https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/speaking-truth-to-power/
Book
Review
Anuradha
Bhasin, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370, Gurugram: HarperCollins, ISBN
978-93-629-608-4, pp. 386, Rs. 699/-.
Anuradha Bhasin hit the national headlines with
her challenge in the Supreme Court on the government disconnecting Jammu and
Kashmir (J&K) from India and those living there from each other by turning
off the internet as part of its massive crackdown to usher in Naya Kashmir with
the evacuation of Article 370 of all meaning. It was a courageous standing up
to authoritarianism by Bhasin, a senior editor distressed by her inability to
pursue her professional calling as a consequence of all communication conduits
lapsing between her and her team in Kashmir. The government won that round,
only reluctantly and in ‘due course’ allowing light back into and on Kashmir,
and that too only in fits and starts.
Bhasin does the Indian nation another favour in
writing up this book, a body blow to the government’s narrative on Kashmir. Even
though one and half crore tourists visited the region last year and the
statistics of those meeting a violent deaths in the insurgency there are
comparatively negligible, no one is under the illusion that the situation in
Kashmir has stabilized. No wonder the government advisedly keeps the security
forces in places that it had pumped in prior to its move on Article 370.
It has rightly been said, ‘there are lies,
damned lies and statistics.’ Bhasin unsparingly exposes the grand lies on
Kashmir. How bad the situation is can best be put in her own words:
The Indian government can use all
its power to subjugate and suppress the local peoples in J&K and their
multiple and complex aspirations for now, but it cannot sustain this till
eternity (p. 295)…. Breathing beneath the behemoth of silence is a deceptive
volcano, which could erupt in a chaos of different forms and varied voices.
What would be its dominant articulation – frightening, violent rage or a
kaleidoscope of ideas and vision? That moment is yet to come.
Assuming that the landslide victory in the
national elections on the back of the Pulwama-Balakot episode had given the
government the backing for widespread change, Narendra Modi used the moment to
hammer home the long standing pledge of the right wing: to ‘integrate’ Kashmir
into India. This to the Hindu nationalist government meant ending the special
relationship signified by Article 370 that J&K maintained with the rest of
India. While Article 370 allowed J&K relative autonomy and Article 35A
permitted protection of its land and livelihood of its people, the two were nullified
through a parliamentary procedure that has yet to face judicial accountability.
While the Supreme Court dallies on when to take
up the raft of challenges to the neutralisation of Article 370 on both
procedural and substantive grounds, the government has gone on to walk the talk
on integration. Knowing that is would be unpopular, it has maintained its
dragnet, toting up statistics on Kashmiri youth killed for futilely taking to
the gun in despair. Bhasin’s is a blow by blow account of how the State is
going about its scheme and the implications of the changes being taken by fiat
and absolutely no reference to the people. This holding of democracy in
abeyance is lamented, as are the consequences of political arrogance and
bureaucratic vandalism on the Rule of Law and the very laws themselves.
Bhasin’s critique covers the whole gamut:
political, security, legal, social and economic. With three decades of
experience in journalism behind her, Bhasin is able to tap not only the
strategies of political leaders but also the sentiment in common folk. She
spices up a narrative that could otherwise get dull - it traverses legal
details - with the human element, using the voice of the marginalized to tell
of the impositions and hardships Hindutva’s liberation of Kashmir has wrought
them. The hopes and fears of Gujars and Bakarwals, of lower caste Hindus, of
those living along the Line of Control, of shikara paddlers and
forgotten Kashmiris come alive through her pen.
Though as a strategy the government has momentarily
shifted Kashmiri demands away from meaningful autonomy to statehood, that it
continues to dither on conceding the latter shows that its intent is not
problem solving or conflict resolution inspired, but merely to pile on
humiliation. In a post Article 370 scenario, restoration of statehood by
inclusion of another subclause to Article 371 is the way to go. However, with
the government denying Sixth Schedule status even to Ladakh, it is unlikely to
oblige. The impetus for such strategy-defying logic is in an ideological animus
that makes Kashmiris doubly-damned, their being Muslim too.
Bhasin engages also with the development
aspect, since it is the legitimizing plank of the government. She cites data to
reveal how land laws are being tweaked to acquire land and evict those settled
on it. As a native of Jammu, she worries how the developmental model of the
plains – based on road building and widening and siting of industrial centers –
will impact the fragile environment. Joshimath had not happened by when she wrote
the chapter. It’s a pity that the juggernaut will role on since that’s the
model in the rest of India, into which Kashmir is being integrated.
The book has copious end notes, doing credit to
her current status as a fellow at Stanford University. The only glitch spotted is
where she dates the Mumbai terror attack to 2007 (p. 222). Its chapterisation
is logical, allowing for a comprehensive coverage of the past three years in
Kashmir. A quote from this reviewer also finds mention (p. 114), making it only
fair to disclose that Bhasin as editor of Kashmir Times oversaw some 100
opinion pieces by this reviewer over the years. Her book informs that the
archives of her newspaper have since gone missing in the cyber world, no doubt
part of information operations executed by the State.
The book is a recommended read, particularly
for non-Kashmiris. What is happening in Kashmir is a negation of the democracy.
It is already visibly and painfully getting clear that jackboots on democracy
anywhere endanger democracy everywhere. The book must also be prescribed
reading for those in the counter insurgent State apparatus on how not to
do counter insurgency. It is true that they are hampered by the preceding
political prong Their self-congratulations shall prove rather premature when
trends identified by Bhasin in her book eventuate in their logical conclusion.
