The obsession with inhabitants statistics in Jammu and Kashmir is as outdated because the contested accession of the state to India and the occupation of components of it by Pakistan. It was rekindled, most lately, in 2019 by the repeal of Article 370 of the Indian Structure, which stripped away provisions that provided autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir. Whereas inhabitants figures play an important position within the politics of Jammu and Kashmir, the standard of the information tends to be moot. The politics of numbers that shapes and is formed by census statistics deserves nearer consideration on this context, particularly its shifting nature between 1991 and 2011.
The erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir was the one state of India that missed the census twice after 1947, first in 1951 after which once more in 1991, resulting from political instability. In 2001 and 2011, the census was performed in Jammu and Kashmir, however the train was impaired by the interference of partisans of independence within the Kashmir Valley who feared that New Delhi wished to govern numbers.
Jammu and Kashmir comprised three administrative divisions in India: Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh. In response to the census, Kashmiri-speaking Muslims represent a majority within the Kashmir division in addition to within the state total. Within the early Nineteen Nineties, communally motivated assaults amid an armed insurgency precipitated the exodus of virtually the whole indigenous Hindu inhabitants of the Kashmir division. Hindus represent a majority in Jammu. In current a long time, Muslims have emerged as the biggest spiritual neighborhood in Ladakh.
Kashmiri-speaking Sunni Muslims and Dogri-speaking higher caste Hindus, the dominant communities of Kashmir and Jammu, respectively, have been locked in a zero-sum recreation over illustration within the state meeting and share in public spending and jobs for the reason that Fifties (different communities corresponding to Gujjars, Bakarwals, and Paharis joined the competition over public sources in newer a long time).
Extra importantly, these communities maintain divergent preferences vis-à-vis the political way forward for Jammu and Kashmir. They’ve been involved in regards to the spiritual composition of the headcount as a result of it’s extensively believed that the relative inhabitants shares of Muslims and Hindus would decide who controls the state’s future. This consists of the unlikely state of affairs of a plebiscite over the state’s affiliation to India, as really helpful by the United Nations Safety Council again in 1948 after India approached the physique when tribal raiders backed by Pakistan invaded the territory.
Because of this, each political transfer and administrative coverage is parsed for implications for the numerical dominance of the Kashmir Valley, which provides it – and by extension its Muslim-majority inhabitants – a bigger variety of seats within the legislative meeting. The politics of numbers has, nonetheless, remodeled over the previous few a long time, which will be defined by the strain between mardamshumari (census) and raishumari (plebiscite) within the Valley. We’ll look at three iterations of this shifting politics.
The 1991 Census
The census was scheduled in Jammu and Kashmir in 1991 together with the remainder of India, however was finally canceled barely every week earlier than its begin date as a result of “the sector scenario” didn’t “allow” enumeration. Nevertheless, it bears noting that in 1990-’91, the insurgency was restricted to the Valley, whereas Ladakh and most districts of Jammu had been freed from violence. Furthermore, the fatality charge in Jammu and Kashmir was a lot much less that of neighbouring Punjab, which was additionally grappling with an armed insurgency.
The census and elections had been held in Punjab, at the same time as the whole state of Jammu and Kashmi was stored out of each the workouts. Whereas census operations had been threatened by insurgents and the census workplace was burned down in Srinagar, it’s not clear if the census was particularly focused as the entire vary of state equipment got here below assault within the early Nineteen Nineties. The disarray throughout the normal administration relatively than the depth of the insurgency was the first purpose why the census was canceled in 1991 (the census was performed in 2000-’01, probably the most violent years of the insurgency).
The armed insurgency disrupted elections and the census within the early Nineteen Nineties and “embarrassed” the Union authorities each inside and out of doors the nation. So, within the late Nineteen Nineties, New Delhi was decided to renew the census and generate a collective self-portrait of the nation that included Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir. Resuming workouts such because the census and elections was seen as important for restoring India’s self-image as a secular trendy democracy.
Nevertheless, by then the insurgency and the federal government’s counterinsurgency had not solely undermined the final administration that gives public items (together with statistics) but additionally deepened regional and communal polarisation, making it troublesome to construct consensus on the supply of public items. The federal government’s insistence on conducting a census below these circumstances meant that the provision of statistics loved a precedence over high quality.
The 2001 Census
That is the bigger context inside which rebel and armed militant organisations such because the Hizbul Mujahideen, amongst others, referred to as for a boycott of the census in 2000 and warned officers towards taking part within the train. A minimum of one authorities workers’ union chief requested its members to skip census duties till there was readability on their security. Be aware that October 1, 2000, was the reference date for the 2001 Census of Jammu and Kashmir. Nevertheless, this reference date was postponed in a haphazard and piecemeal method throughout districts because of the boycott name that severely disrupted the census all through the Valley and Doda district of Jammu.
