dr Nazir Ahmad, Dr Anjum Ara, Dr Sanjeda Warsi, and Dr Javid, my debts are infinite.
I am also indebted to all those authors whom I quoted with their gracious permission.
This work has benefited immensely from discussions with my friend Javid ul Aziz. I thank him. My friends and well-wishers Ajaz ul Haq, Dr Mehmood ur Rashid, Bilal Ahmad Bhat, Mudasir Ahmad, Altaf Para, Inam-ul-Rehman, Tanveer Habib, Shahzad Wani, Neelofer, Feroz Ahmad Wani, Abdul Rouf, Tabzeer Yaseen Sajjad, Sakeena, Shahnawaz, Showket, Imran, Qayoom, Arshid, Tanveer, Imran, Muzamil, Irfan and Shazia rendered invaluable help. Words fail me in thanking them.
Farooq and Mehraj, my students as well as friends, deserve special thanks. I am sure without their unflinching support this work would not have been possible.
Special thanks to all my students who keep pushing me to work harder. I enjoy their company the most, and their inquisitiveness makes me an unending learner.
My combative debates and discussions with my friend, philosopher, guide, and teacher, my father Professor Mohammad Ashraf Wani, former Professor of History, University of Kashmir, gave a historian’s touch to this work. I shall be failing in my duty if i do not thank Professor A. Q. Rafiqi, former Professor of History,
University of Kashmir, who not only initiated my father into the field of research, but also showed equal zeal and zest in my academic growth as well.
I am thankful to the non-teaching staff of my department, library staff of the Centre for Law and Governance, New Delhi, Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, Legislative Assembly, J&K, the Jammu and Kashmir Archives, Research and Reference Library, Department of Information J&K Government, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Srinagar, and the Coalition of Civil Society, Srinagar, for their ungrudging cooperation. I am immensely grateful to my respondents in the field, who for various reasons wanted to remain anonymous, for their valuable feedback.
I would like to thank the editorial team of Oxford University Press, New Delhi, for their cooperation.
The love and support I received from Dr Aman Ashraf, Dr Shazia, Dr Javid Ahmad, Dr Fehmeeda, Dr Gowhar, Dr Sabina, Mukhtar Bhai, Rehana Baji, Dr Javid Ahmad Bhat, Arena Baji, Abu, Khali, Dr Shajer us Shafiq Jan, Dr Deeba, Rafiqa, Mr Ajaz, Mrs and Mr Gh. Rasool Bafanda, Mrs and Mr S. N. Jan, Mrs and Mr Gh. Hassan, Mrs and Mr Ab Rehman Shah, Mrs and Mr Ab. Karim Mohand, and Mrs and Mr Mohammad Abdullah is beyond words. Asifa, Aadil, Moonis, Tuba, Touyiba, Taha, Anas, Tazkiya, Basim, Zahra, Aayesha, Faliha, Nuha, Hayda, Usman, Hurrain, Adiyan, Izan, Kulsum, and Abida were a great source of joy throughout the period of study.
Dr Shaheena, my wife, and my two little children, Mohammad Mousa and Samra Noor, bore with exemplary patience my preoccupation with this work for months together when I should have been with them. They would feel to have been compensated for their purgatory should this book is seen to have slightly added to the existing body of knowledge on the subject.
This book is for Ami and Abajan, who made me what I am.
