Rana Ayyub
In early March, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to the Srinagar airport in the capital of the Himalayan state of Kashmir and made his way by convoy to a 30,000-seat stadium close to the center of town. In front of crowds that had gathered on the stadium floor, he spoke emphatically of his efforts “to win your hearts,” echoing a sentiment he had expressed weeks earlier on a visit to Jammu. “Friends, Jammu and Kashmir is touching new heights of development because it is breathing freely now.”
The event at Bakshi Stadium was several weeks before India’s nearly one billion voters began casting ballots in nationwide elections. But Modi wasn’t in town to rally electoral support for his Bharatiya Janata Party. The party’s decision not to field any candidates in Kashmir, and instead rely on local proxy parties to do its bidding, reflected an acknowledgment of just how deep its unpopularity in the region remains.
Modi’s decision in 2019 to abrogate Article 370, which removed a longstanding constitutional guarantee of near autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, made the Hindu nationalist BJP an object of powerful resentment in the Muslim-majority region. The move, he had promised at the time, would enable Kashmir to develop along with the rest of India and help Kashmiris experience the “freedoms” the other states and territories enjoy.
Neither happened, but that hasn’t stopped Modi from pushing a narrative that political and economic progress is arriving now that the “barrier” that was Article 370 has been removed. If there is residual anger at his move, Modi seems to say, it can only be from Kashmiris who are innately hostile to the Indian nation.
