From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. The Supreme Court today upheld the Centers move to scrap special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution. And all of them said yes, abrogating Article 370 was constitutional. It did not violate Indian laws. The judgment has argued that Article 370 is a temporary and transitory provision of the Constitution.
A little over four years after the decision was approved by Parliament, the Supreme Court cleared the abrogation of Article 370, which took away the special status granted to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In parts of Jammu, Ladakh, Delhi and Mumbai and other parts of India, there were celebrations by BJP workers and other groups. But Shakir Meer, who's in Srinagar, says there was a calm in Kashmir that was in keeping with people's expectations of the verdict.
On the December 7th, when it was announced that Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on Article 370, people were already kind of apprehending that something like this would happen. You know, I spoke to people a couple of days ago and they say we already know what is going to happen and we have resigned to the circumstances. There was already a concern that something like this would happen. People were already resigned to this verdict. So that's why we see no
protests. We see no Section 144. We saw nothing like that. There was just a small, a smattering of deployment here at some of the very sensitive parts of Srinagar. That's it. Even the police was sure that nothing like that would happen. And also because prior to the verdict, there was a sweeping clampdown in which police arrested a lot of people who it suspected would be kind of potential troublemakers. They also made sure that no trouble or no law, no
disturbances there. Kashmiri newspapers since 2019 are already not publishing critical stuff. They're already sort of muted in that sense. They haven't really commented, applauded or even sort of expressed any kind of discontent or anger about this. They have just reported what has simply happened without standing on judgment of whether it was right or wrong.
The Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandra Chud said the abrogation of Article 370 was just another step in a series of constitutional orders aimed at the deeper integration of Jammu and Kashmir into the Union of India. It noted that the legislation
wasn't an exceptional step. The bench also refused to get into the events that led to the imposition of President's Rule in Jammu and Kashmir, which was one of the main points raised by the petitioners opposed to the abrogation of Article 370. Shakir Mir, who you heard earlier, writes on Kashmir for Times of India Plus and has written over the years on the situation in Kashmir since Article 370 cease to exist.
In today's episode, he's in conversation with my colleague Jayaraj Singh and me about the situation in Kashmir 4 years since the state lost its special status and where things are at presently. Shakur says that in the run up to the constitutional provision being nullified, the state's residents were completely in the dark, at least when it came to
communications. When the questions were put to the governor at the times, at the Palmalik as to what was going to happen, he would say no. I can assure you that Article 370 won't be repealed. So he those assurances are there on the record How do? You see the present situation of human. Management. It's normal. Only rumor mongering is going on. It's a very routine thing here. If you sneeze at Lal Chowk, it becomes an explosion when it comes here.
So unnecessary panic is being created by some wasted interest and especially some political parties. Otherwise there is nothing new. But of course, people were in a sense, not expecting something like that would happen. There were different kind of rumors going around. Some would say that Kashmir will be reduced to a Union territory, but Article 370 would be preserved.
Others would say that capital would be permanently shifted to Jammu and Senegal would be deprived of that Individual Kashmiris were believing individual theories about what was going to happen. You were unsure what was going to happen and then suddenly we see the mobile connectivity going out, landline phones were not working, Internet stopped working and you had paramilitary forces deployed everywhere outside every house in in Kashmir.
So and the next day you realize we watch televisions and and we see what was happening. Article 370 was being completely revoked and every provision of the Indian Constitution was now applicable to the Jammu and Kashmir.
