Omar New Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir

Omar Abdullah was sworn in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday. Abdullah, the chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) party, is now the leader of Kashmir's first elected government since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoked the region's special semi-autonomous status in 2019.

Now Jammu and Kashmir is directly administered by the Indian federal government in New Delhi. 

The swearing-in ceremony took place in the city of Srinigar, the largest city in Jammu and Kashmir. 

Abdullah's JKNC won the most seats in a three-phase election prior to his swearing-in.

The JKNC is staunchly opposed to Modi's move to abrogate Kashmir's Article 370 of semi autonomy, with the JKNC's victory seen as backlash against Modi's decision. 

Manoj Sinha, a member of the ruling BJP, administered the oath of office to Abdullah. Sinha serves as the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, a position that was created by the 2019 Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act in the wake of Article 270's abrogation. 

Modi, in a post on X, congratulated Abdullah on becoming chief minister: "Wishing him the very best in his efforts to serve the people." 

The JKNC is allied with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), which is led by India's largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress.

Rahul Gandhi, a member of the Congress Party who serves as leader of opposition in the Indian parliament's lower house, or Lok Sabha, was present at Abdullah's swearing in.   

Gandhi extended his congratulations to Abdullah in a post on X. At the same time, he said "government formation without statehood felt incomplete today."

"Democracy was snatched from the people of Jammu and Kashmir, and today we renew our pledge to continue our fight until statehood is fully restored," Gandhi said. 

 

India: Dream of regional power threatened

India's 2024 general elections have marked a significant shift in the country's political landscape. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saw a decline in its dominance, could secure only 240 of 543 seats in the lower house, a drop from 303 seats in 2019. Despite this, Modi managed to secure a third term as prime minister, thanks to the support from allies within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which together hold 293 seats.

The Indian National Congress, previously nearing political irrelevance, made a strong comeback, winning 99 seats, almost doubling its previous count of 52. The coalition of parties known as INDIA, allied with Congress, now controls 234 seats. This resurgence indicates a significant shift in voter sentiment, away from the BJP's Hindu nationalist ideology.

The BJP's decline is notable even in its traditional strongholds like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, where it suffered substantial losses.

Several factors contributed to the BJP's reduced appeal:

Despite Modi's efforts to energize his base by inaugurating a controversial temple, the party's Hindu nationalist message failed to resonate as strongly as before.

Economic issues played a crucial role; the benefits of India's impressive 8% annual economic growth have not reached the average citizen, leading to widespread dissatisfaction.

Inflation and unemployment remained significant concerns, with a large portion of the population living near or below the poverty line.

Modi's leadership, previously seen as a unifying force capable of driving reforms and attracting foreign investment, now faces challenges due to the political uncertainty introduced by the election results.

The necessity for the BJP to rely on coalition partners complicates its ability to enact policy changes and maintain stability.

This political fragmentation could deter international businesses and investors, who had hoped India, would serve as a viable alternative to China.

The elections have underscored the limitations of ideology as political capital for the BJP. Voters have expressed their concerns over the party's religious nationalism and its impact on the country's stability and security, prioritizing economic issues over ideological ones.

BJP will have to navigate the complex task of balancing governance with its ideological commitments, a challenge made more difficult by its weakened parliamentary position.

This new political reality suggests a return to coalition governance, potentially hampering India's aspirations on the global stage.

Why Modi is keen in calling India Bharat?

Dinner invites referring Bharat rather than India have fueled a political row and public debate over what the country should be called as the country prepares to welcome world leaders for the G20 summit.

Invites issued by the “President of Bharat,” instead of the customary “President of India,” were sent to delegates from the world’s 20 top economies for a dinner to be hosted by Indian President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday.

Both India and Bharat are used officially in the nation of 1.4 billion people, which has more than 20 official languages.

“India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States,” the country’s constitution states.

Bharat is also the Hindi word for India and is used interchangeably – both feature on Indian passports for example.

But its use on the invites marks a notable change in the naming convention used by the country on the international stage under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The G20 summit is a first for India as Modi aims to raise New Delhi’s global clout following nearly a decade-long tenure in power in which he has positioned himself as a leader intent on shedding the country’s colonial past – emphasizing the need to liberate ourselves from the slavery mindset.

Britain ruled India for about 200 years until it gained independence in 1947 and those who prefer Bharat say the name the country is best known by globally is a remnant of the colonial era.

The name India has been derived by ancient Western civilizations from the Sanskrit word for the Indus River – Sindhu – and was later adapted by the British Empire.

“The word ‘India’ is an abuse given to us by the British, whereas the word ‘Bharat’ is a symbol of our culture,” Harnath Singh Yadav, a BJP politician, told Indian broadcaster ANI.

