THE TALK
A young lawyer recently said: “if Kashmir is a litmus test of Indian democracy, it is also the harbinger of what is to come for all of us citizens of India. Kashmir is in many ways the litmus test of Indian democracy”. That comment became the last sentence of the just released report on human rights in Jammu and Kashmir, co-authored by Dr Radha Kumar.
This Talk will discuss the various facets of the Kashmir issue, the acts of omission and commission by various governments, and the resulting situation on the ground, viewed in the context of the current changes to India’s democracy, which some are now calling the Second Republic. Dr. Kumar asks whether there will be any place for federalism in this republic, and whether India is moving towards a (notional) national security state in which the rights to identity and dissent will be permanently curbed.