Abbreviations
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
CID Counter Intelligence Department
CRPF Central Reserve Police Force
IADP Intensive Agricultural Development Programme
ICDP Intensive Cattle Development Project
J&K Jammu and Kashmir
JKLF Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front
KCC Kashmir Chamber of Commerce
KRBMS Kashmir Raj Bodhi Maha Sabha
LBA Ladakh Buddhist Association
MLA member of the legislative assembly
MUF Muslim United Front
PAK Pakistan Administered Kashmir
RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
YMBA Young Men’s Buddhist Association
Introduction
What Happened to Governance in Kashmir? documents the state of management of trouble-torn Kashmir by ‘client governments’.1 It is a story of engagement with political instability through the use of different instruments, strategies, and tactics to create ‘order’ in what Sanjib Baruah terms, in a different context, ‘durable disorder’.2 As the challenges are dynamic, and are expected to be the responses from an alert state, this book examines governance in the framework of the challenge-and-response continuum. In the process, the book unfolds the changes and continuities in the politics and governance of the state since 1948. It argues that since the crucial political decisions about the future of Kashmir were taken by the Indian and local leadership to the exclusion of the will of the people, opting to control the latter by sheer deception, coercion, corruption, and development, Kashmir became a smouldering volcano which finally exploded in 1989–90, with no end till date.
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is arguably the most ailing region, suffering as it does from political instability, financial crisis, and
1 This term is used by Sumantra Bose to describe the post-1947 governments of Jammu and Kashmir imposed by New Delhi. Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (New Delhi: Vistaar, 2003), 98, 190.
2 See Sanjib Baruah, Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).
WhatHappenedtoGovernanceinKashmir?Aijaz Ashraf Wani, Oxford University Press (2019). © Aijaz Ashraf Wani. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199487608.003.0001
a deficit of the salient benchmarks of good governance. The ailment is not self-generated, it is ascribed; its sources lie beyond the borders of the state. A victim of colonialism and nationalism, the state still carries the disabilities imposed upon it by British colonialism, which, to serve its colonial interests, deprived the state of its locational advantages by snapping the commercial and cultural ties that connected it with Central Asia and Russia. In the 1950s, China closed the borders of eastern Turkistan and Tibet, resulting in the complete collapse of J&K’s trade with Central Asia, Tibet, and China. The Indian state maintained the status quo with respect to closure of borders/trade routes, for it served its ‘national interests’. Moreover, J&K became a bone of contention between the two dominion states, India and Pakistan, which emerged on its borders, resulting in the closure of the remaining age-old routes (Kashmir had been connected to the world through that part of the subcontinent which came to be called Pakistan) on the one hand, and, on the other, the creation of permanent instability in the state that adversely affected every sphere, including governance. In fact, for anyone interested in studying governance in Kashmir, it is a prerequisite to bear in mind this sovereign influence on the pattern of rule in the state. Choices regarding how the state is to be ruled; whether to treat it like other states or not; how selective the government should be in following its own constitution or the Indian constitution in their respective areas of jurisdiction; which policies should be adopted in their pure form and what should be modified or left out; whether to adopt the parameters of good governance or not; if it becomes necessary to respond, then what set of parameters should be followed in letter and in spirit, what should be regarded simply as a paper tiger, and what might be overlooked altogether—all these subjective choices are determined by the quest to maintain/restore order.
Being politically a crisis state, the priority of all the governments of J&K has been to win normalcy amidst troubled conditions by following the policy of coercion and consent. While coercion was and is being used against those who represent counter-voices challenging the dominant discourse, material development and socio-cultural policies have been deployed to create social consent and establish moral leadership, with the ultimate purpose of
overcoming opposing political forces so as to establish hegemony. Coercive measures have included the use of armed forces, police, courts, and prisons, and the denial of democracy and civil liberties to liquidate or dominate antagonistic groups. Besides the use of coercive apparatuses, the state has also made use of what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has called ‘symbolic violence’,3 by marginalizing, discriminating against, and shaming ‘outsider’ groups both for reproducing its authority as well as for imposing silence, even generating consent.
