India Kashmir Residence Act Amplifies Demographic Fear

SRINAGAR, India For almost a century, no foreigners were allowed to buy land and property in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

That changed on August 5 last year when the Indian nationalist government of India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed the semi-autonomous powers of the Himalayan states and reduced it to a federally governed territory. It also abolished the long-held special inheritance rights that its natives held over disputed land ownership and works.

Since then, India has brought a host of changes through new laws. They are often drafted by bureaucrats without any democratic restraint and much to the displeasure and anger of the people of the regions, many of whom want independence from India or union with Pakistan.

A year later, things are changing rapidly on earth.

Under a new law, authorities have begun issuing residence certificates to Indians and non-residents, giving them residency rights and government jobs. Many Kashmiris see this move as the beginning of decisive colonialism aimed at engineering a demographic shift in India’s only Muslim-majority region.

Amid growing fears, experts are comparing the new deal in the West Bank or Tibet, with armed or civilian settlers living in shelters among scattered locals. They say the changes will reduce the region to a colony.

Given the history of the Indian state intervention in Kashmir, there are attempts to destroy the local, unique cultural identity of Kashmir and forcibly assimilate Kashmir Muslims into an Indian, Indian policy, said Saiba Varma, Assistant Professor of Cultural and Medical Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

Residence rights were introduced in 1927 by the Hindu king Kashmirs, Hari Singh, to stop the influx of foreigners into the former princely state. Historians say the Maharaja brought land ownership rights at the insistence of the powerful Kashmiri Hindus. They continued under Indian rule after 1947, as part of the special status of Kashmir.

The new law, introduced in May amid a coronavirus blockade, makes it possible for any Indian citizen who has lived in the region for at least 15 years or studied for seven years and taken certain exams to become a permanent resident in Jammu-Kashmir. The Indian government is ensuring that the process is followed quickly and has introduced a fine of 50,000 rupees ($ 670) to be deducted from the salary of any official in the territory who delays the process.

Those receiving residence 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, overseas bureaucrats working in the region, and some marginalized Hindu communities. Locals must also apply for residency, otherwise they risk losing government jobs and welfare benefits.

About 400,000 people have been given residency certificates in more than a month, Pawan Kotwal, a senior Indian official, was quoted as saying on Saturday by The Tribune, a daily English in North India. Officials have not said how many of them are local and have generally been clumsy about the process.

Navin Kumar Choudhary, a senior bureaucrat from the eastern state of Bihar, was the first high-profile foreigner to take up residence on June 26th. While Kashmiris were aghast after the photo of Choudhary displaying the certificate went viral on social media, many in Hindu-majority Jammu. .

Gharu Bhatti, an activist working for the welfare of the lower Hindu caste in Jammu, said the law ended their slavery.

Bhattis’s parents were among about 270 sewer workers brought by the government to Jammu from neighboring Punjab in 1957. Since then, their number has grown to nearly 7,000, said Bhatti, who is among the top ten from the’s community. his to take the residences of the regions.

Now our children have a future. They can be whatever they want to be. We will have choices to make now, he said.

But even some Hindu groups in Jammu have opposed the law, expressing fear of losing their job and business to foreigners.

Authorities have called the new residence rights a belated move to boost greater economic development by opening up the region to foreign investment. Girish Chander Murmu, the region’s top administrative official, told reporters in late June that the law was intended to bring about economic prosperity and dismissed any fear of demographic change as propaganda.

Many locals in Kashmir are skeptical of such clarifications and compare them to assurances from Indian authorities made before the August 5 ruling when they said no constitutional changes were planned.

Human rights activists, pro-freedom leaders, and Kashmiri residents fear that giving foreigners the right to buy land and property could plunge the region further into chaos and set in motion a plan to suppress identity. of his people.

We have always been fed lies and deceived by the deceptions of development and democracy from the Indian state, said Shafat Ahmed Mir, a university student. As a people, it is the most critical time in our history and we have never faced such an existential threat before.

The wrath of cashmere under Indian rule has been long.

The stunning mountain region has known little but conflict since 1947, when British rule of the subcontinent divided territory between newly created India and Pakistan.

After a series of political mistakes, broken promises and a crackdown on dissent, the Kashmiri separatists launched a full-blown armed revolt in 1989, demanding unification with Pakistan or full independence. India called Pakistan-led armed insurgency terrorism an accusation Islamabad denies.

Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict in the last three decades.

Since the early 1950s, Hindu nationalists, including the Modis Bharatiya Janata Party, have been advocating a pro-India solution by neutralizing Kashmir’s Muslim majority residents through the settlement of Hindus from other parts of the country.

The Hindu right wing seeks a demographic solution for Kashmir, but their policies are to sow the seeds for a new conflict, perhaps one that will lead to endless bloodshed and destabilize the entire region, Mohamad said. Junaid, a Kashmiri political anthropologist.

The militarization of the region has increased under Modi, and in July the government eased the rules for Indian soldiers to acquire land in Kashmir and build strategic areas seen as settlements by the locals.

The Kashmir National Conference, India’s oldest and main pro-National Party, the National Conflict, slammed the move as a mission for a “major land grab that could turn the entire region into a military structure.

With India allowing foreigners to become residents, many worry that such an action could change the results of a plebiscite if it ever happened, even though it was promised based on 1948 United Nations resolutions given to it. Kashmiri membership choice either in Pakistan or India.

Kashmiri lawyer Mirza Saaib Beg said the newly drafted residents will gain rights over the years that could complicate the resolution.

The historical precedent shows that Kashmir fears are well-founded, said Varma, an anthropologist. The legal changes, she said, are about a project to exterminate people.