 Hello and welcome to News Greek. Today, we are joined by David Devdas, a journalist and the author of two books, The Story of Kashmir and A Generation of Rage in Kashmir. And someone who has tracked the issues on the ground closely for many years. Thank you, David, for joining us. David. Good to be here. David, to begin with, we know that the abolition of or repeal of Article 370 has been on the agenda of the BJP and the RSS for decades now. But nonetheless, how do you see the way this was actually enacted right now? The presidential order, the bills being passed in two days in parliament in a hurry, the repression on the ground. So, how do you see this, the method in which it is done? Apparently, this plan has been in place for a long time. In fact, I'm told that even last year, there was a move to possibly suspend the Yatra and do it at the same time last year. Which is a little strange, but perhaps it fits with the idea that they want to keep it secret. They wanted to do a sort of, to use the terminology that is common in the government, surgical strike because nobody would have suspected that they would suspend the Yatra and do it at peak tourist season and the beginning of the Apple season. So in terms of the economy of Kashmir, this is a very crucial time. But yet, this seems to have been the plan even last year and certainly has been gone through with this year and the plan surely involved both secrecy and getting it through the two houses of parliament at the end of the session very quickly. In fact, the session was extended for this to be accomplished. Now, of course, this isn't a sense day zero because on the one hand, a lot of administrative and structural changes will have to be done. The two union territories will have to be notified, left-wing governors appointed, a new is also brings into question the entire administrative setup because the KAS now also has to be reorganized and the IAS carder of the Jammu and Kashmir State, will some of those officers go to this? Will the union territory carder apply to these two union territories or be extended to the new officers if they come into this carder? Does it create a whole lot of seniority problems or question marks? All of this will come into play. The other thing is that on the ground, people are by and large still in shock. They didn't expect this. It came out of the blue. There's also very tight security control. At some point, maybe this will play out in one way or another. And so this will have to be a long-term cautionary exercise in the future. Also, on the other hand, there is the international scenario. China is lined up quite closely with Pakistan. Also, President Trump has been playing footsie with Pakistan. The Afghan situation is in very, very sensitive transition. The Taliban seem to be on the brink of taking over. They de facto, if not formally, the Iran situation preoccupies the minds of a lot of people in the US real power structure and other parts of the world. And therefore, they are prone to accommodating Pakistan in order to contain Iran and Afghanistan. On the other hand, the ground situation in terms of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, in the Kashmir Valley, in South Kashmir in particular, has been moving a little towards more radical groups. The Ansar, Gazvatul, Hind has actually gained ground ironically after its founder, Zakir Musa, was killed a couple of months ago. And although the numbers are not very large, the trend is important. And the fact that Pan-Islamism as in ideology appears to be gaining ground over the last few years. And you studied the situation there for over the decades right now, and you've written about it also. So the right wing's narrative, of course, is that this means that there are two laws in the country and it's a method of division and all that. But as far as the people and the, say, especially the intellectual community, the leaders of the Kashmira concern, how did, from your experience, how important was 370 and its concrete manifestations to them? See, 370 has actually meant for many years what two people, in people's minds, by and large, what actually 35A was about, which is, as far as Kashmiris in the valley are concerned, a limitation on anyone from outside the state being able to purchase land in the state. This is what animated the very, very heated uprising of 2008, after land was sought to be transferred to the Sri Amanath Shrine Board. This was the core issue in people's minds in the valley. In Jammu, very many young people in particular cling to that idea of outsiders being excluded in terms of jobs. Over there, it's much more to do with jobs than with property. Among the people at large, this is how it's played out, among the leaders of, or let us say, the politicians who have held control of power over the years, over the decades in Kashmir, autonomy, whatever form it has taken, has actually meant autonomy for the state government from the central government. The fact is that under the rubric of autonomy, rights have actually not been transferred to the people. This is correct, that in many ways, and the Home Minister made these points at length in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday evening, but the fact is that in terms of, for example, the term of the assembly, it's six years rather than five years in the rest of the country, in terms of the Right to Information Act, the way it was implemented there, and the way it has been further watered down. Of course, now it has been watered down in the rest of the country as well. The