In conversation with the veteran journalist and author of ‘ A Dismantled State’.
Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran journalist based in Jammu, has given a moving account of the marginalisation of Kashmiri Muslims in her book A Dismantled State. In an interview with Frontline, she debunks the false narrative of normalcy in Kashmir and points to increased attacks on politically unaffiliated people in Kashmir, which follows the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and perceptions of a demographic realignment. Excerpts:
The government sold the narrative that Article 370 was the root cause of terror and violence in Jammu and Kashmir. What are the arguments you make in the book to counter that narrative?
I have tried to briefly sketch the outline of the political history of Jammu and Kashmir and talk about the political genesis of insurgency, its ebb and flow in the last three decades, and its flattened plateau coinciding with the peace process between India and Pakistan between 2002 and 2006. In a nutshell, political manipulations and democracy breaches are responsible for insurgency or an increase in it, and political outreaches and deliberative processes have had a calming effect.
I have also used data the government put out to claim, wrongly, that insurgency is waning post-2019 and compared that to data on insurgency in recent decades. Besides, there is something very problematic in the way the government is using data on the number of militants killed to make a case for an “improved situation”. This does not take into account the disproportionate rise in the number of killings of unarmed policemen and civilians by insurgents, including those acts committed on selective grounds.
Why is it that civilians believed to be working for the government or Hindus and people from outside the Union Territory are targeted selectively and becoming more vulnerable? This was not the case before 2019 when militants mainly targeted security forces and installations.
This story was originally published in frontline.thehindu.com . Read the full story here
