Mushaal Hussein Mullick
Kashmir’s modern history is bookended by two dates that speak to the same anxiety: who gets to belong.
On 6 November 1947, “evacuation” trucks rolled out of Jammu carrying Muslim families who had been promised safe passage. Many were ambushed on the outskirts, their convoys attacked by armed bands as elements of the Dogra administration looked away or joined in. Accounts vary on the toll, but they agree on the method: organized violence designed to empty neighbourhoods and reorder the city’s human map.
We remember them by the things they carried: house keys threaded into dupattas, family deeds folded in tin boxes, prayer beads clenched in small hands. We remember the fathers who walked behind the trucks, the mothers who would not leave the elderly, the children whose names never reached a register.
We remember the unmarked fields that became cemeteries and the roads that became testimonies. For the martyrs of Jammu, every 6 November is a pledge to speak their story plainly, to guard their dignity, and to refuse the erasure they were forced to bear.
That wound is ritually reopened each year. Kashmiris mark Jammu Martyrs’ Day as the moment a demographic project announced itself with guns and roadblocks; commemorations and commentary explicitly situate the killings within an effort to change who lived in Jammu and who did not.
The observances this week repeat that argument in plain terms.
International law set a different script. From UN Security Council Resolution 47 (1948) onward, Jammu & Kashmir’s final status was to be decided by a “free and impartial plebiscite.”
Over the years, quite a few UN Security Council resolutions have reiterated that demand and cautioned against unilateral steps that pre-judge a promised act of self-determination.
For decades, India’s Article 370 (limited autonomy) paired with Article 35A functioned as a legal firebreak against outside settlement: the former delineated the Union’s reach; the latter empowered local authorities to define permanent residents and reserve land, public employment and some benefits for them. On 5 August 2019, that firewall was dismantled via Presidential Order C.O. 272 and the follow-on C.O. 273, and the state was reorganised into two Union Territories. In effect, the path to structural change, by lawfare rather than by force, was opened.
What followed was an operational playbook.
In 2020, new domicile rules expanded eligibility to non-locals; UN mandate-holders cautioned these changes “may alter the demographic composition.” In October 2020, amended land laws allowed any Indian citizen to buy non-agricultural land in J&K, which had been effectively constrained under Article 35A, prompting headlines about a “land grab” and official reassurances that farmland would be protected. Read together, the suite of rules reframed who can live, own and eventually vote.
Electoral geography moved too.
The Delimitation Commission’s final order (5 May 2022) fixed 90 Assembly seats, allocating 43 to Jammu and 47 to the Valley, a redistribution critics view as the political face of the same sociodemographic project. Whatever one’s view of intent, the outcome is indisputable: constituencies and representation now rest on a new map.
Across the Line of Control, Azad Jammu & Kashmir has chosen a different discipline: restraint, codified rather than rhetorical. Under the AJK Interim Constitution (1974), core property and civic rights turn on State-Subject status; non-State-Subjects, including ordinary Pakistani citizens, cannot buy land in AJK or be enrolled on AJK voter rolls.
The system is not a slogan but a working pipeline, with rules debated in an elected assembly, applied by routine bureaucracy, and reviewable in court, which gives citizens predictable guardrails while aligning with the UN’s instruction not to pre-configure the electorate of a disputed territory.
In practice, AJK’s model pairs openness with protection. Universities, hospitals and public works have expanded with robust diaspora participation, refugees from successive waves have found humanitarian space, and investors can engage through compliant channels, yet the demographic floor remains intact. Development is welcomed; demographic engineering is not.
That sequencing, growth within constitutional guardrails, tracks the UN script closely: keep the ground steady until the people decide.
Placed side by side, 6 November and 5 August read like different chapters of one story. In 1947, demographics were forced; after 2019, they are administered through lawfare, via domicile certificates, land rules and redrawn constituencies.
The methods changed; the endpoint appears familiar: fix facts on the ground first, argue politics later. AJK’s record offers a counter-narrative: fix procedures first, and keep the ground steady until the vote.
What follows from this is straightforward for any actor that treats the UN framework as binding.
Jammu & Kashmir should be handled as a disputed territory with a pending popular decision; demographic measures introduced after 2019, including residency, land and delimitation, should be subjected to independent scrutiny; and safeguards should be applied symmetrically. Until that promise is kept, end the politics of Indian occupation, let the plebiscite decide.
-TheWriteris
Chairperson, Peace & Culture Organization
Former SAPM (Human Rights & Women Empowerment)
Wife of Jailed Kashmiri Hurriyat Leader Mohammad Yasin Malik
Email : [email protected]
