Game-changer in Kashmir

Over a five-week period from November 25 to December 20, the Indian authorities conducted the six-yearly ‘elections’ to the ‘legislative assembly’ of Jammu and Kashmir in a timeworn effort to give legitimacy to their illegal occupation of the state. The results of the electoral exercise, spread over five phases to ensure massive deployment of the military and police at the polling stations, were announced last Tuesday.

The ‘elections’ followed the standard pattern. Kashmiri leaders demanding self-determination called for a boycott. Even before they could campaign against the polls, the Indian authorities launched the familiar crackdown. Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were put under house arrest, while JKLF leader Yaseen Malik, Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) head Shabir Ahmad Shah and National Front (NF) chairman Naeem Ahmad Khan were arrested along with hundreds of others. Many of them were released after the voting but Geelani remains under house arrest. The state police chief warned that “anybody creating law and order problems in the electoral process would be dealt with severely”.

Besides the clampdown on ‘separatists’, the state authorities also ‘cracked the whip’ on those using social media to spread the boycott message on the internet. All social networking sites were brought under surveillance and several users were arrested. The “mischief-mongers are being continuously identified”, a police spokesman warned.

To these familiar acts of coercion, which are now part of the standard operating procedure before every ‘election’ in the state, India added a new trick this year to get a high voter turnout. It spread the message through its collaborators – the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) – that a boycott of the election could bring into power the Hindu extremist BJP which is committed to abolishing Article 370 and to replacing the Islamic personal law which applies to the Muslims of the state with a “uniform civil code” for Hindus and Muslims alike.

After the election, the Indian authorities duly claimed – and the Indian media dutifully reported, together with photographs of the type that one usually associates with North Korean propaganda, of jubilant voters queuing up despite biting cold to cast their votes – that the boycott call had failed and that the Kashmiri people had once again given a verdict in favour of remaining under Indian rule by voting in large numbers. According to the Indian Election Commission, the state registered its highest voter turn-out in assembly elections in the last 25 years with an estimated 66 percent of voters casting their votes. The previous assembly elections of 2008 and 2002 had witnessed 61 percent and 43 percent respectively according to official figures, while the massively rigged 1987 election, which triggered the outbreak of armed insurgency, had recorded 75 percent.

A more accurate reflection of popular sentiment in Kashmir than the figures touted by the election commission is no doubt the boycott by voters in the centrally located Srinagar district where voter coercion and rigging are more difficult than in the far-flung rural constituencies. According to official figures, the eight constituencies of the Srinagar district recorded a voter turnout of 28 percent, a suspiciously high 17 percent above the 11 percent who voted in the Indian parliamentary elections in April this year, but far short of the 66 percent claimed for the entire state.

Kashmir of course has a long and proud history of officially sponsored vote rigging going back to the first election held in the state in 1951. In that election, less than five percent of the electorate voted and the National Conference led by Sheikh Abdullah won all 75 seats, no less than 73 of them unopposed. The hallowed tradition of manipulated elections set by India in those early years has been continued and consolidated with each subsequent election. The spokesman of the Indian Election Commission who told the media that the voter turnout in the latest elections was “historic” and “unprecedented” was only honouring this old practice of ‘crackdown’ on popular leaders, coercion of the voters to cast their ballots and manipulated results.

But these elections could yet turn out to be truly historic, though in a different sense, if they result in handing over power in Muslim-majority Kashmir to the Hindu extremist BJP, a party which is sworn to an unabashedly communal agenda. The BJP fell well short of its publicly announced target of ‘44 plus’ seats in the 87-member Assembly but it bagged 25, all of them in the Hindu-dominated areas of the Jammu region, to become the second largest party in the assembly. It failed to make any impression in the valley, losing its deposit in 33 out of the 34 seats it contested there.

The largest party in the newly elected Assembly will be the PDP led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. It won 28 seats, three more than the BJP, but well below expectations. NC took the third place with 15 seats, followed by Congress which won 12.

Since none of the parties won a clear majority, the new government will be a coalition. In theory a number of combinations between the four main parties – PDP, BJP, NC and Congress – are possible and only a BJP-Congress tie-up is ruled out.

Most of the people in the valley are hoping that the NC and PDP will unite to keep the BJP at bay. But the reality is that the BJP will have the key role in the formation of any coalition and will dominate it. It has many strong cards in its hands. Although it has three seats less than the PDP, the BJP also has the support of a few other members of the assembly, including two from turncoat Sajjad Lone’s People’s Conference. Since the BJP is in power at the centre, its goodwill is needed by any government in Kashmir, not least for development funds some of which find their way into the pockets of the ruling party members.

Also, the BJP alone can claim the mandate to speak for the Jammu region, having bagged 25 of its 37 seats. The PDP and NC have their main support base in the valley and won only a handful of seats in the Jammu region. The BJP, therefore, has to be a partner in any coalition in order to give balanced representation to the state’s two principal regions. It will be for the BJP to choose whether it wants the PDP or the NC as the coalition partner.  Because the ‘election’ has put the BJP in the driver’s seat, it is set to become a game changer. Whatever shape the new government in Srinagar takes, it seems a new era is about to dawn in the occupied state.

First, the election has cemented the division of Jammu and Kashmir into three distinct regions largely on religious lines: the valley, Jammu and Ladakh. A ‘trifurcation’ of the state may be difficult to avoid in the long run. Second, the time when the Kashmir Valley used to dominate state politics is coming to an end. The BJP, which has always stood for ‘regional balance’, i.e. giving Hindu-majority Jammu political parity with the overwhelmingly Muslim valley, is about to get its wish. The next chief minister could be a saffronised Hindu from Jammu.

Third, the special status of Kashmir might not be an immediate casualty but other steps that undermine or threaten Kashmir’s distinct cultural and religious identity could be on the way. The BJP has been pushing plans to settle retired Indian soldiers in the valley, build fortified colonies there for Kashmiri Pandits, abrogate the law on a separate Kashmiri citizenship and give citizenship rights to Hindu refugees who migrated to the state from Pakistan. No one should be surprised if a BJP-led government in Srinagar, backed by Modi, takes steps to turn these plans into reality.

Pakistan must remain alert to any such moves and prepare an appropriate response domestically as well as at the bilateral and international levels. Besides raising the issues of self-determination and human rights at all relevant international forums, the government should also take steps to enshrine Pakistan’s commitments under the Security Council resolutions on Kashmir as a constitutional obligation.

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service. Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com