SRINAGAR - At first glance, coming off typical scenes of the heat and dust of
India's elections, it is a curiously different political reality that one
encounters in Kashmir. The high snows of the Pir Panjal range, which insulate
it physically from the mainland, could well stand for the cold psychological
aloofness with which it is said to regard goings-on in the plains.
So, as the rest of India sweats it out at rallies and polling stations in the
month-long general elections, feverishly debating who will form the next
government in New Delhi, the Kashmir Valley, seemingly straining to break free,
idly ponders over who might cast their vote in the next round of polling - if
at all. In the past two rounds, the southern district of Anantnag and Srinagar
saw a mere 25% and 24% voting respectively. The five-stage election, which is
staggered for reasons of logistics and security, is
currently in its penultimate phase, with final results expected on May 16.
But look beneath the surface, behind the curtain of resentment woven all over
this disarmingly picturesque landscape, and clues lie scattered all over to the
enduring enigma that is Kashmir. There are as many views and voices in the
volatile valley as there are people.
As one moves about 100 kilometers from the summer capital city of Srinagar with
its medley of opinions, past the town of Baramulla - an old zone of separatist
sentiment - to Kupwara in the northwestern corner of the state, it is natural
to find the populace caught up in varying degrees of participation in the
political process.
The Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, consisting of the Kashmir
Valley, Jammu and Ladakh, has been a hot spot for many years. Militants from
across the border in Pakistan-administered Pakistan have created a tense
security situation, while advocates of Kashmir's independence from Delhi have
stoked the flames of unrest.
Elections to the national parliament typically elicit a lesser involvement
among Kashmiris compared to elsewhere in India. The Lok Sabha in Delhi, the
House of Representatives (Lower House), often manages to symbolize the opposite
of what it should - standing for the remoteness of power as far as most of
rural India is concerned. The effect is necessarily more pronounced in Kashmir,
and the success or otherwise of the electoral process has to be judged against
the degree to which this gap is breached.
Helping bridge the gap, as anywhere else, are a network of political ties that
bind the micro-level to the next echelon of popular power, and thence
ultimately to the national. The highly conscious, and acutely polarized, people
of the villages could be seen drawn to the electoral contest to the extent that
it has local meaning and significance - while being fully cognizant of the
overall import of voting.
Conversations with people out in droves to attend the election rallies of the
two regional outfits - the ruling National Conference and the People's
Democratic Party, with the Congress thrown in between - turned out to be
revelatory. They had clearly resolved in their head, at great pains, the
competing claims on their attention - ranging from village-level loyalties to
old political affiliations - and made up their minds.
They expressed it very vociferously indeed. For this corner of Kashmir, with
its gutted roads and all-too-basic rural amenities, the center-periphery divide
is clearly forged vis-a-vis the developed urbania of Srinagar. We ask, don't
people in Srinagar suffer the most in the Indian state's reaction to
separatism? "Yes, maybe. But they also benefit the most," said an old man,
pointing to a powerless bulb hanging from his roof.
The people out on the road are brimming with purpose, offering proof that the
parliamentary elections are, undoubtedly and visibly if conditionally,
generating excitement in the once-simmering hotbeds of militancy. But this is
not counting another buzzing political constituency-in-motion, those who are
remaining at home waiting for the former Kashmiri separatist leader Sajjad Lone
to come calling on his innovative door-to-door campaign.
From the New Delhi perspective, Lone, contesting from Baramulla constituency
(within which Kupwara falls), is perhaps the biggest story this elections. For
someone who until a few months ago was formally positioned against the Indian
state and was rooting for independence of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan,
it is a turnaround that is being interpreted in varied ways.
The responses to Lone's candidature range from an acknowledgement of his
canniness (praising him for sensing the changing mood, the ordinary Kashmiris'
composite understanding within which extreme views have lost a bit of credence)
to the line that it implies a total sellout to the Indian side. He himself
strikes a careful balance, claiming he is not in the fray to sell "any false
hope of speedy development" to his people. "I'm contesting precisely to raise
the issue of Kashmir in the Indian parliament. There's no one else who does it
properly."
But the paradigm shift can hardly be ignored. From refusing to hold an Indian
passport, as most leaders of the Hurriyat - the conglomerate of separatist
parties of which Lone was a part - have done on numerous occasions, to agreeing
to the idea of having to take an oath under the Indian constitution, Lone has
certainly come a long way.
Sitting among supporters in a tiny room in a remote village in Kupwara,
explaining this shift to them, Lone claims he has not given up the basic
agenda, which is Kashmir. It is just that he wants to shut up the critics in
New Delhi who refuse to accept their position on the ground that the Hurriyat
leaders never dare to contest elections. "I am tired of people telling me to
fight an election and prove my support base," he says. "A win would give a
befitting reply to those doubters," he adds.
Not many are buying his line, especially within his own Hurriyat fold. Syed Ali
Shah Geelani, the real hardliner in the Hurriyat who favors not independence
for Kashmir but merger with Pakistan, hit out at Lone. Exhorting the people of
the valley to boycott the polls in a television address from his home in the
town of Sopore, he warns, "Don't get swayed by those who talk about raising
your issues in Delhi. Our goal is not that. We cannot be waylaid by these
tactics."