Realizing that mere dependence on coercive and authoritarian means to enforce rule seriously compromises the credibility of the government besides producing a deceptive peace, it was thought by the policy pundits (the group associated with Kashmir policy, headed by Nehru himself during the critical one and a half decades, 1947–62) that both the centre and the state governments should in unison shore up rule in Kashmir through whatever ideological, economic, cultural, social, political, and legal resources they had at their disposal to resist/create social consent. State-led developmentalism was also favoured by the international environment of the time. ‘Development’ had become the major international concern since the emergence of the ‘Third World’.4 How to bring about speedy socio-economic changes to improve the quality of life of the people in the Third World assumed significance for the leaders of newly independent countries. Among these leaders, Nehru and Sukarno were at the forefront. International donor agencies and the US were also concerned about the development of the new nations, as they were apprehensive about the communist influence
3 Symbolic violence takes the form of taste judgements, where outsiders are marginalized and shamed; of forms of physical behaviour and the ‘way of living, where some feel confident and others feel awkward.… In these cases, a ruling power will see its authority reproduced, a subaltern group will aspire to the value and tastes of its superiors…’. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), quoted in Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci (Routledge, 2006), 52.
4 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Mohit Bhattacharya, eds, The Governance Discourse: A Reader (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 45–6.
4 What Happened to Governance in Kashmir?
in poor countries. Thus, they mobilized resources and offered the services of their development pundits to advise ‘underdeveloped’ countries in their pursuit of planned change and development. The earliest phase after decolonization is, therefore, called ‘developmentalism’, connoting an emphasis on development as the essential means of modernizing and improving the condition of people.5
Just as the development discourse of donor agencies and the US was informed by politics, India’s development policy towards Kashmir is also informed by politics. Development became a tool to manage the state. Irrespective of the changes in the governments and ideologies that have ruled at the centre, there has been consistency in the political rhetoric of the Indian leadership that development will bring normalcy in Kashmir. Parallel to the flow of aid and the fanning out of development pundits from the US and donor agencies to Third World countries, the J&K government was provided liberal aid as well as planners, technicians, and subject experts by the central government to guide the state government in its pursuit of planned change and development. This policy received great impetus during the prime ministership of Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad, to whom Nehru entrusted the job of restoring peace, parting ways with Sheikh Abdullah’s development discourse within the framework of autonomous status for J&K.
Post-1947 Governance Model
Notwithstanding the federal character of the Indian state, the parameters of governance at both the national and the state level flow from the Indian constitution and from dynamic national policies which change with the times, under endogenous as well as exogenous pressures. It is binding upon state governments to follow the centre’s imperatives at least in those spheres which are considered critical for the nation-state’s needs. Although J&K has its own constitution, there is fundamental uniformity in the
5 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Mohit Bhattacharya, eds, The Governance Discourse: A Reader (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 45–6.
essentials of the two constitutions, besides the fact that most of the central laws now stand applied to J&K. Up to the beginning of the 1980s, the model of governance adopted by India under the domineering influence of Nehru was informed by Indian socialism, characterized by a mixed economy, the ‘licence-permit-quota raj’, a maximalist state, paternalistic behaviour of the government, inward-looking policy, planned development, and a high degree of centralization. The government in Kashmir also followed the same model even during autonomous rule (1948–53), evidently because the Naya Kashmir (New Kashmir) Programme drafted by National Conference during the freedom movement was also informed by a progressive ideology. Indeed, J&K took a lead in implementing its predominantly socialist-oriented Naya Kashmir Programme. The abolition of feudalism, nationalization of important industries, cooperative movement, the policy of license-permit-quota-raj (LPQRP), the promotion of public sector, and the policy of softsubsidies, soft taxation, soft credit and soft administrative-prices, expanded service sector beyond requirements and other measures espoused by socialism and followed by the governments in Kashmir have to be understood as much in the context of the public policy guidelines of the central government and the financial support received from the latter for its implementations as in the context of J&K’s own constitution and public policy.
The state-centric approach to governance was also necessitated by the compulsions of a fragmented nation, where national unity was not organic but state-facilitated and ‘manufactured’.6 Kashmir being a mini-India with regard to its sub-national diversity, the state-centric approach to governance became a compulsion here too. Moreover, both the Congress and the National Conference had identical ideological moorings, which, inter alia, favoured a centralized polity with the state as an overarching authority. ‘The ideals of citizenship’, says Srirupa Roy ‘were also articulated in similar state-centered terms.’7 ‘Nehruvian India’s most frequently
6 Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 19.
