The Hindu : Kashmir: a map without roads

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Sunday, Sep 29, 2002

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Kashmir: a map without roads

The election has created possibilities. Not of peace and a lasting settlement, but of a new political leadership, which is willing to take risks for Kashmir. Anjali Mody on the public mood halfway through the Assembly polls.

What does the future hold?

IN SRINAGAR and Sopore, where the nearly no-turnout mocked the idea of elections, set piece demonstrations by young men shouting "no election, no selection, we want freedom", were performed for the media's benefit. But, in places where people stood in long queues to cast their vote, and the turnout was well over 40 per cent, voters also wanted the media to "tell the truth... we are voting... but we want azadi". Even where `azadi' is not a significant political slogan, the qualifier was "we want to change the MLA, but the election will not stop the shells falling on our village".

This has been a steady undercurrent in an election that New Delhi insists is "a befitting rebuff to Pakistan". When, according to a senior Srinagar-based journalist, "it is nothing of the sort. If New Delhi believes this is a vote for India it is living in a fools paradise". The Government of India can take credit for only one thing, he said, "that despite militancy and the fear it has generated, it was able to conduct an election. It is an administrative success. Nothing more."

For, this is an election in which people across the Kashmir Valley voted and did not vote. While there were Assembly constituencies in which the official voter turnout was 80 per cent there were others where it was less than one per cent. People who voted did so because they wanted "to get rid of the National Conference, which has done nothing for us" or because they believe that voting is better than not voting, or because they are fed up with militants who threatened them with bullets if they cast their ballot, or because they felt the security forces would harass them if they did not vote.

Those who did not vote did so because there was no real choice of candidates, or because of the fear of militant reprisal or because they are disillusioned with a political process they believe only benefits the corrupt or because they see elections as a hurdle to their larger political goals. New Delhi's self-satisfied back-slapping is seen as just one more example of how disconnected its Kashmir rhetoric is from Kashmir itself. Something even the N.C. leadership accepts. Across political and ideological divisions, the shared view is that "India lacks sincerity" in seeking a settlement for Kashmir. Even those who are considered `pro-Indian' by their political opponents in the Valley, say that where Kashmir is concerned New Delhi has no `policy'. It is driven by short-term political goals. These elections, they say, are for New Delhi nothing more than a chance to score points over Pakistan in a test set by the international community. Few disagree that the only solution to Kashmir's troubles is through "a change in the politics of hatred and a reduction in the tension between India and Pakistan".

But, they do not see India making an effort to move in this direction. And most have little expectation from Pakistan. "For both India and Pakistan Kashmir is the joker in the pack; when there are no other issues, Kashmir is always there." They are trapped in the rhetoric of war and, in these circumstances, holding elections in which people participate will make no difference to Kashmir.

Optimism is at a premium in Kashmir. The problem, as they see it, is that Kashmir is caught between "the ruling classes of India and Pakistan which are incapable of bold decisions". Pakistan's only leverage in Kashmir, said an editor of a Srinagar-based newspaper, is the gun. "The problem is that India is unwilling to talk to Pakistan while there is still violence, and it has no reason to talk to Pakistan if there is no violence. Where does that leave us?"

The Minister of State for Home, I. D. Swami, came to Srinagar last week with assurances of talks "immediately after the elections". Few believe him. Particularly as he insisted that the terror attack in Gujarat was a result of the "frustration, desperation and disappointment militant organisations have faced in Jammu and Kashmir". Here it was again, plainly said, Kashmir is the only issue, even in Gujarat. Not communal violence, not intelligence failure, not administrative lapses, but Kashmir.

Mr. Swami's assurances about a dialogue after the elections also ring false in the Valley because there is a strongly held view that New Delhi is "unwilling to accommodate any point of view other than its own". That it has "determinedly isolated any voices that are opposed to it". In fact, many feel that anyone who challenges the status quo, whether they are proponents of autonomy, azadi or accession to Pakistan, is seen as `anti-national' by New Delhi.

The only `policy' New Delhi had on Kashmir, said one political pundit, was to "discredit Kashmiri leaders" and "make fools of the people of Kashmir". Even those who say that the NC has only itself to blame for its failures, maintain that New Delhi's rejection of the NC's Autonomy Resolution "without even reading it" and then appointing an autonomy negotiator, after the election was announced, all point to one thing: its determination to show who really calls the shots in Srinagar.

Going back and forth over whether or not to talk to the All-Party Hurriyat Conference is, it is felt, an extension of this attitude. Many believe that the Hurriyat lost an important opportunity by staying out of the election process. But the same people also feel that New Delhi "by its methods... the manner in which it timed the election... gave the hardliners in Hurriyat an escape route and undermined the rest". This strategy, said a commentator, "will leave only the extremists, who are not interested in talking". Perhaps, he said, "this is what New Delhi wants, after all this is a Government that threw out the National Conference's Autonomy Resolution, gave hill council status to Leh, is talking of trifurcation, BJP party workers are campaigning for a Dogra desh in Jammu... how will it talk to the APHC which represents demands for independence and accession to Pakistan."

In the impasse, the resentment against New Delhi continues to grow. The cycle of violence is unending. The costs of conflict are high. Here, children grow up able to identify the sound of different types of weapons fire, and people leave home each morning not knowing if they will return. There is very little support for militancy, compared with the early 1990s. But the fear of the gun forces a complicity of silence.

India fights its battle against Pakistan's support for militancy by treating this silence as culpability and "every Kashmiri as a terrorist".

Big brother's watching... in budgam town.

Everywhere, and almost everyone, students in Srinagar, doctors in Bandipora, farmers in Ganderbal, speaks of being "caught between two guns". People die in fake encounters, in crossfire, women are raped in their homes and ordinary people are still picked up, off the streets, out of their homes, for interrogation by one or another of the security agencies. Some never return.

Since January this year 55 such disappearances have been recorded, adding to the few thousand other `disappeared' since militancy started in 1987.

Successive Governments in New Delhi have refused to acknowledge that the `problem' in Kashmir is rather more complicated than "Pakistan-sponsored militancy". And that there is a deep resentment and sense of injustice that underlines the varied, even contrary, political claims that have crystallised around the idea of `azadi'.

The shadow of 1987 still hangs over the Valley. The subversion of democracy through a rigged election in that year was, even the N.C. which rigged the election accepts, the start of militancy in the Valley.

It was also the beginning of the "oppression of Kashmiris by Central security forces in the name of fighting militancy".

Turning the clock back on this is not easy. But the election has created possibilities. Not of peace and a lasting settlement, but of a new political leadership, which is willing to take risks for Kashmir. Those who see glimmers of light in an otherwise bleak landscape say that it is the People's Democratic Party, and particularly Mehbooba Mufti, which has been able to motivate the people to vote, because it is seen as offering an alternative.

To a lesser extent, the People's Conference, a member of the Hurriyat, with its official `rebel' candidates in Kupwara and its `bold' young leader, Sajjad Lone, is seen as having the potential to grow into a significant political voice. There are even those who believe that the N.C. under Omar Abdullah could return to its pre-1977 roots.

But a great deal depends on what the election turns up. If there is no change in Srinagar and New Delhi is content to crow about its "free and fair" election, the road ahead may be extremely bumpy. (All the people who spoke to The Hindu asked not to be identified, because "the unseen state can come at you from anywhere".)

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