India moves to divide Jammu and Kashmir state despite protests

SRINAGAR (India): India will formally split up disputed Jammu and Kashmir state into two federal territories, aiming to tighten its grip on the restive region that has been in the grip of a harsh security clampdown for nearly three months.

Street protests against the measures have erupted sporadically, while militants have killed about a dozen people from outside the state in recent weeks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government withdrew Kashmir’s autonomy in August.

However, it also announced the division of the state into two territories to be directly ruled from New Delhi – one consisting of Jammu and Kashmir and the other the remote Buddhist enclave of Ladakh.

At the same time, it poured thousands more troops into the Muslimmajority

Kashmir valley where separatists have been fighting against Indian rule for decades, and made sweeping arrests to prevent any outbreak of violence.

The government also imposed severe restrictions on travel and cut telephone and Internet lines.

Some measures have been scaled back, but a security lockdown is still largely in place and broadband and mobile Internet connection is still unavailable to most Kashmiris.

Schools and colleges are empty and most shops, restaurants and hotels have been shut.

Hundreds of people, including mainstream political leaders and separatists fighting for Kashmir’s secession from India, remain in custody for fear that they could whip up mass protests that have in the past turned violent.

Wajahat Habibullah, a former bureaucrat who served in Kashmir and travelled to the region’s main city last month, said Kashmiris felt humiliated to lose their statehood.

“Whatever the attitude of (federal) governments in the past, they at least felt that they had something of their own.

“Now, there is a kind of feeling of having lost whatever freedom they had,” he said.