Statecraft
Kashmir never runs out of controversies: the Central and State governments are competing with each other to make sure that they find a way to inflame passions in Kashmir, one way or another. The JK Police Bill-2013 scheduled to be tabled in the next session of the J&K state Legislative Assembly is the latest example. Among many objectionable provisions, the Bill proposes to create Special Security Zones (SSZ) within the state giving police “special powers” to deal with “abnormal” situations.
Enough has already been said about the appalling specifics of the draft Bill and hence I do not wish to add to the litany of complaints. In short, the Bill envisages converting J&K into a police state where police officers will have the ability to wield unparalleled powers over the lives of ordinary citizens. The Home Minister of the state, who also happens to be the Chief Minister, claims that his government has done a virtuous thing by putting the draft Bill on the Home Ministry’s website for feedback. Much appreciated, but will the thoughtful Chief Minister please tell us how come such a thoughtless, careless and anti-people Bill was even allowed to be drafted, endorsed by the top brass, and put on the Ministry’s website without even showing it (really?) to the Minister concerned? How on earth can such idiotic laws be contemplated in the first place and then put in black and white right under the watchful eyes of a Chief Minister/Home Minister who demands day in and day out that anti-people legislation such as the AFSPA should be abolished from his state? Either his Babus are taking him for granted or he did not understand the implications of what he was signing on!
This proposed law is clearly symbolic of an alarming tendency exhibited by the governments in Srinagar and New Delhi to exercise more and more control over the lives of the Kashmiris without being adequately accountable for it. While the proposed law, if enacted, will have special and overarching powers to control Kashmiris and their lives, what it offers in terms of accountability on the part of the J&K police is merely a promise to ‘act in good faith’. Incidentally, AFSPA also offers protection from prosecution for security forces ‘acting in good faith’. Its time that New Delhi and Srinagar realized that Kashmiris have had enough of their ‘acts in good faith’ and what they need now is accountability from those who control their lives.
The state of exception
Giorgio Agamben, a widely regarded European Philosopher argues, in his book State of Exception, that “the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency (though perhaps not declared in the technical sense) has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including the so-called democratic ones”. Contemporary Kashmir, which seems to represent a political-legal vacuum where normal laws, rights, constitutional remedies, and governmental accountability applicable to other parts of the country do not seem to apply, fits well with Agamben’s depiction of a ‘state of exception’. While still very much within the Indian sovereign space, Kashmir is a ‘state of exception’, not merely characterized by the application of extraordinary legal provisions but also embedded in the popular political imagination in India. Kashmiris are increasingly condemned to live in a state of exception and emergency by the ever-increasing use of extra-constitutional means of coercion: its citizens are dealt with by special laws, and the local government, under AFSPA, is not empowered to take action against those who violate the rights of its citizens nor can the violators of their rights be tried in civilian courts. The J&K government also has put in place special measures to deal with the people (DAA & PSA), and often refuses to entertain complaints about excesses committed by officials in exercising those special measures. As a result, entire categories of citizens are kept out of ordinarily applicable rights and privileges.
AFSPA has been in force in many parts of the J&K state for over two decades now. It is absurd and surely not borne out by facts that emergency conditions have been prevailing in the state for over two decades! Clearly, this is indicative of a tendency on the part of the Indian state to regularize exceptions. For those in power, nothing is better than a situation where emergency laws can be applied at will with no questions asked, no constitutional challenges faced, and no accountability demanded. Better still if it can be done under the guise of preserving national security. Indeed, the manner in which a ‘state with special status’ has over the last six decades been converted into a ‘state of exception’ shows how democratically elected states can exhibit extreme authoritarian tendencies.
Collective conscience and the state of exception
In democracies, application of emergency provisions would normally attract widespread criticism except, of course, when such provisions are meant for certain parts of the country where the application of emergency measures are deemed to be tolerable by the majority population for their security and wellbeing. Toleration of limited violence against ‘the other’ for the pursuit of collective good, sadly, is an emerging characteristic of modern democracies. ‘Collective conscience’, we know, could easily be majoritarian, parochial and hence incognizant of the predicaments of the minorities and fringes of the nation. In a sense, it is this welfare of the majority that the Supreme Court of India referred to when it said while confirming Afzal Guru’s death sentence that “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender”.
It often takes massive protests on the streets of Kashmir and the deaths of scores of Kashmiris for the ‘collective conscience’ of the nation to wake up and ask what has gone wrong there. Sometimes, even when it witnesses what happens in Kashmir, the country’s ‘collective conscience’ is far from morally outraged. Most people simply believe that the emergency provisions in force should continue and that they will one day stabilize Kashmir. Since the Northeast of India does not often take to streets in a coordinated manner, much of the country does not even know that there are states of exception in existence in it’s northeastern fringes. Such ‘national indifference’ to states of exception within the country’s sovereign space is often a result of portraying those dwelling in those states of exception as the problematic other. Kashmir, for instance, is often portrayed as a war zone, its inhabitants as terrorists, and throwing stones at gun-wielding security forces as an act of war in the Indian popular imagination.
