The decision to eliminate the state of Jammu & Kashmir by legislative decree was made in absolute secrecy, and will be executed in absolute darkness.

Thousands of troops have been deployed on the streets, opposition leaders have been put under house arrest with a midnight knock on their doors, the internet has been blacked out, and phone lines have been severed.

The only inkling of the government’s moves came from a chance photograph, snapped as home minister Amit Shah entered Parliament this morning, August 5 2019.

A neat Excel sheet laid out a checklist for Kashmir’s erasure:


“Inform the President —— Done”, the checklist read, under the sub-head, titled ‘Constitutional’. “Inform the Vice President —— Done.” There was a cabinet meeting, and then the bill was brought before Parliament, where a noisy but largely ineffectual Opposition was given an hour to deliberate the redrawing of India’s political map.

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If all goes as planned, and there is little sign it won’t, the state of Jammu and Kashmir will be replaced by two union territories — one with a legislature subservient to a puppet governor, and one with just a puppet governor.


What of the Kashmiris? Where do they appear in Amit Shah’s checklist? Way down on point number 14 and 15 under “Law and Order”.

While Point 14 calls for the Home Secretary to make his way down to a state that has been amputated into a colony administered by New Delhi, Point 15 reveals that colonising one’s own territories carries an attendant risk: “Possibility of violent disobedience amongst sections of uniformed personnel.”

Kashmir is the boundary condition of Indian democracy; and as of now, democracy is dead in the darkness.