It has been three years since then President Ram Nath Kovind issued the fateful orders that read down Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, allowing the Narendra Modi administration to divide the State of Jammu and Kashmir and demote its two new units to Union Territory status. These measures, Prime Minister Modi said, would extend the rights and benefits of Indian democracy to the people of the State. The irony of the fact that his administration felt compelled to simultaneously arrest more than 5,000 political leaders, activists and mediapersons in order to achieve this laudable goal appeared to escape him.
Draconian actions
Three years later, the promise of democracy seems as far away as it was on August 5, 2019. Several hundred of those arrested in 2019 are still in jail without trial. Fresh arrests of dissidents and human rights defenders have become routine. The media continues to be muzzled, and the few journalists who brave a silent censorship suffer from the ‘vicious circle’ of repeated arrests that the Supreme Court of India criticised in the case of Mohammed Zubair. Despite the completion of the delimitation commission’s exercise, Legislative Assembly elections have still to be announced. Jammu and Kashmir has been under President’s rule and then Lieutenant-Governor’s rule for four years now.