Anuchek timso sattar ke. Sabi Khan Lagunahi Honge Siva Khan ke. Since Article 370 was struck down, one argument that has been made is that there's been normalcy in the Kashmir Valley. Shakur admits that there have been visible changes in the Union territory since 2019, but says it has come at a cost. Definitely. I would definitely call it normal. It's relatively good. We have increasing tourism. We have more and more private players coming up and setting up
hotels. Acres of land have been given to the industrial estates so that new industries could be set up, although they haven't yet materialized. But the land acquisition has happened. The Smart Steep project has given a sort of a new lease of life to the state, especially the main state areas that were previously the hotbeds of pro freedom separatist sentiments like Mysuma. You wouldn't really recognize that Mysuma is the same mysuma where JKLF would take
processions. It's absolutely different place today, but my point is that this normalcy is also happening at the cost of not giving political freedoms to the people. There have been questions raised about the freedom of speech and media freedom in Kashmir since 2019. Take for instance the case of Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah, who was arrested in February 2022.
Shah was arrested and booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, or UAPA and Public Safety Act or PSA, allegedly for an article he wrote well before 2019. He was granted bail by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in November with a court criticizing the order for his arrest. Shakey says that this has been a pattern since 2019, and like he said earlier, there is little commentary about the decision to nullify the region's special status or the Supreme Court's endorsement.
Post 2019, we have seen the sustained clampdown. The manner in which the government is preventing this sentiment from emerging is only through tough laws like UAP and PSA. These are being used to stifle any argument about Article 370. Like Shakir said earlier, there is greater normalcy in parts of Kashmir, which is perhaps exemplified by tourism in the state. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had said earlier this year that there was a 350% rise in tourist footfall compared to 2022.
In 2022, the number of tourists visiting the state was said to be 1.22 crore, which itself was a new record. Shakir says that while Kashmir is featuring in a lot more pictures and reels, the spike in tourism doesn't mean a booming regional economy. There are deals on Instagram, on Twitter that Kashmir is recovering. Its normal army conditions are calling celebrities, inviting them and touring them around Kashmir to portray a sense of normalcy. When it comes to optics, it's
going really well. There's an impression that everything is going really well. But overall, tourism contributes to only 6% of Kashmir's GDP, J&K GDP. Even if tourism is exceedingly doing well, it won't still change the economy radically. Shakir says what drives the economy of the Union territory is agriculture and some very specific crops, but those have been hit by a variety of
factors. What contributes to the economy of Kashmir is is agriculture, particularly the horticulture sector, the apple, the beer walnut almonds. Kashmir is lurching from crisis to crisis in this case because firstly, there's a climate change, early rainfall, early snowfall is devastating the crops, which has happened since 2014 consistently. Secondly, we have seen that the Union government has taken 2 specific measures.
This year. They waived the surcharges over apple imports from Iran and US. So that makes those apples which are higher quality of course relatively cheaper when they come to the Indian markets which makes Kashmiri apple very expensive and that discourages the buyer from purchasing the Kashmiri apple. We are not in a position to say what will happen, but over the last 2-3 years, we have seen Kashmiri economy has received one blow after another.
First it was shut down due to abrogation of Article 370, then it was the COVID. After that it was the early snowfall and now it is Indian government waiving surcharges over the imported apples. And this is this is not good news for the Kashmiri economy overall. Since the abrogation of Article 370, the government has also pointed out that the number of terror attacks in Kashmir have fallen and that is borne out by the numbers as well.
But Shakir, who has been documenting the changing face of militancy in the region, says the way militancy operates in Kashmir is quite different even from last decade. Now, militants are no longer announcing that they will join this organization. What happens is that teenagers from 14 to 18, they're recruited through shadowy social Media Group groups on WhatsApp, Telegram. They identify these young boys and they recruit them, and then
they give them activities. First, they are assessed based on on the extent that they are willing to participate, followed by the handler giving them the pistols and then then telling them to assassinate a particular person. It could be a policeman, It could be a person from the minority community, a pundit or a Sikh. That person assassinates his victim and then drops the weapon
where he had picked it from. And when the police investigates it, it finds that neither that person has any record of adverse activities. That person does not even know who he was talking to. He has a mobile device. But the person is somebody based in Pakistan, he's not in Kashmir. They can't arrest him, so this
is a shadowy militancy. Shaker says the worry for security forces is that the shadowy nature of militancy makes it harder to track, which in turn also makes it difficult for them to assess how much it has spread. The young boys were supposed to be over ground workers, which is the motivators and sympathizers of of militants are now directly taking part in the militant operations.