way in which the Panchayat Thiraj acts were implemented, and very little power was really transferred to the local bodies, Panchayats in particular. Now, the government, the central government is talking of empowering the Panchayats to a great extent. Let us see how that plays out. What I would say is that at this point, there's a great challenge for the central government, because having taken on the owners, it's having turned the state into two union territories, which is quite remarkable. It has taken upon itself the responsibility to deliver. And do you see that there is any prospective, say, the various negotiations that took place over the years? There were track, tree diplomacy, say, engagement with various sectors, even including the Hurriyat, for instance. So the Home Minister, of course, has now said that that won't happen. But do you see there's actually any possibility of dialogue with various sections of Kashmiri society on this? There certainly was, and perhaps still is, but the government is not interested. That's quite clear. The Hurriyat Conference, at least sections of it, the Mirwe has given me an interview a few months before, maybe seven or eight months before Burhan Vani was killed in 2016. So at the end of 2015, the beginning of the winter of 1516, the Mirwe was almost pleading for talks. Let us please have talks, because he also saw that the new radicalism was coming into militancy, the new militancy that had come into play. But there was no response. After Burhan Vani was killed, MPs went and with the assistance of the government were taken to the various prominent leaders' homes. They were not able to talk, because by that time, the Joint Resistance Leadership had been formed and they were totally controlled by Pakistan by then. This had happened by April 2016. Burhan was killed on July the 8th that year. Now, over the last year or two, there have been fresh initiatives by others to try and build. And I am told that even Mr. Ghilani was quite willing to negotiate, to come down to some kind of solution with dignity and some kind of paradigm that would accommodate various kinds of moves without taking a very hard line. But clearly, the center was not interested. And another aspect of your work has also been regarding the youth in Kashmir. So, the book itself is called The Generation of Rage, about how there has been a shift in the way you think itself. So, how do you see the impact of this move on young people in Kashmir? You see, over the last 30 years, two generations have not only grown up but been born in a time of violence. And so, they are the children of war. They are angry, they are traumatized from infancy and they have also been, particularly the millennial generation, born around the turn of the century, have grown up at a time when they've heard about this war on terror and global oppression of Muslims. And what they see on the ground in terms of militarization plugs into that and seems to confirm that. And they see the world through that prism. And so, it's a much more pan-Islamist view of the world than before. As it is, Salafi Islam tends to have become far more the norm in Kashmir than Ziyarati Islam, as I refer to it. Some people call it Sufi Islam, but to my mind, that's a little different. But shrine-oriented Islamic praxis is what was commonplace until the 90s. And in fact, common people at large contested the Hisbul Mujahideen and the Jamaat-e-Islami, which backed the Hisbul Mujahideen to a large extent, although not officially through the 90s. Now, Salafi Islam has become more or less the standard. And people are not contesting it by and large. People are in fact, those who go to shrines do it quite often covertly. They don't want to be seen. They don't want to be recognized doing that because it's seen as a deviation from standard practice. That is how far we've come in the last 20 years or so. Youth have also been alienated in various other ways. So there's not only this global perception of their situation, globalized perception, but also a tremendous sense of disappointment. I think in the 2008 elections, people were willing to try out almost for a last time this democracy and the way it was promised. 2014, there had been floods. And in the wake of the floods, people came to the election booths, hoping this time for at least some relief and rehabilitation and a lot of funds from the center, they were disappointed again. They were disappointed also with the PDP coming together with what people on the ground saw as an RSS party, RSS backed party. And they saw this as a great jolt. But for the first few months, they were still willing to bide their time, hoping that at least funds would come and some kind of rehabilitation development would take place. That didn't happen either. Instead, during 2015, there was one incident of cow vigilantism in Udampur, which had a tremendous impact in the valley. Of course, news from other parts of the country was also coming in. So there was a greater sense of dismay at the coalition that was in place. The coalition remained in place until last year, 2018, June. After that, actually, there was no response even in terms of protests and heartals to the jailing of a whole lot of Hurriyat and other freedom fighter leaders or leaders of various kinds of groups. There was no response. Even when the Jamaat-e-Islami was banned a few months ago, there was no response. People didn't protest. But perhaps this jolt may affect the faith that they had because even in, as I said before the 2008 elections, a lot of people were looking