Why Apologists Are Quiet On J&K

For decades, an entire industry of political entrepreneurs, activists, academics, and scribes inclined towards the loony Left or with liberal pretensions, and a few retired soldiers, has grown around the idea of advocating a political solution in Kashmir. But none of these characters ever really defined what precisely they meant by a ‘political solution’.

- Sushant Sareen

Development bogey

It was at best an amorphous and inchoate formulation, a sexy slogan which made the sloganeers sound profound without ever thinking it through. Even the ‘moderate’ separatists never really specified what exactly they meant by a ‘political solution’.

Everyone knew they were plugging for separatism. But when they were asked to spell out their ‘political solution’, they only mouthed clichés like ‘talks’, ‘dialogue’, consultations. Well, guess what? On August 5, the Modi-Shah duo went in for a political solution to Kashmir. The administrative, constitutional and legal changes announced on August 5, are nothing but a political solution as conceived by the current political dispensation to solve the vexed ‘political problem’ of Jammu and Kashmir. The political solution has, however, been sugar-coated with talk of economic development, and ending ethnic, social and gender-based discrimination. In other words, the entire spiel about development and rights is at best a corollary and not the primary driver behind the move.

The fact of the matter is that J&K wasn’t exactly in the bottom of the pile when it came to economic development. The 2018 Human Development Index ranked J&K 11 among Indian states. Compared to Leh, Jammu and Srinagar, the main cities of Pakistan