 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Aditi. As a lot of you might have heard, the recent Kashmir governor's statement where he practically appealed to the militants saying that do not kill the innocent civilians and kill corrupt politicians and bureaucrats instead. To talk about this in the Kashmir issue in general, today we have with us civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha. So Gautam with statements like these coming from the governor recently in the past, Amit Shah made a lot of statements during his parliament speech. Do you think this is a trend in Kashmir? Are we setting a trend that anything goes? Well, that's been true for quite a long time. But I think this governor takes the cake because he's come out and opened quite, he's been quite forthright in sharing his considered opinion about many of the issues. So when he is after, he claims that he was angered. I mean, why was he so angry that he virtually made an appeal to the to the militants to target bureaucrats and politicians and not the SPOs and the PSOs? I don't know, I can't read his mind, but it's pretty, it's another sign of the strange going on in Jammu and Kashmir. It's always been the whole history of the president's rule or governor's rule in Kashmir has been fraught with such incidents earlier too. But never have we come across a governor making issue, I mean, making statements which have gone beyond mayor giving expression to his personal opinion or perspective. And he's gone overboard by coming out completely, I mean, coming out with an appeal, virtually, it's a virtually an appeal to the militants. And so he seems to be, I guess, Kashmir and the kind of impunity and unaccountability that exists at all levels of government of India where Kashmir is concerned where everything goes, I guess it fits in with that pattern that we see today. So if we talk about this sort of pattern and trend that the rhetoric in Kashmir from the Indian administration has taken, maybe we can look at Amit Shah's parliamentary speech where he's talked about a lot of things, whether it's article 370, 35A, do you think that's his general sense of hypocrisy in the tone and the way things have been presented, which you yourself in a recent article have called the half-truth? Well, hypocrisy or not, what he has said is partial, doesn't cover all the issues. I mean, he's suppressed facts. He's unwilling to and he's very quiet about even speaking about the role of Jansang, the previous avatar of Bharti Jantapati and Prajaparishad in Jammu. So it's, you know, this is something, again, fits in with the pattern. But I think more than half-truth, it's an indicative of an ideological and dogmatic staking to a position on Jammu and Kashmir, which RSS had a long-standing view. So now we see that they are actually trying to now push through their agenda in Jammu and Kashmir. And that agenda is the agenda of full merger, quote unquote, full merger, which means complete assimilation of Kashmir, Kashmir's obliteration of its own cultural identity and its own specificity. I mean, that is a threat that fears. So it's this half-truth, hypocrisy and this ideological, ideologically driven policy that we see now unfolding in Jammu and Kashmir make for a very combustible mix, and it can rebound on not just government of India, but the Indian people may have to end up paying a very high price for it because there are systematically things that have been done in recent times, which have gone beyond what was ever done by the central government. This is not to exonerate the previous governments for the role they've played in Jammu and Kashmir and for evading responsibility which fell on their shoulders to at least try and work towards finding a democratic resolution of the issue. But it goes beyond much beyond that now. So talking about the governments and the previous governments' role in Kashmir, what do you have to say to India championing the cause of Balochistan and sort of speaking in support or defending the Balochistan Liberation Army in Pakistan after the U.S. having called it a global threat or a global terrorist? Well, this seems to be a peculiar feature of Indian government, isn't it? That we are quite the media, the government, and media is very obedient, obediently follows what the government says. The government comes out with this obnoxious, I mean a very strange statement on the floor of the parliament through its ministry of external affairs where they talk about and element the fact that Balochistan Liberation Army has been declared a global terrorist organization. And they virtually come to the defense of the Balochistan people's struggle, which is alright. Many governments do that and many governments have also this, you know, parallel line on the one hand they would condemn those that they dislike and they will prop up or they support those that they like. So this is no different. But since this is linked to Kashmir also and it's taking place at a time when Kashmir is in news and has been in news for so many years and government of India's position has now become that they take a position in favor of Balochistan publicly. This is what this MEA statement means. It raises a, I mean it obviously that if at the behest of government of India, US declares Hizbul Mujahideen as global terrorist organization, you're fine with it. But that behest of Pakistan, if the US declares Balochistan Liberation Army to be a global terrorist organization, you're not. Obviously, the argument the government of India's hands, its own hands are not clean. So before it speaks about Pakistan, it should also realize that it can that a lot of mud would also stick to its own conduct and role in Balochistan. But keep Balochistan out. The more serious part of it, I mean these are diplomatic positions probably government of India and Pakistan to spite each other. But as you know, in trying to spite each other at times, you cut your own nose in the bargain, but that leave that aside for the time being. What is more striking is that in the last few years, there have been, it's not just incremental changes, major changes that are taking place in Jammu and Kashmir. Look at it, two years