August 31, 2019

Two populist premiers, a lingering crisis and the tenacious human suffering

topic:	Discrimination
located:	Pakistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

On stern directives coming right from the top brass of the military and civilian leadership, millions of Pakistanis stood still for half-an-hour this Friday in solidarity with the people of Kashmir.

Ever since the populist Hindu-nationalist premier in New Delhi, Narendra Modi revoked the special status of Kashmir, the disputed region between India and Pakistan, the populist premier in Islamabad Imran Khan is on the agitation drive.

Widely regarded as the powerful Pakistan Army’s pick, Khan has warned of a nuclear war between the two South Asian nations over the issue of Kashmir, which has already caused multiple skirmishes and a full-blown war between them.

The beautiful valley of Kashmir, which has always given the image of a war-zone with the many military check posts and armed police patrols within it, remains in lockdown as both Modi and Khan view and approach this entirely humanitarian issue from a strategic angle. Meanwhile the main stakeholders – the Kashmiris – have been completely removed from the perspective.

Forcing all commuters, men and women, sick and elderly for half-an-hour for the sake of state-directed protest is evidently a bizarre idea. It only exposes the failure of diplomatic manoeuvres and constructive dialogue on the part of Pakistan; just as the state-oppressed protests in the valley dent the image of India globally.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party leaders are already busy with war-mongering in an evident effort to hide their utter failure to shore-up the economy amid sky rocking inflation.

Modi’s party, Bharatiya Janata Party, is not behind with its Hindu fanaticism, with the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, with which the BJP plans to change the definition of illegal migrants explicitly on the basis of religion. The proposed Bill seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to provide citizenship to illegal migrants, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian belief. However, the Act doesn’t have a provision for Muslims.

It seems as though this move does not look that absurd to many, but the core of the trouble is a corresponding move by the government, the National Registration of Citizenship (NRC) underway in Assam state in the northeast, bordering Bangladesh, which is meant to identify ‘legitimate’ citizens. It is aimed to detect Bangladeshi nationals who might have entered Assam illegally. So, if the Bill becomes an Act, the Muslims identified as ‘undocumented immigrants’ would become stateless.

(Photo: Yawar Nazir/ Getty Images)