Why should you read the heart-breaking stories that comprise the recently-published The Night of Broken Glass by Feroz Rather (222 pages, HarperCollins India)? Recently, there has been much written about Article 35A of the Constitution of India, which empowers the Jammu and Kashmir legislature to say who is that state's "permanent resident" and who is not. Permanent residents have special rights and privileges: they can acquire land in J&K, government jobs, aid and scholarships. Kashmiris want it to stay because they fear demographic change in the Kashmiri Muslim-dominated Valley ­— as has happened in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where a great many Punjabi Muslims have settled. An RSS think tank has challenged it judicially and it is currently being heard by the Supreme Court.

The Kashmiris are as afraid of demographic change as the Assamese, whose draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) was recently published. The right wing tom-toms the NRC, which has excluded four lakh residents, because the majority population in Assam is Hindu. The right wing challenges 35A because the majority in J&K is Muslim. (Then, of course, are the legal and Constitutional arguments.)