SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir Kashmirs local administration has arm-twisted street vendors to ply the streets, jailed store owners for refusing to keep their shops open between 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and urged gas station owners to stay open, police sources told HuffPost India.

A school bus operator said the administration forced him to run empty buses for three weeks until the mounting losses meant the buses couldnt run anymore. A shopkeeper said he was one of 20 store-owners jailed by the police for refusing to stay open during business hours. The states farmers are yet to participate in a much-touted Central government scheme to procure Kashmirs famed apple crop.

Here in Jammu and Kashmir, which was Indias only Muslim-majority state till Aug. 5, when the government of Narendra Modi unilaterally scrapped its constitutionally guaranteed autonomy, demoted the former state to a Union Territory (bringing its police under direct control of the Central government), flooded the valley with thousands of fresh troops, imposed a communication blackout, and jailed over 4,000 Kashmiris, including the regions prominent politicians.

Since then the governments supporters, and its fervent allies in sections of the Indian media, have sought to convince the rest of the country, and the world, that life in Kashmir has returned to normal and ordinary Kashmiris actually welcome the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which protected the states special status. Only last week, Prime Minister Modi urged Indians to hug a Kashmiri .

Meanwhile this week in Houston, Texas, U.S. President Donald Trump staged a huge Howdy Modi rally for the Indian prime minister, an event enthusiastically promoted by the India media, which almost largely ignored the crowd of protesters outside the event that questioned Modi about the human rights violations in Kashmir and raised slogans like Modi, Modi you cant hide, you committed genocide.

The revocation of Article 370 immediately sparked outrage and even the threat of war with Pakistan. Kashmiris fear this will lead to a demographic transformation of the region from majority Muslim to majority Hindu.

Now, a cross-section of police sources, businessmen, shop owners, and trade associations have revealed the Indian government has sought to stage an elaborate reality show to normalize an unprecedented coercive campaign against the regions civilian populace.

There are almost no restrictions on movement in Srinagar, but the much-touted traffic movement in a few thoroughfares the city is mostly government employees getting to and from their place of work, and people trying to procure basic essentials.

Some are moving around to salvage marriage ceremonies in what happens to be Kashmirs wedding season, which is soldiering on without the internet and mobile services. There is no public transport. People from the capital Srinagar to Tral and Anantnag in south Kashmir, wait for hours to hail down one of the few passing private cars.

So vigorous has been the administrations attempt to airbrush reality that locals joke that even the barriers erected along Srinagars thoroughfares are meant to create fake traffic jams.

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The presence of thousands of heavily armed troopers has virtually guaranteed that any widespread public protest will end in a bloodbath, so Kashmiris are resorting to a silent, non-cooperation movement by refusing to engage with the Indian state.

HuffPost India spoke to a wide cross-section of Kashmiri society, all of whom sought anonymity as they feared arrest.

The Indian state, a well-placed police source said, has responded to this non-cooperation by simply staging an alternative reality.

India can be obscenely irrational when it comes to Kashmir, said the police officer, explaining that it was standard practice in the valley to intimidate poor people, especially unorganized workers who work for a daily wage, even bribing them with money, to get them back on the streets to project normalcy.

A policeman, who has witnessed such pressure tactics being used to project normalcy in 2010 and 2016, said, Its a kind of blackmail. Pushcart vendors are dependent on the local administration. They are told that if you come out on the streets today then you will be allowed to return when the normalcy returns. They are told that you sit today or never.

The policeman added, That promise is not always kept.

This strategy has its limits.

As the school bus operator put it, You can force shopkeepers to open shops but you cannot force parents to send their children to school.

This is our silent protest against India taking away Article 370 , our human rights and our dignity, said the shopkeeper who said he was jailed for a day by the police for opening his shop from six to nine in the morning.

The police has tried to force us to operate from nine in the morning to five in the evening. They want to show the world that everything is normal, but nothing is normal, he said. We will not open our shops until we get back Article 370.