Modern commentary catalogued the boycott as one other fallout of the secessionist insurgency. The Hizbul Mujahideen’s boycott name can, nonetheless, be learn via a number of totally different lenses. First, it may be seen because the refusal to acquiesce in actions that normalise New Delhi’s declare to sovereignty. Second, it displays communal anxiousness within the Valley about demographic change that would erode the Muslim majority character of Jammu and Kashmir.
Whereas these longstanding macro-concerns can account for the rationale of the boycott, they depart elements that precipitated and enforced the boycott unexplained. That is the place a 3rd lens is required. Competitors amongst pro-independence teams and political events below the shadow of a nascent engagement between pro-independence teams and the union authorities may help higher perceive the politicisation of the 2001 Census.
The potential of direct engagement between a piece of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Union authorities alarmed the Hurriyat Convention, an overground alliance of political and spiritual organisations campaigning for Kashmir’s separation from India, that claimed to be the true consultant of the Valley.
A pointy trade ensued between the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Hurriyat. The Hizbul Mujahideen suggested the Hurriyat to deal with “the conspiracies being hatched towards the Muslims” relatively than assault the ceasefire initiative. The attainable use of the census to change Jammu and Kashmir’s demography was one of many conspiracies that the Hizbul Mujahideen highlighted. Whereas the 2 sides patched up quickly, the politicisation and communalisation of the census proved irreversible.
Round this time, the ruling Nationwide Convention was coping with anti-incumbency within the run-up to the 2002 meeting elections. It was struggling to guard its political turf amid twin pressures generated by the implementation of the Fifth Pay Fee’s suggestions, which worsened the state’s funds and restricted the fiscal house for developmental initiatives, and New Delhi’s outreach to pro-independence teams and rejection of the state authorities’s partisan autonomy report.
Saif-ud-Din Soz – a politician who had been expelled from the Nationwide Convention just a few years earlier for defying a whip – selected to query the impartiality of the census to current himself because the genuine voice of Kashmir. Soz issued two press statements after the Hizbul Mujahideen’s boycott name to elaborate the alleged menace of demographic change.
So, amid the political uncertainty generated by the nascent peace course of, a wide range of actors throughout the mainstream political events and the pro-independence camp tried to safe their assist base by tapping into communal passions infected by the alleged menace to the demographic composition of the state.
The 2011 Census
The long term-up to the 2011 Census was dotted with demographic controversies harking back to the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. Nevertheless, this time the pro-independence teams referred to as for participation within the census (and likewise, elections) to stall makes an attempt to undermine Kashmir’s demographic dominance and share within the state legislature and improvement funding. This shouldn’t be seen as a sudden improvement.
First, even in the course of the 2001 census, sure communities inside Kashmir had been supportive of the train. Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes, which comprise the third largest inhabitants group of Jammu and Kashmir and have a big presence in Kashmir, “evinced a unprecedented curiosity of their enumeration” as a result of they considered the census as important to have interaction the developmental state. They, nonetheless, demanded steps to handle issues, amongst different issues, in regards to the undercount of the nomadic a part of the neighborhood below the de facto methodology (wherein people are counted the place they’re usually residents in the course of the interval of enumeration).
Second, even the Hizbul Mujahideen’s assaults on the 2001 census had been framed in statistical (issues in regards to the undercount of migrants below the de facto methodology) and developmental (worry of obstruction of “avenues of improvement for Muslims” if Kashmir loses the bulk) phrases, along with its older and broader issues in regards to the Indian state’s legitimacy.
Third, there was a extra normal shift from violent opposition to the census to its manipulation to safe a bigger share of the general public pie throughout India’s politically restive ethno-geographic periphery. This was seen in 2001 in states corresponding to Nagaland and Manipur. This shift throughout the periphery will be seen from the attitude of dual developments within the early Nineteen Nineties. On the one hand, after the tip of the Chilly Struggle, nationalist insurgencies degenerated into sub-nationalist conflicts over redistribution. On the opposite, the retreat of the state after the liberalisation of the economic system added urgency to seize public sources within the economically stagnant periphery the place belief within the impartiality of public establishments is low. So, the information deficit of the periphery is intertwined with its democracy and improvement deficits.
The shifting politics across the census throughout 1991-2011 can, due to this fact, be accounted for by the competitors between mainstream political actors and pro-independence teams that, in flip, unfolded throughout the bigger political-economic context outlined by the liberalisation of the economic system and the tip of the Chilly Struggle that reshaped the principles of the sport. The influence of those non-demographic developments on the standard of census statistics and public coverage is a narrative for an additional event.
Vikas Kumar teaches economics at Azim Premji College, Bengaluru and is the writer of Numbers as Political Allies: The Census in Jammu and Kashmir (Cambridge College Press, 2023).
This text was first printed on India in Transition, a publication of the Middle for the Superior Examine of India, College of Pennsylvania.