Corruption in Indian-Occupied Kashmir: The Historical and Social Roots, and What the Kunan-Poshpora Case Reveals
Historical Background
The origins of corruption in Kashmir date back to pre-colonial days (between 1003 and 1320), when feudal landholding defined social-economic hierarchies and privilege based on classes. Agrarian production and land taxation was under the control of the powerful Hindu feudal groups and warlords, the damaras whose influence was great. Lacking institutional checks resulted in a culture where the exploitation of the peasants was made legal. Forms of corruption in their early stages like those which were founded on privilege, patronage and coercion provided precedence to the subsequent development of unaccountable authority in the area. . Several foreign invaders and occupiers—including the Afghans, Sikhs and the Brits and lastly the Dogras took turns to exploit the local Kashmiris. The Treaty of Amritsar (1809) was an agreement between the British East India Company and the defeated Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh that established the Sutlej River as the boundary of the Sikh Empire and limited its expansion to the north. The Treaty was signed in 1946 between the British and Maharaja Gulab Singh, founder of the Hindu Dogra dynasty. Muslims who had earlier displaced the damaras were now relegated to subservience with burdensome taxes on land and cattle. They were frequently subjected to forced labor by the rulers. The operation of government by the Dogra monarchs was characterized by centralized government, biased administrative practices and discrimination. The Muslim majority population in the valley had been marginalized politically and economically. The ruling elite continued to dominate the valley through her webs of loyalty and rent seeking. These historical circumstances presented the groundwork to a system where corruption was not an isolated phenomenon but rather a tool of normal political handling. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims in the valley perished in waves of famine and starvation. Historians report that Kashmir valley lost two thirds of its population at one time during Dogra rule from starvation. During Maharaj’s time villagers were forced to give large portions of rice paddy to the government without pay. Some of us heard those heart wrenching stories from our uncles and aunts in1950s.
Since the British India partition in 1947, Kashmir has been the center of the territorial and ideological dispute between India and Pakistan. The new phase of institutional corruption started with the political uncertainty that surrounded the annexation of the princely state by India in October 1947. The split of the region along the Cease Fire Line caused by the first Indo-Pakistani War (1947-1948) created the brutal logic of militarized governance. The intuitive principles of democratic self-determination mandated by successive UN Security Council Resolutions were replaced by the artificial demands of national security and political stability of India at the total expense of Kashmir. Corruption in this changing environment became a means of consolidating power, dispensing loyalty and dealing with opposition. Kashmir became a den of the Indian spy network of CIDs in every nook and corner. Indians had already established this network as a prelude to permanent occupation. To do that Indians had started doling out bribe money to bribe vulnerable elements of Kashmiri society. That, along with widespread torture by the Indo-Kashmiri police state helped create a perfect model for endemic and perpetual monetary corruption.
Corruption is entrenched and endemic in Kashmir and inextricable from occupation. Occupational machination necessitates corruption of mind, body and soul of the enslaved populace. Military and police force is critical to maintaining control and corrupt officers are necessary to implement control.
Kashmir Corruption Institutionalization
There was a brief period of pause between 1947 and 1955 during the Shaikh Abullah’s premiership which saw a lull in public corruption. He was a headstrong Kashmiri leader with huge popularity among Kashmiris. He had strong ideas about governance of Kashmiris. That was before he realized that Nehru, Patel and even Gandhi had double-crossed him and eventually jailed him for 11 years outside his homeland . He was replaced with his deputy, Bakhshi Ghulam Muhammad. Bakhshi was given a free reign to engage in corrupting the individual and institutions. The decades that followed, there was increasing institutional corruption in the forms of governance in Indian-occupied Kashmir. This was seen in the political arena as one government after another used clientelism and nepotism to sustain themselves. The administration turned to be associated with favoritism whereby bureaucratic appointments and developmental funds were in most cases distributed along partisan lines. The state resources were abused, resulting in a decline of trust in institutions by the citizens and poor checks and balances that could not hold the officials accountable. The issue of land-based corruption continued to prevail in the Roshni Act scandal, whereby the state lands were sold in uncertain conditions to the powerful people. The scandal did not only reflect the manipulation of the policy by the government to benefit the individual, but also a lack of transparency in the institutional processes. Although agencies like the Anti-Corruption Commission in the past and the Jammu and Kashmir State Vigilance Commission of late were formed, there was no accountability because of drilling into politics and inertia in systems.
Nevertheless, corruption in Kashmir cannot be discussed only through the economic or bureaucratic perspective. The social and ethical aspects of corruption are also very meaningful, especially in a highly militarized setting. The system is undermined when the institutions which are supposed to uphold the justice and guard the rights are violated or condone it. This kind of moral and institutional corruption presents itself in the form of undermining ethical standards, selective application of law and normalisation of impunity. Political control and militarization have led to a system of governance where abuse of power is easy to go unnoticed, and redress systems are ineffective. These systemic failures have not only damaged the public trust in the institutions of the state, but have also led to a larger cynical and alienated culture.