7 Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 20.
What Happened to Governance in Kashmir?
invoked figure was that of the “infantile” citizen and his need for state tutelage and protection in order to realize the potentials to citizenship,’8 placing the state at the heart of individual and natural life. The Nehruvian policy remained vigorously in vogue until Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980. She introduced some pro-liberalization and market-friendly economic reforms, alongside centralizing the party structure around a personalized and increasingly populist mode of leadership.9
The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a radical transformation in the role of government, propounded by neo-liberal theorists and promoted by capitalist democracies and their controlled global institutions. To overcome the fiscal crisis faced by advanced capitalist democracies, neoliberal theorists and management gurus conceived of the crisis and believed that the economic crisis would be overcome by changing the role of government from rowing to steering. Thus, calls for a minimal state, a stateless state, rolling back the state, reinventing the state, more governance and less government, network governance, and the like became the dominant notes for neoliberal theorists, leading to the public sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. With this, ‘governance’ came to be used as a specific term to describe the shift from a hierarchical bureaucracy towards a greater use of markets, quasimarkets, and networks,10 especially in the delivery of public services. Experience has, however, shown that state and government
8 Srirupa Roy, Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 20.
9 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Francine R. Frankel, India’s Political Economy, 1947–1977: The Gradual Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1998); Stuart Corbridge and John Harriss, Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy (London: Polity Press, 2000).
10 See Mark Bevir, ed., Public Governance, vol. I (London: Sage, 2007), 2; Rod Rhodes, Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity, and Accountability (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), 15; Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes, Interpreting British Governance (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2003), 55–6; Anne Mette Kjaer, Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 10–11.
continue to be central to the governance process.11 Even in those countries where neoliberal reforms have been quite intensive, the state has ‘scarcely rolled back at all’.12 Emphasizing the centrality of state in governance, Jon Pierre and Guy Peters argue that, ‘despite persistent rumours to the contrary, [the state] remains the key political actor in society and the predominant expression of collective interests’.13 Mark Bevir, who favours the post-1980s definition of ‘governance’, is however not averse to using it as a blanket term for all patterns of rule. He says:
More generally still governance can be used to refer all patterns of rule, including the kind of hierarchical state that is often said to have existed before the public sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s…. However, if we are to use governance in this general way, perhaps we need to describe the changes in the state since the 1980s using an alternative phrase such as ‘the new governance’.14
Apart from the arguments put forth by scholars supporting a statecentric, relational approach to governance,15 I have special reason to agree with this thesis because, in Kashmir, the hierarchical governance structure continues to hold its ground, and the state has maintained its position as the pivotal player in framing and implementing policies and strategies to respond to challenges. In the difficult conditions of Kashmir, the state has assumed even more power, to the extent of forming part of the backdrop of everyday
11 See Stephen Bell and Andrew Hindmoor, Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
12 Mark Bevir, ‘Governance’, in Encyclopedia of Governance, ed. Mark Bevir (London: Sage, 2007), 366; Mark Bevir, Democratic Governance, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 31.
13 Jon Pierre and Guy Peters, Governance, Politics and the State (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 25; also see Bell and Hindmoor, Rethinking Governance, 2–3.
14 Bevir, ‘Governance’, 364–5.
15 The ‘state-centric relational approach’ has been used by Bell and Hindmoor (Bevir 2007), by which they mean that far from receding, states are in fact enhancing their capacity to govern by extending top-down controls and developing closer ties with non-governmental sectors.
life. Governance through markets, associations, and community engagement is peripheral.
