Brainwashing, state capacity, and the differences between Kashmir and Xinjiang. So Kashmir has been under martial law for months now and le perfide Anglo press has started to make the usual screeching noises regarding it drawing parallels to Chinese policies in Xinjiang.
However, because the pico brain historical knowledge of journalists, they are unable to see beyond the blanket security presence as to what effects both policies will ultimately have. The Indian gambit is temporary suppression of active performative protests and likely terrorism.
There is no purpose beyond keeping Kashmiries off the streets and quiescent. In other words, throw rocks, get shot, go home to stew in resentment and nurse your grudges. Rinse and repeat until the Indian army presence goes away. The Indian government isn't capable of anything
beyond this nor does it aspire to because it's driving impetus is sectarian in nature. The cooperation, co-option, or perhaps more accurately collaboration of the locals isn't needed or is at best perfunctory. The difference with China is whether or not the apparatchiks on the
ground believe in the mission, the Chinese state is running a totalizing social engineering program to "sinify" Islam with all of its attendant characteristics and to restructure the relationship Uighurs have with the state. Kashmiries go home and escape the Indian government.
The Chinese government follows them home. There is no reprieve from the state as it seeks to fill up all social spaces with itself from festivals, to schools, to weddings and inside their homes. This is the essence of totalitarianism in that there is no place for seclusion aside
from within the confines of your own head. Any social interaction with more than one individual and the shadow of the state makes its presence felt. The stark difference between the degree of social control the Chinese state has over it's recalcitrant Muslims compared to India is
demonstrated by the Indian governments pitiful reliance on masked informants to physically point out potential troublemakers. The Chinese state uses Uighur police to arrest Uighurs and state organized collectives of Uighurs civilians to publicly act as a force auxillary of the
security state. In India, the cowardly collaborator hides his face in fear of reprisals. As is the case of all irreligious Muslims in the Muslim world. In China, the state makes all Uighurs complicit and de facto collaborators are the majority. It is the religiously obstinate who
fears being unmasked. The differences are driven by historical contingencies both recent and and rooted in the deep past. The Leninist party is the pre-eminent organization of mass mobilization and it shouldn't be a surprise that China does social transformation better than India
Just as importantly the Chinese state has a vastly different conception of it's relationship with organized religion than India or Islam does. The Chinese are simply not a very religious people to begin with unlike Indians or Muslims and when the state decrees, the faithful obey
or get crushed. This is the historical norm. Religious plurality was tolerated, up to a point, only so long as religion didn't interfere with the functioning of society or generate social friction. Thus sinification of Islam is explicitly correct in that its relationship within
China must follow the path of all other major religions in China. Obedience and co-option by the secular state.