back in February 2017, there was a committee set up and which prepared a report and submitted it to the Ministry of Home Affairs, which advocated an extremely, how should I say repressive kind of a shift in government of India's policies, not that it was not repressive earlier, but a far more stepping up an escalation of its repression in Kashmir. So they advocated the mosques and madrasas must be brought under the control of government of India. That newspapers must be made to toe, as part of perception management must be made to toe the line of government of India and what they report, how they report, what kind of news is carried. And so in the name of the fair coverage, fair coverage according to government of India means a favorable coverage for itself. Anything which is critical is considered unfair coverage. Or anti-national, they use even, I mean from unfair to anti-national, the language and the strident scene, the language is shown. When an editor-in-chief was detained because they covered. So then they've been asked, they cracked down on two newspapers, Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Narita, where the editors were called, ostensibly to discuss, to be examined, interrogated about terror funds, so-called terror funding. But at the same time, they were also asked about a lot of articles that have appeared or the editorial policy, I mean direct interference in what was being carried and why it was being carried, etc., etc. These are some of the things. Then the change, the crackdown in JNK bank, the crackdown in administration and a very remarkable thing that has happened in the last 30 years. It was the Jammu and Kashmir Policies Crime Branch, which investigated all the crimes that took place, including all the so-called militancy related crimes. In the last two years, now NIA seems to, National Investigative Agency seems to be the flavor, finds special favor with this government. So now they are the ones who have been handed over most of these cases. And in fact, they are out on a fishing expedition in the name of terror funding, hawala racket, basically to strike against income tax rates that are taking place, etc., etc., basically meant to strike at, on the one hand, the joint resistance leadership plus the others, activists or members of a part of the movement in some way or according to the agencies and government play a very important role. So those people are being targeted, as well as people from the pro-Indian side of the political formations who are also coming under attack and cases are being filed against them. If you take all these changes that are being introduced from attacking the pro-India party, attacking the separatives, making no distinction between the indigenous and political militancy, as Paus say by Hisbul Mujahideen, in contrast to ISIS, Al Qaeda kind of militancy, which doesn't talk about liberation of Kashmir or anything, but which believes in fighting for establishing the Islamic Khalifat. There is a big difference, but collapsing all of it in one just because they are Kashmiri and that's just because political expression in one way or another is very sharply critical of government of India's role and things like that. Everybody is being targeted. Government of India refuses now to make any even the subtle distinctions that exist between these groups. They refuse to take note of it. For them, whether it is, I mean for them, they would like to characterize Hisbul Mujahideen as being as bad as ISIS when there's a world of difference between the two. And if we can't make that distinction, then it's a failure of our own understanding analysis and nothing to be very proud of because in the days, in the years ahead or the months ahead that we have with things churning in Afghanistan, we will face some kind of impact as a result of whatever settlement or agreement takes place between United States, Russia, China, Pakistan with Taliban. And there is a fear which has been expressed by the ministers as well as by officials of government of India that the seven to eight thousand foreign militants who are in Afghanistan, if there is an agreement and a settlement in Afghanistan, where are these foreign militants going to go? And the immediate, I mean, there is a strong likelihood that many of them or at least some of them will make their way to India. So it's not even wise what they're planning to do. But the sum total of all these changes handing over all the cases to NIA, which drops the crime banche of its own role. But at the same time, sends a message that there is a great distrust of Jammu and Kashmir police and question mark about its credibility and its competence to handle these cases, then the changes in JNK bank, the administrative setup that you have in Jammu and Kashmir under the precedence rule, when most of the advisors, most of the key officers holding key positions in Jammu and Kashmir are non-Kashmiris. And on top of that, non-Muslims which sends a very clear message then to the population that it strengthens their view that it is an alien rule that is being imposed on them. And that's not conducive for any kind of peaceful, let alone democratic, for any kind of political resolution that the government of India, of course, government of India seems to believe that there is no need for political resolution. But we all know that sooner or later they'll have to take that seriously. And how is it possible to do it if you alienate even the setup and the institutions and the people who man them from, I mean where you express a view which is that you distrust them and therefore they have to be replaced by those that you trust who have to be brought from outside. That's not a very healthy message that we are sending across. So taking it all together from what the governor has said yesterday to the changes that are, I think we are on the cusp of a major conflagration in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than a resolution, we may be heading towards an upscaling of militancy in a much more virulent form than what we have even I have experienced. Okay. Thank you, Gautam. We're going to be talking about this issue further. But for now, thank you for watching.