SIDDHARTHA DEB: I think there is a great deal of distress within India in terms of agriculture, in terms of livelihood. There are no jobs. There is drought. India seesaws between drought in large parts of the country and these unpredictable monsoons and floods. And so, there is a great deal of poverty and migration. And I think, in part, in Kashmir, what Modi has tried to do is two things.
For the poor in India, there has always been this story, this fake news produced by the BJP, that Kashmiri Muslims get special privileges. And the very raw example of this would be a political street address that I heard in Kolkata in passing, many years ago, where the BJP speaker was saying that, Kashmiris get subsidized meat from the Indian government for a price that you won’t even be able to buy dog meat in Kolkata. This is clearly directed at the large masses of the Indian poor, that Kashmiris — and this is said of other groups as well, including Indian Muslims— that they get special privileges. It’s similar to the “welfare queen” comments that Americans make about black minorities, that they get special privileges. And it plays into the same kind of majoritarianism, the same kind of sectarian nationalism. So, that’s one part of it.
The other part of it is for India’s BJP support, which is more elite, the business crowd. Now you can go into Kashmir and buy land. Social media is filled with Hindu right-wing supporters of Modi saying, “We will now marry Kashmiri women.” And you can see the settler-colonial, racist, sexist rhetoric at the heart of it. The idea is that they can now purchase land in Kashmir and basically turn it into an investment destination. So, that’s what Modi is doing – we are going to let more Hindus move into Kashmir.
I will just say one thing, though. Kashmir is not alone in this kind of protection of land rights. This is common in many border parts of India where there are minorities or indigenous people. This is true in many parts of the northeast, including the state where I grew up, in Meghalaya, where similar protection is in place and you cannot buy land if you are not from the indigenous groups there, in order to protect them from being swamped by people with much more access to capital. More here.