What world media is saying about #Article370

The Indian government announced the scrapping of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5. The article was originally inserted soon after Independence to provide a degree of autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. 

Article 35A, which allowed special privileges to the state’s “permanent residents”, was also tactically superseded.

In the Rajya Sabha, the central government introduced a bill to bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories—Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir. 

The move was engineered at a time when the state of Jammu and Kashmir was in the throes of panic: the Indian government has deployed 300 companies of paramilitary in the state over the last week; imposed internet shutdown and curfew in parts of Kashmir; snapped mobile communication and arrested political leaders.

The weight of this move on India’s regional relationships will be immense, more so with Pakistan, which continues to make territorial claims on Kashmir and sponsors cross-border terrorism in the region. The larger ramifications of this South Asian duel is also headline-worthy internationally, especially in the West, which has been a keen observer and often a nervous participant in the Kashmir saga.

Pakistani Media

“New Delhi sheds fig leaf, robs held Kashmir of special status,” reads a long front-page headline on Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest and most widely-read English daily.

The cover also carries pictures of protestors in Pakistan’s Hyderabad and Lahore (with placards calling “Moodi” a terrorist), and also New Delhi.

Writing for the paper, Delhi correspondent Javed Naqvi rued that the Modi government has “entombed Nehru’s dream of a secular, inclusive republic.” He opined that communal motivations for scrapping 370 are not beyond Modi and that Kashmiris will now have to bear the “full force of Hindutva bigotry”. 

Naqvi believes that the state’s bifurcation will “keep the large Muslim population of Kargil from acquiring a political platform, which will be also denied to Ladakh’s Buddhist people.”

He adds: “Pakistan will have to negotiate the feared demographic changes, replete with militarily protected and therefore segregated regions on the model of Israeli settlements.”

Another editorial in Dawn takes a more critical position. It says that India’s latest move is a “violation of all its commitments, including those made at the UN” and has reduced Kashmir—“Indian-held Kashmir”—to a colony. It expressed anxiety over the future of demography in Muslim-majority state since quashing 370 brightens the prospect of an “invasion of the Valley sponsored by the BJP in its current belligerent mood.”

“Pakistanis will be asking their government,” it continued “as to what exactly transpired, and in precisely what context did Kashmir feature, at the recent meeting between Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and US President Donald Trump. Indeed, Islamabad is being advised to link its support for the normalisation of Afghanistan in a post-American pullout scenario with Kashmir.”

In the front-page of the Karachi-based Tribune, the most striking sight is a picture of former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and her quoted comment: “It was a mistake to prefer India over Pakistan”. Beside her, a white moustachioed Raja Farooq Haider, Prime Minister of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, informs the reader: “We will not let India usurp Kashmiris’ rights.”

The headline reads “Occupation Redux”. Subhead: “India strips occupied Kashmir of special status, revokes property curbs and imposes communication blackout.” 

In an explainer, the daily told its readers that the revocation of 370 will mean that the “Indian Constitution will come into full force in IoK [Indian-occupied Kashmir] and the state government loses its power to decide which provisions should be applied in the occupied territory.”

Like Dawn, it stated that the removal of 35A “is driven by the desire of Hindu nationalist groups such as Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to end Muslim majority in IoK”, since it will allow for “mass Hindu migration and settlement in IoK, akin to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Another article in the paper opined that the move will be a “real test” for Indian judiciary “which claims to be independent and takes pride in protecting civil liberties”. “It has been reported,” the piece went on, “that Modi’s move will be challenged in the superior courts by different segments of the Indian society.”

The Lahore-based The Nation reported Pakistan’s opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif’s views on the response to the abrogation of 370: the nation would not forgive Prime Minister Imran Khan if he showed any weakness on the Kashmir issue. 

Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sirajul Haq, it said, believed that India has “announced war by revoking Article 370 and now Pakistan should go to every extent to reverse the decision.” He added that Islamabad should link its cooperation with the Washington DC on Afghanistan to seek solution on the Kashmir issue.

Invoking Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations thesis, a Nation columnist wrote that the “tidal wave of Hindu extremism” in India “has the potential of turning Kashmir into a civilizational dispute at the fault-line of Islamic and Hindu civilizations.”

International Media

In most international publications like Israel’s Haaretz, France 24 and Russian Television, the abrogation of 370 was plainly reported with headlines like “New Delhi revokes special constitutional status for India’s Kashmir, in move Pakistan calls illegal”, “India Revokes Kashmir’s Special Status; Pakistan to ‘Exercise All Possible Options’”. There was minimum opinion-mustering in these reports. 

Breaking the news to its readers, Al Jazeera used the headline “’Darkest day’: Uproar as India strips Kashmir of special status” and “India revokes disputed Kashmir’s special status with rush decree”.

Ather Azia, a poet and a political anthropologist who teaches at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley, noted in an Al Jazeera column that India has “finally announced to the world their intention to annex Kashmir completely and rule its population indefinitely, they [Kashmiris] are gearing up for a new period of conflict, oppression and bloodshed.”

The New York Times flashed on its front-page the following headline: “Hindu-led India puts clamp on Muslim Kashmir”. According to the article, India’s “Hindu nationalist government…unilaterally wiped out the autonomy of the restive Kashmir region.”

It stated in its initial paragraphs that the Hindu nationalists have traditionally desired to “curtail the special freedoms” of Kashmir, which it describes as a “predominantly Muslim territory that has turned into a tinderbox between India and Pakistan”.

If the piece is to be believed, Pakistan was busy persuading its international allies to oppose the Indian move, but it did not induce much sympathy since “Pakistan has little credibility on the issue,” thanks to “a long history of covertly supporting militant groups in Kashmir”.

From the front page of the New York Times on August 6, 2019

The Wall Street Journal reported the impact and risks of scrapping Article 370 and noted that if Modi’s BJP “succeeds in its decades-old goal of redefining the Himalayan state’s status, it could become one of the prime minister’s biggest legacies.” 

It added with a caveat that the move can risk “exacerbating an already tense situation that has long festered in the state, which could have regional and global repercussions.” The article made note of the heavy-handed crackdown by Indian forces in Kashmir and the human rights concerns they raise.

Across the Atlantic, in the UK, the Guardian also speculated that the Indian move can “define Modi’s legacy as prime minister”, but it can also “fuel the insurgency in Kashmir”. 

In  a column, the paper’s current South Asia correspondent Jason Burke opined that Modi’s decision to do away with Kashmir’s autonomy is “a statement of intent and ideology.”

Burke added that even though Kashmir’s autonomy had eroded over the years, the Article was “nonetheless of huge symbolic importance to the local population.” Hinting at the oncoming phase of violence and protests, Burke said that the youth of Kashmir’s population is a “key factor.”

“The bitter memories of that period dissuaded their elders from violence, making recruitment harder for the various armed extremist factions operating in “the Valley”, as the heart of the region is known. This is no more the case, and many young people will think that their time has come. The consequences may be tragic for the region, and India too,” he concluded.

A report in the Chinese Communist Party’s China Daily said that revocation of Article 370 will strip the “significant autonomy” that Kashmir enjoyed since seven decades. It will “further inflame tensions in the Muslim-majority region and infuriate Pakistan”. As opposed to the ten pieces that China Daily carried on the Balakot strikes in February, this time we’ve only seen one.