However, by a ‘state-centric, relational approach’ to governance, I do not mean the centrality of the state in governance process to the exclusion of the environment in which the state functions. Indeed, it would be naïve to take this position. Therefore, I have also taken note of the importance of situating the priorities and actions of governments within the context of their own respective environments, which in today’s world are constituted by a mix of endogenous and exogenous pressures and opportunities. This approach is informed by the state-in-society discourse, which maintains that while states are responsive to social interests, they also retain some capacity to act independently against powerful social actors.16 True, the will of the state and the priorities of the government do not always capture the interests of the society, not least in cases where, like Kashmir, there is a struggle for hegemony between the opposing narratives represented by the state and other powerful social actors. Yet, in such cases too, forging alliances with different sections of society by using power and patronage to disarticulate and disempower their opponents fits into the state’s priorities. For example, in the difficult situation of Kashmir, where the support of the Muslims has always been crucial for the legitimacy of Indian rule, the central government employed two main strategies to win over the Muslims. One was to cultivate and make alliances with the ideologically favourable Muslim elite, and install some of them as heads of government to generate consent in the community, with the belief that it will somehow satisfy their psychological instinct of ‘self-rule’. This policy was also aimed to draw mainstream discourse closer to the people by co-opting political society in the localities through the Muslim governing class.17 Further, to impoverish its opponents
16 See J. Migdal, ‘The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination’, in State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World, eds J. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and V. Shue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 7–36.
17 By ‘political society’ I mean those influential sections of the society who because of their comparatively better economic, social and cultural position have always been coopted by the state through patronage in order to establish its hegemony.
politically, the state, within the limits of its financial and other constraints, embarked on the policy of satisfying the ‘acceptable’ aspirations of the society to isolate the rebellious instinct of the people from the basic priorities of life, to preclude this ‘instinct’ from assuming violent expression. It is also observed that the state uses culture and ideology, by imposing its own meanings on them to reinforce the state narrative and weaken the counternarrative, thus perpetuating its hegemony. The political institutions, tools, strategies, and tactics employed by governments have been crucial in setting constraints on human subjectivity and ensuring the implementation of ‘official goals’; but at the same time, changing pressures from within and without have continuously modified (if not making structural changes in) the approach to governance. Indeed, governance in Kashmir is underlined by change in the broader framework of continuity (political and military status quo) in response to shifting endogenous and exogenous pressures.
Moreover, as articulated by Migdal, there is no human society where one incredibly coherent and complex organization exercises an extraordinary hegemony of thought and action over all the social formations intersecting that territory. The state, for its own survival, is always in constant interaction, negotiation, conflict, and conciliation with multiple groupings and power centres, making the state ultimately a site of contradictory practices and disparate alliances.18 It is these multiple and contending structures, actors, and relationships that make up the modern state. The variety of encounters produces a state with different faces and ‘languages of stateness’,19 a puzzling simultaneity—a state that is simultaneously all-encompassing and limited, omnipresent and non-totalizing, a ‘ruling state’ and a ‘serving state’, invincible and fragile,
18 For details see Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How State and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
19 Thomas Hansen and Finn Stepputat, eds, States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
What Happened to Governance in Kashmir?
timeless and new.20 The ‘ambiguities of domination’,21 rather than uniform application of state power, is also demonstrated by varied and disparate encounters across governance levels.22 Encounters with the state have also varied significantly between ‘peaceful’ and ‘disturbed’ areas. Representations of state, nation, and citizen that emerge from ‘disturbed’ areas are quite different from those in ‘peaceful’ areas. The peaceful areas are the ‘core’ areas whose will is represented by the state, whereas ‘disturbed’ areas are the pockets on the margins of the state, in the sense that they constitute what Carolyn Nordstrom refers to as the ‘shadows’, 23 places existing as part of the formal state, but also excluded from it in terms of the violent realities of everyday life, the legal and extra-legal networks that support them, withdrawal of rights, and a series of invisible corrupting, messy, and profane strategies to silence dissent and perpetuate the dominant discourse.
From the early 1950s onwards, the situation in Kashmir has gone from bad to worse, to the extent that one is reminded of Philip Spratt’s suggestion for the solution of the Kashmir problem in the early 1950s as one which should be ‘tinged with morality, but more so with economy and prudence’, and in which ‘material interests should supersede ideological ones’.24 In this book, I look for the reasons why the policies of the government have not yielded the desired results. Indeed, the present is the product of the past, and becomes intelligible only in the light of the latter. The different trajectories and processes under way between
20 Roy, Beyond Belief, 21.
21 See Lisa Wadeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
22 J. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and V. Shue, eds, State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3.
