Govt’s normalcy narrative faces off against realities in J&K

How do the Union government’s claims about peace in Kashmir stand up in light of the recent outrage around civilian killings and violence across the region?

The words are telling. They come from someone who has been serving with the Border Security Force for 32 years. Noor Ahmed said with great regret, “Now the punishment for working for the country has been that my brother was killed in army custody.” When asked what kind of marks there were on the dead bodies, he said, “There was no place left on the body where there were no marks of torture. We have made videos of it and done photography. He was beaten a lot. Their necks were broken.”

His brother’s was among the bodies of three of the nine locals of Topa Peer village in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir taken for questioning by the army and handed over to their families on Saturday. The three dead have been identified as Mohammed Showkat, Shabir Ahmed and Safeer Hussain. All of them belong to the local Muslim Gujjar community. They were taken by the soldiers for questioning after two army vehicles were ambushed by armed militants in Bufliaz village last week. Four soldiers were killed, and two others injured in the attack. A couple of bodies were also reportedly mutilated by the militants after the ambush.

The families of those killed have accused the army of torture. Others who were picked up have gone on record about the torture and are admitted in a hospital in Rajouri. The army has accepted the wrongdoing by paying Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the families of those killed. It has moved out three officers from the area, including a brigadier and ordered a court of inquiry into the incident. The army also said that it is “committed to extending full support and cooperation in the conduct of investigations.”

This stands in complete contrast to the incident in Kashmir Valley when Major Leetul Gogoi had tied an innocent civilian to a jeep as a human shield, and was awarded a commendation by General Bipin Rawat in 2017.

In fact, the army leadership has long claimed that any punitive action for fake encounters and custodial deaths will degrade morale of the soldiers operating in a tough environment where they are shielded by the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). The government has bought the argument, not giving sanction for prosecution to the local police for extrajudicial killings, as is required under the AFSPA.

In this case, the civil administration has also been active. There is an FIR filed at Surankote Police Station, but it is against unknown persons. Internet services were shut in two districts to prevent any spread of outrage and anger. Topa Peer was sealed by the police and security forces from all sides, with no outsider allowed to enter the village. 

Poonch district officials have also offered Rs 20 lakh as compensation and a government job to the families of those killed in army custody.

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha paid a visit to the area, as did Defence Minister Rajnath Singh when they met the families of the dead in Rajouri, 35 kilometres away from Topa Peer. The political outreach is because the BJP is actively courting the Gujjar community, as it seeks to achieve its goal of installing a Hindu chief minister in the Muslim-majority union territory. That is why the J&K BJP Chief Ravinder Raina visited the village on Thursday and asserted that the “culprits” who tortured the young men would get a “big punishment”.

Though Muslim Gujjars have supported the security forces, the BJP has largely failed so far in cultivating a significant votebank among the community, which forms around 12 per cent of J&K’s population.

The reported torture and deaths of innocent civilians by the army has shifted the gaze away from the deteriorating security situation in the Pir Panjal Valley, comprising Rajouri and Poonch districts. While the country’s attention has been focused on the state of militancy in the Kashmir Valley, official figures suggest that 21 soldiers have been killed in six encounters with armed militants in Pir Panjal Valley so far this year. In contrast, only seven soldiers have died in three encounters in Kashmir Valley, the original hotbed of armed militancy in the erstwhile state.

Till 2018, the Pir Panjal region was a route for infiltration of armed militants and weapons because of its favourable topography, lack of snow and forest cover. It was then declared a militancy-free zone, but violence against security forces returned after 2020. The armed militants currently operating in the region seem well-trained and proficient in jungle warfare — the army has lost special forces operatives and failed to nab the perpetrators. Demonstrating their adeptness at psychological warfare, the militants have also recorded videos of three major encounters this year using body cameras. As Ian Fleming warned in the famous Bond movie, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

It is enemy action, one that successfully demolishes the normalcy narrative of the Modi government. Since August 2019, when it abrogated Article 370, the establishment has vocally asserted that normalcy has returned to Jammu and Kashmir. As neither statehood has been restored nor Assembly elections held, the claim is based on a single metric — of reduction in violence. The drop in deaths of militants or soldiers has not been matched by a concomitant reduction in security forces in the union territory, a logical step for the revival of the political process. The region has instead seen greater securitisation of the administration, with the most draconian anti-terror laws being used against persons speaking up for the Kashmiris.

Multi-level failure

The Union government had claimed an end of militant violence in Kashmir after Modi suddenly announced demonetisation in November 2016. A similar declaration was made following the so-called surgical strikes across the Line of Control in September 2016 and the dubious Balakot airstrike in March 2019. The targeting of Indian soldiers by well-trained militants in Rajouri-Poonch shows that Pakistan has not been dissuaded from its ways; it has instead expanded its reach outside the Kashmir valley.

The Modi government’s boast of holding a G20-related event in Srinagar to depict normalcy now lies in tatters. In fact, the US ambassador to India used the visit by some of its officials to Kashmir for that event to justify the visit by the US ambassador to Pakistan to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The normalcy narrative has boomeranged, underscoring a spectacular diplomatic failure of the Modi government.

It is also an intelligence and security failure. The intelligence setup, working directly under the highly rated Ajit Doval, has neither prevented the return of armed militancy in Pir Panjal Valley nor provided the tactical intelligence to thwart specific attacks on security forces. This is in keeping with its poor record in averting the Chinese ingress in Ladakh and the ethnic violence against the Kuki community in Manipur.

Because of being surprised by the Chinese, the army was compelled to move the division-sized U Force of Rashtriya Rifles out of the Pir Panjal region to eastern Ladakh. A reactive and defensive posture has meant an extended deployment of additional soldiers on the China border, leaving fewer troops available for counterinsurgency duties. The problem is compounded by a shortfall of around 1,20,000 soldiers in the army, created by the Modi government’s decision to ban recruitment until the armed forces accepted the short-term contractual recruitment scheme of soldiers called Agnipath.

The army’s action of targeting these young men in Topa Peer, and thereafter allegedly releasing the videos of their torture, risks earning the backlash of the Muslim Gujjar community that played a key role in wiping out militancy from the Pir Panjal area two decades ago. The community, classified as a Scheduled Tribe, has been adversely affected by the larger anti-Muslim narrative fostered in the country under the Modi government. After 2019, the Gujjar community has been more alienated once the BJP decided to extend Scheduled Tribe reservations to Paharis, made up of both upper-caste Muslims and Hindus. The army is at fault, but the blame also lies at the door of the political establishment driven by a virulent Hindutva ideology. The ideological imperative is to covet the land of Kashmir while spurning its people.

When a post-independent India wanted Kashmir to be its integral part, it was to reinforce the country’s secular constitutional identity that does not discriminate between citizens over religion. It was meant to negate the basis of India’s partition on communal lines, and could only be achieved by winning over the Kashmiri people. Now Kashmir is seen as the site of a Hindu majoritarian narrative — where the people must be subjugated, and the land conquered. This approach will produce no winners. Even if Kashmir is won, India would have lost.

(Sushant Singh is senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research.)