Meanwhile, former India cricket star Virender Sehwag urged the sport’s officials to use Bharat on players’ shirts during the Men’s Cricket World Cup, which will be held in India this year.

“We are Bhartiyas, India is a name given by the British and it has been long overdue to get our original name ‘Bharat’ back officially,” he said on social media.

During its time in power, Modi’s government has made steps to steer the country away from what it has called “vestiges of British rule” and to free itself from its “colonial baggage.”

These efforts also include renaming roads and buildings related to both India’s Mughal as well as its colonial past.

For example, in 2022, the government renamed Rajpath, a 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) boulevard formerly known as Kingsway that runs through the heart of New Delhi. The new official name, Kartavya Path, would “remove any trace of colonial mindset,” the government said.

And in 2018, three Indian islands named after British rulers were renamed in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, to erase “these signs of slavery.”

But the use of “Bharat” on the G20 invites has raised eyebrows among opposition leaders.

“While there is no constitutional objection to calling India ‘Bharat’, which is one of the country’s two official names, I hope the government will not be so foolish as to completely dispense with ‘India’, which has incalculable brand value built up over centuries,” Shashi Tharoor, a former diplomat and prominent lawmaker from the main opposition Congress party, said on social media.

Tharoor is also the author of “Inglorious Empire”, a work of non-fiction that excoriates colonial Britain’s rule of India.

India's opposition is uniting to unseat Modi in next year's election. Should he be worried?

In July, the leaders from 26 Indian opposition parties formed an alliance – known as INDIA (or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) – in a bid to unseat Modi in the next general election.

Coined to evoke a sense of nationalism ahead of the 2024 polls, the INDIA alliance said its goal was upholding the country’s democratic institutions.

Modi’s government has come under scrutiny from rights groups and opposition lawmakers for its increasingly strident brand of Hindu nationalist politics, an ongoing crackdown on dissent, and a tightening grip on the country’s democratic institutions.

Modi has denied a crackdown, saying in a rare June press conference at the White House that when “there are no human rights, then it’s not a democracy,” and “there’s absolutely no space for discrimination” in the country.

Some opposition politicians said the government’s use of Bharat was a response to the formation of the INDIA alliance.

“How can the BJP strike down ‘INDIA’? The country doesn’t belong to a political party; it belongs to [all] Indians,” Aam Aadmi Party lawmaker Raghav Chadha, an alliance member, said on social media. “Our national identity is not the BJP’s personal property that it can modify on whims and fancies.”

But in an interview with ANI, India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar said India “is Bharat.”

“It is there in the constitution. I would invite everybody to read it,” he said.

“When you say Bharat,” it evokes a “sense, a meaning and a connotation,” he said.

“I think that is reflected in our constitution as well

 

India: When state fails people take law in their hands

Furious women set fire to the houses of two Indian men accused of parading two women naked in a state where months of ethnic clashes have left at least 120 dead.

A clip went viral Wednesday showing two women reported to be from the Kuki tribal group walking naked along a street while being jeered at and harassed by a mob reportedly from the Meitei community.

Violence erupted in the northeastern state of Manipur between the mainly Christian Kuki and the predominantly Hindu Meitei in May over job quotas and land rights, and intermittent clashes have continued since.

The emergence of footage of the women’s humiliation — which happened in May — triggered outrage across the country, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying it had “shamed India”.

Police arrested four suspects Thursday, and the same day a group of women activists put stacks of hay into the house of one of the men in Imphal and set it on fire.

As the fire raged, the women — from the Meitei community, like the accused — broke down the walls and roof of the house with sticks.

Another mob of women destroyed the house of a second accused, reducing it to ash and bars.

India is generally traditionalist, conservative and patriarchal, but the Meitei have a history of women’s activism, with women having a more prominent role in society than elsewhere.

The video of the naked women sparked protests across India on Friday, with demonstrators calling for the state’s chief minister to step down over the delay in taking action.

“Can normal people do these things?… Even cats, dogs, animal(s) never committed these kind of filthy act,” said one demonstrator near Imphal, where hundreds of women gathered to protest.

“This is not even how human beings treat other human,” she said.

India’s Supreme Court warned Modi’s government Thursday that if it does not act, “we will”.

Authorities in Manipur, led by the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said police had taken action as soon as the video surfaced on social media.

A “thorough investigation” was under way, the state’s chief minister N Biren Singh tweeted Thursday.

“We will ensure strict action is taken against all the perpetrators, including considering the possibility of capital punishment,” he added.

The Manipur violence came after the Kuki community protested Meitei demands for reserved public job quotas and college admissions as a form of affirmative action, stoking long-held fears that they might also be allowed to acquire land in areas currently reserved for tribal groups.