23 Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 34–9.
24 Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of World’s Largest Democracy (New Delhi: Picador, 2008), 259–60.
1947 and the 1980s have made Kashmir a smouldering volcano, which erupted in radical politics in the late 1980s. It was a period of engagement and negotiation with political instability through the development of different instruments, strategies, and tactics which created new challenges, but, except for cosmetic responses to these challenges, the governments held its ground. No doubt at the same time it performed important services for society, and it appeared to be a blessing. But ultimately it has been proved that these were only Kashmiri summers, masking autumn and presaging winter, for coercion and ‘development’ could not subsume the effects of idolizing outworn institutions, policies, and strategies.
As governance is a vast topic, I had to be necessarily selective in choosing only a few capital areas, issues, and measures which are important especially in the context of my subject bias. The work is based on primary sources, fieldwork, interviews, and the author’s personal knowledge and experience gained as a ‘participant observer’ in contemporary Kashmir.
The first chapter, which contextualizes governance in Kashmir, considers the role of various factors that shaped and continue to shape the nature and character of governance in Kashmir. Among these, mention may be made of the impact of the Kashmir dispute, the identity politics of the state, the legacy of the authoritarian, feudal, and exclusivist princely order, the ideological orientation of the freedom movement, Kashmir’s special position and its contestation, policy interventions from the centre, financial crisis, and the changing environment which characterize the period.
Being the main sponsor of the Naya Kashmir Programme, Sheikh Abdullah’s brief reign of a little over five years (1948–53) is characterized by the process of speedy implementation of the programme. However, notwithstanding the revolutionary changes in agrarian relations and other aspects, the condition of the common people worsened, and the whole period became mired in controversies and conflicts leading to disillusionment among the people as well as the dismissal of the Sheikh. The second chapter revisits this period by examining the extent to which the Sheikh succeeded in replacing the old with the ‘new’ Kashmir.
The forces representing religion and region in the Hindudominated Jammu districts and among the Buddhists of Leh raised
12 What Happened to Governance in Kashmir?
a banner of revolt against the Sheikh-led National Conference government, calling it ‘pro-Kashmiri Muslim rule’. The nature of the revolt clashed sharply with the ideology of Abdullah that had prompted him to prefer India over Pakistan. Having become disillusioned with Indian secularism, on which he had pinned high expectations, and with India’s constitutional promises of sovereignty, the Sheikh voiced his disappointment publicly and drifted towards a position in support of plebiscite, which led to his widely condemned dismissal. ‘For maintaining hold over power’, says Gramsci, ‘the group in power has to be constantly alert to the volatile demands of the dominated and to the shifting contexts within which it exerts its authority.’25 The deposition of Sheikh Abdullah and the imposition of Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad in 1953 created a storm in Kashmir, followed by the formation of the Plebiscite Front under the patronage of Abdullah. At the same time, the central government felt the urgency to further integrate Kashmir with India, which the popular leader Abdullah had resisted. Thus emerged the need for Gramsci’s ‘expansive hegemony’, to obtain the consent of the great mass of the people willingly and actively to the ruling establishment. The third chapter engages with the steps taken by Bakhshi under the patronage of the central government to change the tide in favour of the Indian nation-state.
Yet, some of the policy instruments, especially the curbing of civil liberties and promoting corruption and nepotism, did not go down well with the hegemony project, as goonda raj and the misuse of power evoked strong reaction both within and outside Kashmir. Most importantly, however, Bakhshi showed diffidence in cooperating with the further integrationist moves of the centre. Hence it was regarded as necessary to change the leadership in Kashmir and to install G. M. Sadiq, whose alternative views were clearly known. The fourth chapter examines the nature of and the changes in governance during the period of Sadiq and the extent of his success in a hostile environment, to which however
25 A. Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks (London: International Publishers, 1971), 58.
he also added fuel, notwithstanding his celebration of ‘liberalism’ and clean government.
