Selected root causes and the structure of human rights violations

Abstract

This chapter discusses selected root causes and different structural patterns which lead to or provide excuses for human rights abuses in Kashmir. Under the BJP-led government, India has institutionally reinforced the role of Hindu far-right nationalist ideology and majoritarian supremacism in its domestic policy. Kashmir, strategically exploited and politically projected by all post-independence Indian governments as a symbol of ethnoreligious inclusiveness, has now become a crucial pillar of a larger political and social campaign aimed at redefining the project of a democratic, inclusive, secular state into a one-nation, one-religion-based political construct with structural disenfranchisement of minorities in Kashmir and all over India, and those dissidents, intellectuals, who oppose such vision of the state. Historically inherited Pakistan-supported proxy strategy has also influenced the socio-political dynamics in Indian-administered Kashmir, by bolstering the Islamisation of resistance in the Valley and escalating communal violence with dismal consequences for Kashmir's indigenous inhabitants. Multiple incidents exemplify core tenets of the ferocious approach of Indian authorities to Kashmir and Kashmiris, particularly in the Kashmir Valley. The analysis of root causes and the structure of the HR violations comprises the patterns of the de facto impunity, of systematic nature, when the state fails to persecute the perpetrators of violence for political reasons and acts as a shield for abusers, and the de jure impunity, of systemic nature, when special laws and regulations are intentionally enacted to guarantee immunity to state-supported actors.