Echoes in Vacuum

6 September 2019

Yesterday a veteran wrote a piece that was nostalgic about his days as a young officer in Kashmir, circa 1969. In his prosaic and pertinent style he drove a simple nail home, that Kashmir was singular as a province, that its citizens did have a claim for being regarded with deference, and that in the larger scheme India had failed Kashmir, by not emotionally integrating with it. He left all this said and quite unsaid as well, his singular punch had been whether India could actually hold 8 million Kashmiris to ransom for the actions of a few hundred militants?(https://theprint.in/opinion/how-this-general-saw-kashmir-50-yrs-ago-no-signs-of-fundamentalism-army-had-peoples-trust/286888/)
The splash this piece made was not on account of his portrayal and the manner of how he threw our pretence under the bus! It was as if by reading his essay, one had to take a position, it provoked one to either feel ill at ease with the lockdown now well beyond a month, which is amply aware to the Supreme Court as it makes provisions for daughters to visit mothers, as it makes provisions for a politician to be shifted from the Valley to AIIMS for treatment; or to ask why should the Kashmiri feel special, why should not the Assamese, Mizo, Naga, Sikkimese, Arunachali, Tamil or Malayalee not feel similarly special!
So while the powers that be can pat themselves for the supreme sleight with which the hand was played, the element of actual surprise in which they acted on Article 370, observers feel that perhaps after that the government appears to have lost its way. Certainly while many think this is a DeMo redux, I feel that unlike DeMo there is no flurry of orders, tweaks in how the whole exchange of notes of some denominations were to operate through the banking system, for Article 370, there is a steady slam approach, barring the false note of a Governor’s invite to Mr Rahul Gandhi. Till now, first the NSA went for a field trip, followed by Mr Amit Shah’s meeting with Panchayat leaders. There has been a steady relaxation of restrictions across many police precincts, which now make clear that it is the Valley alone that is under lock down. Land lines are working, Jammu and Leh are actually back to normal, it is also clear that Army managed frontier tehsils are also normal, only mobile networks are not back on. Urban centres in the Valley are where the showdown is anticipated and the preemptive set of censors for communication and movement operate.
Now NRC has unfolded to suggest that the Assam bureaucracy has stuck to the original AASU agitation’s charter. It is clear that the move is secular, anti Bengali and not what the BJP had been canvassing as a Anti Bangladeshi/Anti Muslim drive. So with about 2 million suggested aliens, out of which some quarter million as Muslims, the NRC in its present form appears unpalatable to the ruling dispensation. Mr Hemanta Biswa Sharma the Congress import into the BJP, and a prominent minister in Assam Government made it clear that according to his adoptive party, he had it on authority that no NRC is acceptable if it extinguished the hope of Hindus, that Hindus had no other homeland but India to go to. Now local people feel his remarks qualify that some new rule may come about that would allow the Bengali Hindus to remain as citizens, which meant that the Gurkhas left out, found their sponsor from Ms Mamata Banerjee the CM of next door West Bengal!
Unlike DeMo, unlike Article 370, the NRC is one where even the highest court of the country is deeply involved. For in their observations, the SC have actually endorsed the notions fanned by mainstream politicians, that crores of Bangladeshi illegals are squatting in Assam and hence the NRC was a mandated exercise! So with SC supervision, this NRC was finally completed and the lists hosted on the website of the State as directed.
Imagine this is a scenario when contesting facts have been laid out in the open, discussed thread bare and debated in the highest forum of the Supreme Court, which has now proven way short of estimates. So what reliance should we permit for say operations of the UAPA law which now accepts ‘sealed cover’ system? With several cases of exonerations of accused in NIA Special Courts of Muslims, all the more reason why the UAPA must never function with evidence that is ‘tainted’ by the cloak of secrecy- the sealed cover system is just that. If only the government prosecutor offers this to the judge and the judge merely to peruse the record, without allowing the accused to argue their case based on the evidence against them, then it would be blatantly a mistrial. (https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/jurisprudence-of-the-judicial-rubber-stamp/article29334498.ece)
So can we operate in a vacuum? It is not just what is happening in Assam or Kashmir or under the UAPA that is suggestive of a vacuum, it is in general how issues of even economic nature are dealt with in public discourse that makes us feel that there is perhaps a vacuum under operation. Still, I feel that there is no need for alarm, because, by nature, Indians have an innate empathy, that they have a real feel for the truth and the noble, and that the onslaught on our sensibilities will be short lived and resistance to it, is right around the corner. Or we could have a new mandate that speaks eloquently about the larger or greater good, that would justify this vacuum as a show of pantomime, of phantoms to force us to act in a way that would offer more latitude to the powers that be. The Hindutva Right Wing is not alone in thinking that what ever censorship and centralisation of power that has come about in the last six years is reflective of the larger mandate from a people tired of the chaos of diverse opinions, who feel that the diseased polity could do with a dose of sterile environment for a bit.
A way of life that enjoins a few days of fasting and much more of feasting should offer a clue to how Indians will react as the vacuum extends itself. The economic hardships enforced on the pretext that the system is being decluttered, de-clogged, by evicting the corrupt, by banishing the crooks, by jailing the brokers and middlemen, is a narrative that is on its last legs already. So likewise one expects that these dietary restrictions, attire restrictions, personal space restrictions, these efforts to condition Indian hearts and minds will soon tire out the people. ‘For how long can you keep showing them the phantoms of Kashmir, Pakistan, Muslims and cows?’ is the question on the minds of many commentators. If you are a person with roots to the ground, you can yourself know, how the mood is altering and it is just 100 days from the Verdict Day of the Mammoth Mandate!
As the moon lander from ISRO Vikram marks with its imprint the lunar surface tonight, many Indians who think of the Hindi heart land as ‘mainland’, and many Indians who are comfortable in their entitlement as Indians will be in euphoria. The National Mood will mark this momentous occasion with the grandstanding it deserves. Let us not forget, this is country that has still not got many basic things right, and still it has dreamers and engineers who made their date with the nearest object in space, our moon! Likewise let us not forget, that Indians are capable of overcoming rifts, abridging chasms and creating social coalitions when the time demands it. Listen to the echoes in the vacuum!