Kashmir coronavirus curfews and ceaseless repression
Core Argument¶
The article argues that the Indian state under Narendra Modi is using the cover of the coronavirus pandemic to deepen and entrench its repressive occupation of Kashmir, following the August 2019 revocation of Article 370. The lockdown is not a neutral public health measure but a continuation of the same curfew regime by other means, allowing the government to impose new domicile laws designed to alter the demographic character of Kashmir through what the article identifies as settler colonialism. The central claim is that the pandemic has become an opportunity for the Indian bourgeoisie to accelerate its imperialist project in the region, but that this will ultimately generate an explosive revolutionary backlash that cannot be contained.
Theoretical Grounding¶
The analysis draws on the Marxist theory of the state as an instrument of class rule, specifically the Leninist understanding of the bourgeois state's willingness to use emergency powers against oppressed nationalities. The article situates the Kashmir question within the framework of imperialist oppression — not simply as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan, but as the subjugation of a nation by a capitalist state acting in the interests of its own ruling class. The concept of settler colonialism is deployed explicitly, drawing a structural parallel with the Israeli state's treatment of Palestinians, which places the analysis within the Marxist tradition of anti-colonial national liberation struggles. The piece also implicitly relies on the Marxist understanding that periods of crisis — whether economic or epidemiological — do not suspend class and national oppression but intensify it, while simultaneously creating the conditions for mass radicalisation.
Conjunctural Relevance¶
The article is written in April 2020, at the onset of the global pandemic, and captures a precise moment of dual crisis. India had just entered a 21-day national lockdown on 24 March, while Kashmir had already been under a military curfew since August 2019 — a period of over seven months. The article notes that over 600,000 military and paramilitary personnel were deployed in Jammu and Kashmir, that political leaders and hundreds of youth had been arrested and imprisoned across India, and that internet and mobile phone services were systematically interrupted. The specific conjunctural move the article identifies is the Home Ministry's 1 April notification changing domicile laws: granting citizenship to anyone who has stayed 15 years in Jammu and Kashmir (or 10 years for central government employees, or 7 years for those who pass through the state board), and opening recruitment to all Indians. This was announced during the lockdown precisely to minimise protest. The article also notes that the Tablighi Jamaat religious gathering became a vector for COVID-19 transmission, and that the Modi government and media used this to stoke anti-Muslim sectarianism.
Where the Argument Continues¶
The article is a snapshot of a rapidly evolving situation and does not develop a strategic perspective on how the working class in India and Pakistan should relate to the Kashmiri national movement. It asserts that the coming period will produce revolutionary movements capable of overthrowing not just the Modi government but the capitalist system itself, but does not elaborate on the organisational or programmatic questions this raises. The argument continues in subsequent IDOM coverage of Kashmir, particularly articles analysing the further erosion of democratic rights, the economic devastation of the region, and the broader question of how Marxist parties should approach national self-determination in South Asia. The piece also opens a question that is not resolved here: the relationship between the struggle for Kashmiri freedom and the class struggle of the Indian working masses. This tension — between national liberation and socialist revolution — is a recurring theme in the Marxist tradition that the article gestures toward but does not fully theorise.
Connections¶
The article should be read alongside IDOM's broader coverage of Indian politics, particularly analyses of the Modi government's use of the pandemic to centralise power and attack democratic rights. It connects to the Marxist literature on national oppression and self-determination, especially Lenin's writings on the right of nations to secession and Trotsky's analyses of combined and uneven development in colonial and semi-colonial countries. The explicit comparison with Israeli settler colonialism invites reading alongside Marxist analyses of Palestine, including the work of the Israeli Socialist Struggle movement. The article also implicitly engages with the debate within Marxism about whether the Kashmir struggle should be understood as a bourgeois national movement or as part of a broader anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist front — a question that remains live in the RCI's theoretical work.
Key Quotes¶
"Kashmir is in a double lockdown and the lives of ordinary people have become even more miserable in the absence of proper internet, and given regular interruptions in mobile phone services."
"People fear that this is the start of settler colonialism, to change the demography of Kashmir, and Hindu fundamentalists will be brought to impose reaction and spread hatred in the valley. This is a similar measure pursued by the Israeli state in Palestine, which is now being replicated in Kashmir."
"The government had been waiting to notify people of these rules but it would have led to anger and agitation in Jammu, as well as in Kashmir, necessitating the imposition of a curfew. Taking the opportunity presented by the lockdown, the Modi government gave notice without attracting much anger."
"The pandemic, economic breakdown and restrictions in Kashmir are testing the resolve of people like never before. But the coming period is pregnant with revolutionary implications in which the hatred against the Modi government will erupt like burning lava from an exploding volcano."
"This period will give birth not only to revolutionary movements that could overthrow the Modi government, but will challenge the brutal capitalist system in India, which is the real basis for the imperialist oppression in Kashmir and the whole region."
"The present period of slavery, hunger, poverty and death will prove to be the last part of a dark night, giving way to a beautiful dawn of freedom and prosperity."