The dividends, domestic as well as international, of restricting the powers of the armed forces can be visualized in the palpable sense of relief here after Mufti Muhammad Sayeed reined in, if only to some extent, the dreaded Special Task Force of the police. This should have been the cue and the take-off point for New Delhi on how to win friends in Kashmir. The sticking point, though, is that the powers-that-be don’t seem to be interested in such an enterprise. Why else should the new army chief have been allowed to poach on essentially political territory by displaying his mandatory machismo on the purported dire need of the draconian law? One of the many mistakes committed in this formulation is to club Jammu and Kashmir with the north-eastern states where the law has been in force since 1958, and without much to show for itself. The situation unfolding in Kashmir has its own peculiar dynamics, and repealing the AFSPA in the state could certainly have a positive impact on the public psyche, besides restoring some measure of faith in the country’s organs of governance.
Brazenly ignored by the Indian state is the Supreme Court ruling requiring the Act to be reviewed after every six months. Though the government’s periodic assessments of the situation in Kashmir vary with domestic political compulsions, no one can deny the gradual slackening of violence and the accent on political routes in the state. New Delhi could have consolidated on this significant gain by ensuring that the armed forces were no longer the judge, jury and executioner they have been for the past twenty years. The reassertion of civilian authority, not in symbolic but in real terms, can go a long way in building confidence among the masses and make them feel less vulnerable to what are justifiably perceived to be colonial masters.
Talking of which, the Act itself is a relic of India’s colonial past which it readily embraced for want of a cogent, sane response to the challenges in the north east. And when the AFSPA could not douse the insurgencies in the country’s remote territory for over fifty years, how can the militaristic minds in New Delhi guarantee its success in Kashmir? Experts have long lamented the counterproductive impact of the Act in the north-eastern population, and pointed out how it bred a vicious cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals in a never-ending orgy of violence.
The toll the Act has taken on non-combatants in Kashmir is incalculable, for the impunity and immunity it grants to the armed forces has put them beyond the pale of law, choking off all avenues of redress for wronged civilians. The Act is a license to the uniformed forces to kill and maim with or without justification, and more often than not, the victims have been ordinary civilians who have had nothing to do with the insurgency. This has dealt a death blow to what remained of the faith common Kashmiris had in the rule of law and the benevolent character of the state. Increasingly, the state has come to be seen garbed in the olive-green colours of battle, with no mechanism left to call deviant personnel to account. The government could not have forgotten the army’s refusal to honour a charge sheet by no less an agency than the CBI on the soldiers indicted in the Gandarbal fake encounters case. Though the wanton and willful killing of a number of innocent civilians by the army and the police is well documented in the case, the system has failed to give the guilty soldiers up to the law, even after several years. Courtesy the AFSPA. And New Delhi expects Kashmiris to view it with less than hostile eyes!
Given the nature, longevity and background of the insurgencies in India, militaristic laws which put the armed forces beyond the reach of prosecution can only foster alienation, mistrust and desperation. There is no way out of the violence that must necessarily entail. The sanest course, by far, would be to subject the forces fighting insurgencies to the ordinary law of the land, and ensure that they have a stake in upholding internationally accepted rights of combatants and non-combatants alike.
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