So this is something that had changed over the years and this shadowy militancy board is more dangerous because we're not able to by certain what number of people are involved. You don't know what the recruitment is, how many people potentially could join such a program.
It could be vast number. While I was working on a story for Times of India Plus on hybrid militants, one cop in the downtown area told me when they killed a very dreaded militant named Abbas Sheikh who was responsible for a lot of attacks. They found in his device that he he was connected to at least 25 to 40 over ground workers in a small two square kilometer area in in state of. So that gives you an idea of how secretive as well as very complex and dangerous the situation could be.
We can't really say it with certainty, but we get these these hints, these impressions that something is going on at the ground and it's very disturbing article. 370, which granted special status to Kashmir, has always been portrayed outside Kashmir as an unnecessary agreement between the Indian state and the region. 1 which had long outlived its
utility. But within Kashmir, Shakir says the provision in the constitution was viewed as an endorsement of Kashmir's politics for self governance that has existed since before independence. He says Kashmir's politics before 2019 always centered around whether it was affecting Kashmir's special status. It has been the political minister for the last 7 decades.
Every big or small developments that has happened in Kashmir throughout all these decades is linked to the political process of emboldening Article 370 or diluting it.
Every big political process whether it's deposition of Sheikh Abdullah, installation of Bakshibullah Muhammad, another chief Minister, his removal from power and then installation of Khajiasham, Sudan as a Chief Minister, every Chief Minister being evolved and removed has actually been about Article 370, either diluting it or expanding its scope or completely revoking it. So you can understand what it means for Kashmiris. Even votes are being sought to
make sure that Kashmiris has maximum autonomy. Top leaders of the state, like former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, were kept in detention for weeks after the abrogation of Article 370. They have since formed the Gupta alliance but have had no state polls to contest. Shakir Meer says the biggest political leaders of the state have expressed their disappointment with the Supreme Court's verdict.
The majority of political parties have actually expressed their disapproval of the judgement. Some have done it very implicitly. Some are very overt and explicit in articulating their disapprovals, Omar Abdullah said. A very significant thing. He said it took decades to BJP to arrive at the stage where it could actually abrogate Article 317. Even if Supreme Court disappointed us, they would still mobilize and keep working and arrive at a time which is conducive enough when Article
370 could be restored again. She posted a pre recorded message of herself saying that this is assassination of the country's soul. While the Gupta alliance has had little to do since 2019, the Supreme Court has set a deadline to conduct elections in the state by the end of September 2024. Shakir says that since 2019, multiple new political parties and leaders have emerged in the
state. New political formations are coming up, but these are the political formations who have set of sort of predetermined agenda. We would know what they they will say. They won't come up with something that is really unexpected. This is something that that is very conducive to what union government expects of people, political parties here. 1 Abdullah has pledged to boycott elections because he wouldn't want to be a chief minister of a
union territory. You know, we have seen new faces coming up like Mehboob, his daughter Umar Abdullah. He introduced his two sons to the politics recently and yesterday one of his sons actually tweeted about the article 370. So these are the new small developments that are taking place as far as the politics is
concerned. But given there's been widespread disappointment about the manner in which the abrogation of Article 370 was carried out in Kashmir, Shakur says it only makes the political decisions of people and their leaders harder to predict. The simmering discontent was already there. People were already apprehending that this will happen, but somewhere they felt that maybe it still has a final round to pass. It still has this last hurdle to cross and let's see what will
happen. But Supreme Court put a stamp of approval and now what I see is that the simmering discontent with acquire a new centrality, slowly stream rolling these decisions over Kashmir without taking somebody on board, without having a conversation with the local politicians in the longer and only generate more and more political resentment. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Anuja Singh. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us.
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