at it almost as a last chance. Let's go out and vote and see. Let's hope something will be delivered. They were disappointed. There was a lot of callousness, unresponsiveness, corruption. Corruption has been a major factor in Kashmir. And even over the last year or so, the hope that at least corruption would be cured doesn't seem to have worked out because in the governor's press conference just about a month ago, that was a major issue that a lot of journalists brought up. So there's been disappointment all around. And a sense of dismay over both the global scenario and the way they see themselves within that backdrop, as well as with how things have played out on the ground. And the division of the state into two union territories will most likely be seen as humiliating in terms of the Kashmiri sense of identity, which is very strong. I mean, we know that there are many identities across the country that are very strong, the Tamil identity, the Bengali identity, for example, and several others. In Kashmir, there's a sense of great history going back thousands of years and a written history going to about 1100, written in about 1100 CE. And a sense of culture, a sense of achievements in terms of theater, in terms of medicine, in terms of culinary skills. This deep sense of identity may get a great result. Now, of course, there are many different identity groups within Jammu and Kashmir. It's a many splendid place. In fact, I've argued over the years that this is perhaps the most sociologically complex place on earth, more so than the Balkans. So dividing, I'm very glad that the government at least has chosen not to trifurcate because I was most concerned about the division along the Chinab Basin, where in many areas, the population is 50-50 or 60-40, Hindu-Muslim. And we do not want to disturb the degree of communal harmony that there is. And so happily, they have chosen to not touch that, at least. So Jammu and Kashmir remains one entity. Ladakh is separated. Both have been reduced to union territories. It seems from the Home Minister's statements in the Lok Sabha and there are other indications that perhaps this move is a little bit of a bargaining chip. In fact, the Home Minister virtually made a declaration in the Lok Sabha. If you behave yourselves, then we will give you back a statement, which is again a little, is going to upset people in terms of sense of humiliation. But at least that is a possibility that will happen. And perhaps even with the courts, there is a little bit of that bargaining chip between the three issues of 370. And actually, 370 has not been scrapped. Exactly. 370 has been used to reduce the impact of 370. In any case, 370 had been hollowed out over the decades. So it was more an issue of living up to the promises that have been made over the decades. From 1950 on, when the Bharatiya Janasangh was formed, even that has not actually been met, because 370 still exists. So it's a very ironic situation in very many ways. And finally, so at one level, of course, the BJP was the party which led this initiative, pushed the agenda. But there was also say support from various corners of the country, the ADMK, some of them, of course, NDA allies, but some of them, not so much. So the BJD, for instance. So do you think at one level over the years, there's also been a failure of, especially the regional parties, to understand the complexity of the issues involved in, even they haven't actually ended up seeing the whole issue to this present? Well, nationalism is the flavor of the day. And a lot of them have also seen the writing on the wall in those terms. It's the flavor of the day, not only in India, but in international terms in many, many countries. So it is there in Turkey, it's there in Hungary, it's there in even places like Holland, which one never expected it's there in the US. So Brexit is an aspect of that. So that is something that all of us need to understand a little more. As far as the regional parties are concerned, I wish they would take far more seriously. The challenge to federalism that has emanated from the way in which a state which had special powers, which in fact until about 55 years ago, had in 1964, the beginning of 1964, the state had a prime minister. And a Vaziriyasam, sorry, Vaziriyasam is the same, but a Sadri-Riyasam. This has been reduced now to two union territories. So the lesson that that has for what could be done with other states, you know, for example, Naxalite affected parts of let's say Telangana or Chattisgarh or Orissa could also be under this rubric of dealing with terrorism and other such challenges might be also in future open to the same kind of possibility. So therefore, this challenge to federalism and the way in which a full-fledged state which actually exceeded to India under special terms, special conditions, under the Maharaja's own covering letter. It is true that the instrument of accession itself was standard. It was a pro forma, the same as all the other 560 also instruments of accession. But the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir gave a very significantly worded covering letter along with that with conditions. Then the kinds of promises that were made over the years, whether verbally or in terms of agreements or like the New Delhi Agreement of 1952, all of this needs to be taken into account while assessing what has been done and seeing the lessons that it holds for federalism and the future of federalism. Thank you so much, David. You're most welcome. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.