But for the people of Kupwara, who may or may not vote to send Lone to Delhi, a
wholly different yardstick is at work. They are testing whether Lone is a
genuine article and deserves to inherit the legacy of his deceased father,
Abdul Ghani Lone, one-time education minister of Jammu and Kashmir who later
took his People's Conference party to join the Hurriyat at the height of
militancy.
Lone Sr, always a moderate in the Hurriyat scheme of things, was killed by
militants a few years ago. From the time he had joined the separatist call to
the years after his death, the People's Conference has been out of active,
overground politics for a period of two decades, leaving a dormant constituency
in its wake.
One of the voters in the indoor gathering at Mogalpora village is telling Lone
Jr to remember that "a vote for you is actually a vote laid as tribute at your
father's grave". There's little doubt that a latent support base is being
revived. As the campaign process drags every candidate - high or low - to the
doorstep of the poor voter, power flows in that one instant in a reverse
direction. In Kashmir as elsewhere, it is reduced to its basic element: popular
endorsement.
Lone's decision to enter the electoral path that leads to New Delhi, however,
is in no way a defining moment in the topsy-turvy universe of Kashmir politics.
Certainly not the way the huge voter turnout at the local assembly elections a
few months ago was - it had come in defiance of the Hurriyat's boycott call, of
which Lone was very much a part.
The popular participation in those polls, going up to 60%, did shake up the
separatist leadership. In fact, it was one of the reasons that emboldened Lone,
for long seen as a reluctant co-passenger in the Hurriyat camp, to test the
waters himself - instead of fielding proxies, as he was said to do earlier.
Some others, including 36-year-old Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, went
into a shell and even refused for a while to issue the mandatory boycott call
for the ongoing parliamentary elections. They changed their stance only after
the United Jihad Council in Pakistan used their methods of gentle persuasion,
putting out a few stone-throwing protesters in Srinagar's streets for extra
emphasis.
Then the plot followed the usual script. Geelani and Mirwaiz were put under
house arrest for the entire period of the multi-phased, month-long elections,
so as not to allow them to turn up the heat on the streets and campaign for the
boycott. The picture of the separatist leadership frozen into immobility by the
state (barring the TV statements that they seemed to be glibly issuing) does
generate sympathy among their inner-city supporters in Srinagar. Even a few
incidents of stone-pelting at the Indian security forces were reported.
But for a state numbed by daily gun battles between militants and security
forces, in which hundreds of ordinary civilians have died, this seemed to be
child's play. Mercifully, the guns are quiet now.
Not so the mind. The wounds are too deep for that. It would take more than the
cool breeze of the Dal Lake, the special economic packages from Delhi, the
brand new local trains and Asian Development Bank projects for them to heal. If
healing is, at all, on the agenda.
As a professor at Kashmir University says, "There are vested interests at work.
Everybody from the Indian security forces to the Hurriyat leaders and the hired
guns from the other side benefit from the strife. It runs like a parallel
economy. Money is pumped in from all sides to keep it alive and under
international focus. No one is interested in a solution that would bring succor
to the common Kashmiri."
Such home truths are not confined to the drawing rooms of the intelligentsia.
Ghulam Mohammed Bhatt, a middle-aged autorickshaw driver in Srinagar, points
fingers at both the elected politicians and the separatist leaders for fleecing
the cause and playing with the sentiment of the people. "I had to work for 35
years from morning till night, brave all the bullets on the streets, to own
three autorickshaws. But these leaders have built hotels, resorts, mansions and
even golf courses by just contesting elections or protesting against the Indian
state."
This is a refrain that can be heard with great frequency both in the city of
Srinagar and the villages. There is a sort of subterranean disillusionment
among the common Kashmiri, who feels cheated of 20 years of existence. Tourism,
the staple bread-earner around Srinagar, lies in tatters. Though last year saw
a good season, the elections have robbed them of a repeat show.
The presence of the large retinue of security forces - Indian army and
paramilitary - is a continuing sore that is blamed for all ills. The sentinel
of the Indian state become the visible symbol of the power in New Delhi, and
actually helps generate an anger against the state.
But there are many who feel that as long as the Indian state does not interfere
with their religious practices and gives their families employment, they have
nothing to complain about. Young Mudassar, a supporter of the National
Conference, claims he would "certainly go to vote early in the morning.
Everybody does later in the day, despite the posturing." Standing next to him,
his elderly uncle, a fabric merchant, butts in. "What about all those who got
killed, shall we forget them ... "
As Kashmir stumbles to find its way forward, the Jammu & Kashmir Bank makes
an enviable success story. Announcing a special economic package with cheaper
loans for the state's artisans, carpet weavers, craftsmen and exporters reeling
under the global recession, its chairman Haseeb A Draboo said two days before
polling, "Maybe the rest of India should follow our system." Maybe the rest of
the world could take the advice and learn how to survive and flourish despite
the odds.
Santwana Bhattacharya is a New Delhi-based journalist who writes on
politics, parliament and elections. She is currently working on a book on
electoral reforms and the emergence of regional parties in India.
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