Coronavirus and the disunited states of India

Pakistan has long tried to balkanise India, to disunite it and break it up into many small countries, but has failed to do so. But what Pakistan has not been able to achieve the coronavirus might succeed in doing.

Several Indian states have sealed their borders to prevent people from neighbouring states from entering and possibly spreading viral infection.

Haryana, for example, repeatedly sealed its border with Delhi, which with some 20,000-plus cases of Covid-19 was deemed a ‘hot spot’. But on the day that Haryana once again opened its border with Delhi, Delhi’s CM Arvind Kejriwal closed his side of the National Capital Region (NCR).

Kejriwal said he was sealing Delhi off because otherwise people from all over the country would come to the city and totally cripple its already burdened hospitals and health services.

The CM’s decision, and his given reason for it, raise some fundamental points about India’s unity as a republic. Being the political capital of the country, Delhi doesn’t belong only to its residents but to all Indians, all over the country.

Indeed, it is the taxes paid by all Indians that have made Delhi the showcase capital which it is, with amenities such as hospitals and health care facilities being far better than they are anywhere else in India.

By preventing people from Gurgaon, or anywhere else in the country, from entering Delhi is the capital violating the constitutional rights of all Indians to travel everywhere within the country?

It will be argued that the coronavirus pandemic has created a national health emergency where travel restrictions have to be enforced. This argument, however, is undermined by the fact that domestic flights and train services continue to operate to and from Delhi.

So while people can’t cross the Delhi border by road, they can, if they want, take a plane or a train to enter Delhi. What sense does that make? Kejriwal has said that the border will be sealed for a week, after which he’ll ask the citizens of the city to decide when it should be opened. This is, in effect, a call for a popular referendum about the opening and closing of borders.

Other states and union territories might follow suit, perhaps starting with Kashmir, where among certain sections there has been a long-standing demand for a referendum about whether to stay in India or quit the republic.

Would CM Kejriwal concur that Kashmir has the right to do so?