The failure of liberalization, state-led development, and clean government under Sadiq in neutralizing dissident voices further convinced the central leadership that peace in Kashmir was hanging by the eyelids. This realization, together with the pulls and pressures exerted by Sheikh Abdullah, led to the Indira–Abdullah Accord of 1975. With the coming back of Abdullah to power, Kashmir witnessed almost a decade of ‘peace’. It seemed that the internal dimension of conflict, at least, had been buried for all time to come. However, these hopes were belied. Around the same time, a new voice was born out of the debris of the buried Plebiscite Front, culminating in armed resistance in 1989–90. The fifth chapter delineates the processes that had resulted in what was only a short-lived peace.
The Place
Kashmir—the term by which I have denominated the place of my study—is the popular name for that part of the erstwhile princely state of J&K which is administered by India. It comprises three distinct regions—the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, and Ladakh. Like the Lahore Darbar under the Sikhs in Punjab, the seat of power in J&K during the reign of the Dogras was known as the ‘Kashmir Darbar’, giving an international name—Kashmir—to the state, by which it continues to be known.
The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir came into existence in 1846, a creation of British imperialism.26 The three main administrative entities within the princely state of J&K included the province of Jammu, the province of Kashmir, and the provinces of Ladakh and Baltistan. There were other distinct political entities which, as a result of their geographical location, had to formulate some type of political relationship with the princely state, like the Gilgit Agency, which the British attached to J&K for political
26 Huttenback, A. Kashmir and the British Raj (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
What Happened to Governance in Kashmir?
convenience in 1889, and which the Dogra state leased back to them in 1935. Poonch was brought under the formal control of J&K in 1936.
The state was balkanized in 1947 following a war between the two newly created dominions of India and Pakistan, creating Indian Administered Kashmir or J&K, and Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK) or ‘Azad Kashmir’. Later, Pakistan ceded some part of Kashmir to China in a boundary agreement. Both countries have been staking their claims to the erstwhile princely state, making J&K a disputed territory, and resulting in three wars between India and Pakistan besides the continued deficit of peace in Kashmir— the land which was once known as paradise on earth.
The Indian-administered state of J&K is not only a conglomerate of three distinct regions—Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh—but there are regions within each region marked off from one another by geography, culture, history, economy, and politics. According to the 2011 census, Islam is practised by 68.31 per cent of the total population, followed by Hinduism, practised by 28.43 per cent. The state is home to other minorities as well—Sikhs (1.87 per cent), Christians (0.28 per cent), Buddhists (0.89 per cent), and so on. Major ethnic groups of the state include Kashmiris (mostly living in the Kashmir Valley), Gujjars/Bakarwals, Paharis (spread both in the Kashmir and Jammu regions), Dogras (concentrated mostly in the Jammu region), and Ladakhis (living in the Ladakh region). In terms of religion, the Kashmir Valley is predominantly Muslim (around 97 per cent of the population). All the 10 districts of the Kashmir region are Muslim dominated. The population of the Jammu region is 60 per cent Hindu, 36 per cent Muslim, and 4 per cent Sikh. Hindus form the majority in 4 out of 10 districts, while in 6 districts Muslims are in the majority. As far as the Ladakh region is concerned, 50 per cent of its population is Muslim, 44 per cent Buddhist, and 6 per cent Hindu. Buddhists form the majority in Leh district and Muslims in the Kargil district of the region.
E. F. Knight, the late-nineteenth-century European traveller, titled his travelogue on Kashmir Where Three Empires Meet. 27
27 E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1905).
Though by this he meant that the princely state was strategically a place of interest to the British, Chinese, and Russians during the period of intense colonial rivalries, he was also referring to another fact having enduring relevance: Kashmir is hemmed in by many countries, namely, China, Central Asian states, Afghanistan, Iran, India, and Pakistan.