Kunan-Poshpora Incident (1991): Case Study
A good example of such intertwined types of corruption is the Kunan-Poshpora incident of February 1991. During a raid in the twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora in the Kupwara district, the soldiers of the Indian army were accused of having sexually assaulted some women. The accounts of the number of victims have differed in various reports, however, it has been reported that dozens of women aged between young adults and older women were gang raped in the night between February 23 and 24. The local authorities made a police report in the sections of the Ranbir Penal Code that dealt with rape and unlawful confinement. Nonetheless, procedural anomalies, delays and controversy were evident at the very beginning of the investigation. Months later the official investigation by the Press Council of India ruled out the accusations as being baseless, a decision which human rights groups and civil society observers criticized as lacking in thoroughness and sensitivity.
The Kunan-Poshpora incident response on an institutional level was a demonstration of the way in which moral and political corruption overlap in the context of governance. It was observed that the credibility of the investigation was compromised by claims of administrative bias andinterference. The evidence used was largely overlooked and the testimony of survivors was met with suspicion instead of compassion. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International subsequently reported such shortcomings stating that the inability to undertake an unbiased inquiry constituted a sustainability of a bigger trend of immunity to security agencies in war-torn areas. Such institutional inertia and the unwillingness of the state to reopen or re-examine the case was a symbolic representation of the erosion of morals in the mechanisms of accountability. Such failure to dispense justice despite omnibus appeals and judicial instructions has become a symbol of cardinal negligence of moral accountability by the state apparatus.
Outside the institutional realm, the social consequences of the incident also demonstrated a different aspect of corruption, which is based on the attitude of society and loss of morality. The survivors were stigmatized and ostracized in their communities. They were rather marginalized as opposed to being supported and their ordeal intensified with social isolation. This response was based on ingrained ideas of honor and shame, which obscured the guilt of perpetrators and the perceived disgrace of victims. In this way even social corruption is perceived in the response of people to injustice. A failure to enforce dignity of survivors by the whole community also reinforces loops of silence and denial where systemic injustices remain unquestioned.
The Kunan-Poshpora case also highlights the correlation of corruption and militarization. The reasoning of national security often supersedes the interests of human rights in conflict zones and institutionalized impunity is a result of such reasoning. Such a relationship creates a culture under which the Indian Army can commit violations without being punished and reinforces political and moral corruption.
The unwillingness of the state to punish its own representatives discredits the procedures of law and makes people more suspicious. Impunity in the long run erodes the legitimacy of governance, and it becomes part of society, corruption, not an administrative issue. It becomes institutionalized within power structures and makes injustice natural and civic resiliency.
The legacy of Kunan-Poshpora also shows the impact of corruption in perceiving governance across generations. To most of the Kashmiri, the inability to bring justice in this case has only served to strengthen the distrust that people have in the state institutions and their ability to be impartial. This disenchantment is not isolated to the particular incident, but is influenced by the attitudes towards political authority and the rule of law in general. Corruption should be perceived, however, not only as a failure to adhere to the norms of governance but also as a structural condition that dictates political actions, social awareness. Corruption is no longer an exception; it is the rule of politics when power is unfaithfully utilized.
Corruptions in Kashmir
New forms of corruption have come up in modern Kashmir along with technological and administrative transformations. The emergence of digital governance and surveillance has brought new issues of data manipulation, control of information and propagandising. These advances are the continuation of institutional corruption to the digital realm where a story can be told, censored, or distorted in order to advance specific political interests. Silencing of the opposition and distortion of the truth have become instruments of control, and the boundary between management and domination is more indistinct. These practices underscore the nature of corruption that is changing in contemporary states where corruption may take complex and less apparent forms.
Broader Implications
Corruption in Kashmir, however, has to be studied in an integrative manner that has incorporated the historical continuities, structural power relations as well as the moral aspects. Since the pre-colonial systems were feudal in nature, to the bureaucracy of patronage that is inherent in the contemporary state, corruption has been a steady element of political existence in the region. Nevertheless, moral and institutional types of corruption, that weaken the concepts of justice, dignity, and accountability, have had the greatest social implications. The Kunan-Poshpora incident is a sad testimony to the extent to which corruption goes into corrosion of morality of governance and institutions of protection have been turned into instruments of violation.
The corruption history of Kashmir presents a continuum that runs back to the pre-modern social hierarchies to the present day political systems. This situation is summarized in the Kunan-Poshpora incident whereby the inability to deliver justice helps to perpetrate impunity and mistrust. The need to deal with corruption in Kashmir, therefore, goes beyond an administrative change and it requires a wholesale moral and institutional restructuring. The region can only overcome the burden of corruption that has been a long-standing bane only by regaining accountability, enhancing the independence of the law and investigative institutions and reasserting the principles of human dignity and justice.