Homes and churches were torched, with tens of thousands of people fleeing to government-run camps.

In a detailed report to the Supreme Court in June, civil society group Manipur Tribal Forum said many gruesome acts of violence, including rape and beheading, had not been investigated by state authorities.

Footage of one such incident was shared on Twitter Thursday, reportedly showing an aide to a BJP lawmaker in the state holding a victim’s severed head, before it disappeared from the platform within hours.

 

Kashmir: Modi trying to convert demographic majority into political minority

Two years ago, on 5th August 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir as a state and redesignated it as two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Ladakh, which are governed directly from Delhi. 

He also scrapped Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which had allowed J&K to make its own laws, and cancelled Article 35A, which gave its legislature the power to determine who was a permanent resident of the state.

The effective annexation of J&K was overwhelmingly rejected by Kashmiri Muslims. Pakistan virulently opposed it, arguing that because J&K was considered by the United Nations Security Council to be disputed territory; its annexation violated international law.

Modi claimed that this unilateral move would bring peace and development to J&K. Not surprisingly, this action by his Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has only brought more misery and more violence. And, sadly, the future doesn’t look promising.

Within a year, the impact on the economy of J&K was disastrous. Another year later, and notwithstanding the Modi government’s assertions that the political changes had brought socioeconomic development to the region, economic activity has come to a standstill. A double lockdown, political and Covid-driven, has hit the tourism industry very hard. Starved of international tourists, those running the famous house boats on Dal Lake in Srinagar are desperately struggling to survive.

Many of the political leaders arrested two years ago are still under house arrest or in jail. The BJP has made rampant use of a particularly harsh piece of legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act—which permits detention without charge for up to six months—to crack down on all forms of dissent. Torture and mistreatment of detainees, including teenagers, is common practice. Less than 1% of arrests under the act have resulted in a conviction in the past 10 years. Modi has used the law to silence civil-society organizations, in particular, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society—the only two groups documenting human rights abuses in J&K.

India’s harsh and uncompromising approach to J&K has come to the attention of the UN. In March 2021, five UN special rapporteurs wrote a letter to the Modi government expressing their concerns over arbitrary detentions, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in J&K. That letter and five previous communications by other UN rapporteurs since 5 August 2019 have been ignored.

In June 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, concerned by grave human rights violations in J&K, asked the Indian government to end the use of shotgun pellets against children. The dire situation in J&K has also come to the attention of the EU. A number of members of the European Parliament have written to the president and vice president of the European Commission expressing concern about the human rights violations in J&K.

Kashmiri political leaders­—most of whom have lost all credibility with Kashmiris—have demanded that J&K’s statehood be restored. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai has said in the Indian parliament that statehood would be ‘granted at an appropriate time after normalcy is restored’. The Indian government’s response begs more questions about Kashmir’s future.

In the meantime, Delhi has extended until March 2022 the role of the Delimitation Commission established to redraw the electoral constituencies of J&K. Most Kashmiris fear that the commission’s real task is to redraw the electoral map to make it easier for the BJP to win the next election, whenever that will be.

But more worrisome to Kashmiris is that since the legislative changes in August 2019, well over three million domicile certificates have been granted to non-Kashmiris, most of them non-Muslims. Moreover, there’s a fear that Delhi will apply to Kashmir the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act, which requires Muslims to prove their citizenship. Many would not be able to do so because they have no official papers to confirm their legal status.

The Modi government has been keen to assist the return to Kashmir of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) who left because of the security situation in the 1990s. As former J&K finance minister Haseeb Drabu noted, Kashmiris are worried that through the use of legislative and administrative actions the Modi government is trying ‘to convert a demographic majority into a political minority’.

Despite the misery Kashmiris endure daily, the international community has no appetite to confront Modi on this. And he knows it.

There are critical strategic issues to deal with, notably the growing tension between the West and China and the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, in which India could play an important role. India’s geostrategic importance is further strengthened by its membership, along with the US, Japan and Australia, of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Given that context, Kashmir simply doesn’t make it onto the agenda.

On his recent visit to India, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not allow Kashmir and other human rights issues, such as the poor treatment of Muslims in India, to complicate the bilateral meeting. When asked to comment on the wobbliness of India’s democracy, Blinken stated, ‘We view Indian democracy as a force for good in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific. We also recognize that every democracy, starting with our own, is a work in progress.’ This would have been sweet music to his host, India’s Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar.

Sadly, once again, politics takes precedence over human rights issues. There’s no expectation that anything will change soon for Kashmiris because there’s absolutely no international pressure on Modi to relent.