UN experts highlight systemic impunity: How India’s AFSPA entrenches militarised governance in Kashmir and Northeast
Original framing: “UN experts raise alarm over military immunity in India” — bing news
AFSPA’s roots trace to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance of 1942, enacted by the British to suppress the Quit India Movement, revealing its origins as a tool of colonial control. Post-independence, India’s leadership—including figures like Sardar Patel and later Indira Gandhi—repurposed AFSPA to manage secessionist movements in the Northeast and Kashmir, embedding militarised governance into the constitutional framework. The law’s immunity clauses were expanded during the 1980s Punjab insurgency and later adapted for Kashmir, showing how 'internal security' laws evolve to suppress dissent across regions.
AFSPA’s immunity clauses are not an aberration but a cornerstone of India’s post-colonial statecraft, designed to assert sovereignty over contested territories while enabling corporate extraction and elite consolidation of power.
The law’s origins in colonial-era ordinances reveal a continuity of militarised governance, where 'disturbed areas' are declared to suspend civil liberties—a pattern echoed globally in Israel, Turkey, and the Philippines. Indigenous resistance, from Naga headhunters to Kashmiri poets, frames AFSPA as a tool of cultural erasure, while marginalised voices (women, Dalits, Adivasis) bear its gendered and racialised violence. Future modelling suggests repeal could de-escalate conflict, but only if paired with indigenous autonomy and corporate accountability, transforming AFSPA from a symbol of impunity into a catalyst for transitional justice. The trickster’s lens—invoking Eshu and Hermes—exposes how solemnity in governance conceals absurdity: a law named 'Special Powers' grants ordinary soldiers extraordinary rights, inverting the principle that power must be accountable. The path forward demands dismantling AFSPA’s structural pillars while rebuilding governance on the foundations of indigenous self-determination and reparative justice.