Prime Minister Narendra Modi has described India as the mother of democracy. Yet this week marked five years since democracy was suspended in one of India’s most sensitive regions: Jammu and Kashmir. After a coalition government between Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the Peoples Democratic Party collapsed on June 19, 2018, Jammu and Kashmir came under Central rule. It has stayed that way through some of the most tumultuous changes in its history since its 1947 accession to a newly-independent India. Mr Modi's government in New Delhi has enforced those changes without any involvement or representative debate within Jammu and Kashmir, a situation that does not square easily with the democratic credentials of a country aspiring to become a global power. In August 2019, the Central government revoked Article 370 to end the semi-autonomous status enjoyed by Jammu and Kashmir without holding consultations in the region or even a proper debate in Parliament. The state was carved into two Union territories — Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. Mainstream, pro-India Kashmiri politicians were placed under house arrest, all political activism was banned, and the internet choked across the Kashmir Valley. The official pledge was to make Jammu and Kashmir safer, end militancy, and usher in a new era of growth, development and peace in the region.
But the past five years have shown just the opposite. Attacks on Hindu minorities and migrants in Kashmir have gone up, even as journalists have been locked up on dubious charges. The security clampdown remains as formidable as ever. Freedoms, including that of movement and of voicing diverse political views, that other Indians take for granted are constrained in the Valley. Investments are down and the economy is sputtering. Global opinion on India’s position on Kashmir remains divided, as witnessed by the boycott of a G20 meeting in Srinagar last month by some nations. Mr Modi’s administration is yet to lay out a clear roadmap for the restoration of direct elections to the legislature. Protests are mounting even in Ladakh, where the actions of August 2019 were largely welcomed initially. Meanwhile, a delimitation exercise has accentuated fears that New Delhi is attempting to tilt the region's political fortunes so that a Kashmiri vote counts for less than a vote in Jammu, where the BJP performs better. Sadly, all this betrays a deep lack of faith in democracy as the bedrock of Indian governance. A true mother of democracy would be weeping.