Suhasini Haidar<\/p>\n
In the days that followed the [Indian] government\u2019s decision to amend Article 370 and split the State into two Union Territories, there was a deafening silence in Kashmir. A total curfew had been imposed, thousands were arrested, many of them held captive in their own homes, internet and mobile telephones were switched off, and those with working phones much too frightened to say anything over them. It is this silence that Anuradha Bhasin\u2019s A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370 speaks about most eloquently. Like Shirley Toulson\u2019s famous words about grief, Kashmir\u2019s \u201csilence silences\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Be quiet\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
In one poignant paragraph, Bhasin, editor of Kashmir Times newspaper, sums it up like this: she writes about a fellow journalist, a Kashmiri based in Delhi, who speaks of the humiliation when \u201cyour parents call after two weeks, able to do so after trekking three kilometres from home, standing in a queue for a painfully brief call just to say that they are fine, and to add \u2018be quiet, don\u2019t say a word\u2019.\u201d It is a humiliation ordinary Kashmiris have lived with for more than three years now, as the government has taken pride in its complete control of the place, and supporters of the government\u2019s move across the country have exulted in the decision. For most part, Bhasin doesn\u2019t question the Modi government\u2019s decision on Article 370, as much as the means it adopted to deliver the decision.<\/p>\n
After all, Article 370 itself has been read down dozens of times since it was introduced, by none more than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself, and then by his successors, as special powers to the State were whittled away. However, its formal abrogation has always been tied to a final settlement of the dispute, as a sort of ribbon-cutting to such an eventuality in the future. Instead, the government\u2019s act suggests that it does not recognise Kashmir as a dispute any more, and in its re-imagination of Kashmir as \u201cNaya Kashmir\u201d can seek to create Jammu and Kashmir as a peaceful and prosperous version of the present, \u2018freed\u2019 of its political leadership and welcoming of non-Kashmiris keen to live and work there as investment pours in.<\/p>\n
Myths and reality<\/p>\n
Bhasin has, however, ripped the band-aid off those ideas. She explains the myths that surrounded Article 370: the J&K High Court ruled against the provision taking away property rights of women who married outside the State in 2005, for example, and the clause has been inactive since. The return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley, a crucial and important outcome, has not been guaranteed by the strike on Article 370 either \u2014 if anything, the community of Pandits, long exiled in their own country and buffeted as a political football by several governments, have only been made to feel less secure as a result of it. Perhaps the sharpest commentary in the book is from the quotations chosen at the beginning of each chapter that speak volumes in a phrase: \u201cFear cuts deeper than swords\u201d says one, \u201cWhen truth is replaced by silence, then the silence is a lie,\u201d says another.<\/p>\n
The book makes no pretence that things were better pre-2019. In fact, Bhasin\u2019s searing pen has castigated all the players in Kashmir\u2019s tortured history without exception \u2014 India, Pakistan, politicians in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as the militants\u2026..<\/p>\n
Eventually, Bhasin\u2019s work is less a historical or political analysis of Kashmir\u2019s past as it is a painstaking day-by-day account of what has happened in the entire state of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh since August 5, 2019. If journalism is the first draft of history, A Dismantled State fulfils the author\u2019s role of recording for posterity the powerlessness and helplessness that came home to people living in her State that day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suhasini Haidar In the days that followed the [Indian] government\u2019s decision to amend Article 370 and split the State into two Union Territories, there was a deafening silence in Kashmir. A total curfew had been imposed, thousands were arrested, many of them held captive in their own homes, internet and mobile telephones were switched off, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21674,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21672\/revisions\/21674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}