Law anniversary has Kashmiris set for protests

Natives worry colonialism among India’s motives in region

SRINAGAR, India — Authorities imposed a curfew in many parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir on Tuesday, a day ahead of the first anniversary of India’s decision to revoke the disputed region’s semi-autonomy.

For almost a century, no outsider was allowed to buy land and property in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

That changed Aug. 5 last year when India’s Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi stripped the Himalayan state’s semi-autonomous powers and downgraded it to a federally governed territory. It also annulled the longheld hereditary special rights its natives had over the disputed region’s land ownership and jobs.

Since then, India has brought in a slew of changes through new laws. They are often drafted by bureaucrats without any democratic hearings and much to the resentment and anger of the region’s people, many of whom want independence from India or unification with Pakistan.

A year later, things are changing on the ground.

Under a new law, authorities have begun issuing “domicile certificates” to Indians and nonresidents, entitling them to residency rights and government jobs. Many Kashmiris view the move as the beginning of settler colonialism aimed at engineering a demographic change in India’s only Muslim-majority region.

Amid growing fears, experts are likening the new arrangement to the West Bank or Tibet, with settlers — armed or civilian — living in guarded compounds among disenfranchised locals. They say the changes will reduce the region to a colony.

“Given the history of Indian state intervention in Kashmir, there are efforts to destroy the local, distinctive cultural identity of Kashmiris and forcibly assimilate Kashmiri Muslims into a Hindu, Indian polity,” said Saiba Varma, an assistant professor of cultural and medical anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

Residency rights were introduced in 1927 by Kashmir’s Hindu king, Hari Singh, to stop the influx of outsiders in the former princely state. Historians say the maharaja brought land ownership rights on the insistence of powerful Kashmiri Hindus. They continued under Indian rule after 1947, as part of Kashmir’s special status.

The new law, introduced in May amid the coronavirus

lockdown, makes it possible for any Indian national who has lived in the region for at least 15 years or has studied for seven years and taken certain exams to become a permanent resident in Jammu-Kashmir. The Indian government is ensuring the process is fast-tracked and has introduced a fine of $670 to be deducted from the salary of any official in the territory who delays the process.

Those receiving domicile certificates include Hindu refugees from Pakistan after the bloody 1947 partition of the subcontinent, Gurkha soldiers from Nepal who had served in the Indian army, outside bureaucrats working in the region and some marginalized Hindu communities. Even the natives must apply for residency, otherwise they risk losing government jobs and welfare benefits.

About 400,000 people have been given domicile certificates in over a month, Pawan Kotwal, a top Indian official, was quoted as saying on Saturday by The Tribune, a north Indian English-daily. Officials have not not said how many of them are locals and have generally been tight-lipped about the process.

But even some Hindu groups in Jammu have resented the law, expressing fears of job and business losses to outsiders.

Authorities have called the new residency rights an overdue measure to foster greater economic development by opening up the region for outside investments. Girish Chander Murmu, the region’s top administrative official, in late June told reporters that the law was aimed at bringing economic prosperity and dismissed any fears of demographic change as “propaganda.”

Meanwhile, Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, a civil administrator, said the security lockdown was imposed in the region’s main city of Srinagar because of information about protests planned by anti-India groups to mark today as “Black Day.”

Late Tuesday, authorities lifted a curfew in Srinagar but said restrictions on public movement, transport and commercial activities would continue because of the coronavirus pandemic.