We can only thank her parents, to whom the book
is dedicated, who taught Bhasin to write and to speak the truth fearlessly. She
has done them proud, and, in the bargain, done India a national service in
bringing to light the ‘untold story of Kashmir’ in face of an authoritarian
State’s massive propaganda effort to efface reality. That with such truth
telling she opens up herself to paying a personal price is to her credit.
Reviewing them chronologically here, we begin with Mistry’s portrayal of the adventures of his uncle by marriage, Dr. Jehangir Anklesaria. The good doctor was posted as port medical officer in Rangoon when the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbour. The Japanese—‘runts’ in the racist prototype held before they overran South East Asia—were at Rangoon’s doors within six months. The British empire’s outpost there scrambled to get out of the way along with the retreating armies of the empire over which the sun never set. The book follows Jehangir as his familiar world crashes about him and his family. He hastily dispatches his family to Kolkata and readies to help 50,000 refugees, mostly Indian, making their way via the land route back to India. Jehangir’s challenge was to prevent cholera outbreak at a major transit point, lest it spread to the 30,000 British, Indian, Chinese and Burmese troops and sap morale. The book follows him from Rangoon, across the Irrawaddy and the Chindwin, through the refugee transit camp at Monywa and, finally, in the last leg of the arduous journey through the malarial 24th Mile. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, the monsoon hits the serrated edges of the Arakan Yoma ranges as the good doctor struggles alone over the leech-infested and snake-lined pass between Tamu on the Burma border and Palel in Manipur: a 24 Mile eternity-long gap. The author rightly brings out that we owe our second language English to the likes of Dr. Anklesaria, else it could well have been Japanese.
The third book is about India’s next war, the 1971 War. The book, released to coincide with the year-long observation of the fiftieth anniversary of the war, appears intended to transmit tales of derring-do in the war to the next generation. This book is different from the others in that it is not about one individual’s adventure, as much a collage of a set of individuals. Nair is a self-confessed war aficionado, who puts his school-boy enthusiasm to good use in communicating the exploits of soldiers, airmen and sailors to the younger generation that has not seen war. Nair intends the book to recapture the empathy with which India intervened in East Pakistan. His penchant for details, particularly of air battles and technology, however, leave him word space only for making his point, more as an assertion than as a refutation of the argument that India had other motives, principally strategic, that prompted its intervention. Whereas India did end genocide as Nair records, Nair neglects the possibility that India’s interference partially precipitated the genocide in the first place. Since he believes India’s altruistic reason, he is severe on the United States for being double-faced. The book is a good start point for young enthusiasts to explore not only this war, but also move on to India’s military history–that is increasingly in nationalism-charged times coming in for much revision.
The fourth book is about an interesting, if not controversial episode, in India’s UN peacekeeping experience. Punia was the senior company commander of two subunits–his infantry company and one mechanized one–deployed in a remote corner of an anarchic country, Sierra Leone. The book follows Punia inducting into the country and deploying at the location. How he uses the Indian Army’s well known tools of counter insurgency to ‘Win Hearts And Minds’, WHAM, is well described. Lucky for him, the period was in the era of peacekeeping amateurism; else if done today, he’d have an inquiry sitting on how he distributed UN provisioned food for WHAM. But what is most striking in the book is the self-confession of sorts by him of what could be possible violations of international humanitarian law or war crimes. The Indian contingent was entrapped in a hostage situation by the rebels. The author reveals how he arrived at a plan to shoot his way out of a hostage situation. Its implementation in Operation Khukri arguably amounts to war crimes. While shooting their way out of their encirclement, they leveled the village they were located in, killing civilians in the process. From the narration, it is uncertain if civilians were collateral damage. From this narration though, it is clear that instead of a highpoint in Indian peacekeeping success, the book only succeeds in bringing the operation under a cloud.
The last book reviewed here is very different from the others. It is about a war alright, but a civil war in India’s vicinity, Nepal. It’s a memoir of Hisila Yami. That she has retained her name shows that she cannot be reduced to merely being wife of Baburam Bhattarai–revolutionary Prime Minister of Nepal. The book shows her in her various identities as a feminist, revolutionary, architect, mother, wife and politician at various times. Yami’s has been a full life, well compressed in a simply told 300 plus pages. What makes the book interesting is also the description of ten years she spent as a revolutionary in a people’s war. The book captures the innocence of a revolution, with participants ready to die and kill for causes such as equality, federalism, socialism and fraternity. Though Nepal is an intimate neighbour and Nepalis are very evident in our neighbourhoods, there is much we are unaware of about their lives and concerns. The book is a good read, introducing us not only to a very sprightly lady, Hisila, but also to a significant part of our region. Together the books can make younger readers not only take to reading as a hobby but to a life of adventure beyond known confines and comforts.
Lt Gen HS Panag writes that having commanded two armies, the northern and central army, he had over six lakh troops under him at some point or the other. Most of them may have seen the badge he wore on his uniform since his colonel days that read: ‘Don’t do anything that I don’t do. Do like me, do better than me and do it now!’ This was his command philosophy, arrived at through inspiration from his father, a redoubtable colonel, and with experience since his National Defence Academy days as Academy Cadet Adjutant.