(Source: March 3, 2013. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2013/Mar/3/the-making-of-a-state-of-exception-64.asp )
HAPPYMON JACOB
Enough has already been said about the appalling specifics of the draft Bill and hence I do not wish to add to the litany of complaints. In short, the Bill envisages converting J&K into a police state where police officers will have the ability to wield unparalleled powers over the lives of ordinary citizens. The Home Minister of the state, who also happens to be the Chief Minister, claims that his government has done a virtuous thing by putting the draft Bill on the Home Ministry’s website for feedback. Much appreciated, but will the thoughtful Chief Minister please tell us how come such a thoughtless, careless and anti-people Bill was even allowed to be drafted, endorsed by the top brass, and put on the Ministry’s website without even showing it (really?) to the Minister concerned? How on earth can such idiotic laws be contemplated in the first place and then put in black and white right under the watchful eyes of a Chief Minister/Home Minister who demands day in and day out that anti-people legislation such as the AFSPA should be abolished from his state? Either his Babus are taking him for granted or he did not understand the implications of what he was signing on!
This proposed law is clearly symbolic of an alarming tendency exhibited by the governments in Srinagar and New Delhi to exercise more and more control over the lives of the Kashmiris without being adequately accountable for it. While the proposed law, if enacted, will have special and overarching powers to control Kashmiris and their lives, what it offers in terms of accountability on the part of the J&K police is merely a promise to ‘act in good faith’. Incidentally, AFSPA also offers protection from prosecution for security forces ‘acting in good faith’. Its time that New Delhi and Srinagar realized that Kashmiris have had enough of their ‘acts in good faith’ and what they need now is accountability from those who control their lives.
The state of exception
Giorgio Agamben, a widely regarded European Philosopher argues, in his book State of Exception, that “the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency (though perhaps not declared in the technical sense) has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including the so-called democratic ones”. Contemporary Kashmir, which seems to represent a political-legal vacuum where normal laws, rights, constitutional remedies, and governmental accountability applicable to other parts of the country do not seem to apply, fits well with Agamben’s depiction of a ‘state of exception’. While still very much within the Indian sovereign space, Kashmir is a ‘state of exception’, not merely characterized by the application of extraordinary legal provisions but also embedded in the popular political imagination in India. Kashmiris are increasingly condemned to live in a state of exception and emergency by the ever-increasing use of extra-constitutional means of coercion: its citizens are dealt with by special laws, and the local government, under AFSPA, is not empowered to take action against those who violate the rights of its citizens nor can the violators of their rights be tried in civilian courts. The J&K government also has put in place special measures to deal with the people (DAA & PSA), and often refuses to entertain complaints about excesses committed by officials in exercising those special measures. As a result, entire categories of citizens are kept out of ordinarily applicable rights and privileges.
AFSPA has been in force in many parts of the J&K state for over two decades now. It is absurd and surely not borne out by facts that emergency conditions have been prevailing in the state for over two decades! Clearly, this is indicative of a tendency on the part of the Indian state to regularize exceptions. For those in power, nothing is better than a situation where emergency laws can be applied at will with no questions asked, no constitutional challenges faced, and no accountability demanded. Better still if it can be done under the guise of preserving national security. Indeed, the manner in which a ‘state with special status’ has over the last six decades been converted into a ‘state of exception’ shows how democratically elected states can exhibit extreme authoritarian tendencies.
Collective conscience and the state of exception
In democracies, application of emergency provisions would normally attract widespread criticism except, of course, when such provisions are meant for certain parts of the country where the application of emergency measures are deemed to be tolerable by the majority population for their security and wellbeing. Toleration of limited violence against ‘the other’ for the pursuit of collective good, sadly, is an emerging characteristic of modern democracies. ‘Collective conscience’, we know, could easily be majoritarian, parochial and hence incognizant of the predicaments of the minorities and fringes of the nation. In a sense, it is this welfare of the majority that the Supreme Court of India referred to when it said while confirming Afzal Guru’s death sentence that “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender”.
It often takes massive protests on the streets of Kashmir and the deaths of scores of Kashmiris for the ‘collective conscience’ of the nation to wake up and ask what has gone wrong there. Sometimes, even when it witnesses what happens in Kashmir, the country’s ‘collective conscience’ is far from morally outraged. Most people simply believe that the emergency provisions in force should continue and that they will one day stabilize Kashmir. Since the Northeast of India does not often take to streets in a coordinated manner, much of the country does not even know that there are states of exception in existence in it’s northeastern fringes. Such ‘national indifference’ to states of exception within the country’s sovereign space is often a result of portraying those dwelling in those states of exception as the problematic other. Kashmir, for instance, is often portrayed as a war zone, its inhabitants as terrorists, and throwing stones at gun-wielding security forces as an act of war in the Indian popular imagination.
(Source: March 3, 2013. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2013/Mar/3/the-making-of-a-state-of-exception-64.asp )
