“To be or not to be....” —Hamlet

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Mapping A State

1.25 cr Population

Population 72.25 l Voters

Voters 68% Literacy3

Literacy3 87 Assembly strength

Assembly strength 889 Sex ratio

Sex ratio 10,015 Polling stations

Polling stations 72.62% Rural population

Rural population 22,000 sq km area

sq km area 708.74 bn Net SDP rupees (RBI)

Highest producer of: Apple and saffron

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To vote or not to vote is always one of the questions in Kashmir, and this time round, the momentum will be set by the first round that recorded the highest-ever 71 per cent turnout in the five-phase elections whose results will be announced on December 23. But in the Valley, one of the great conflict zones of the world, it would be a mistake to see THE VOTE through the rose-tinted glasses of Indian nationalism or as a thumping endorsement of the country. Like a Shakespearean tragedy, Kashmir has indeed known the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and people have “taken arms against a sea of troubles”.

And now they vote, a collective act that certainly shows a readiness to come to terms with the realities of their existence and to believe that, yes, the vote could matter. Militancy is down and candidates will not be shot dead and neither will people face a social boycott for pressing a button on an EVM. The man who most in the Valley believe is the frontrunner for becoming the next chief minister, Mufti Moh­ammad Sayeed, carefully touches some issues, skirts others like lifting of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that is being raised repeatedly by chief minister Omar Abdullah.



CM-to-be? The man who can manoeuvre between agencies, army, separatist sentiment, popular space.

The home minister in the V.P. Singh government, the Mufti knows how to manoeuvre between agencies, army, separatist sentiment and whatever space there has been for popular politics in Kashmir. In 1989, within days of his taking over as home minister in Delhi, his daughter Rubaiya was kidnapped and eventually released for the exchange of five terrorists. Since then another daughter, Mehbooba, has emerged as a figure in her own right and is a powerful campaigner. But a PDP leader explains that the Mufti is the preferred CM candidate. “After Omar Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi, no one trusts the young anymore,” he says.

Invoking Modi’s name is not proving to be a disadvantage in the Muslim-majority Valley, though BJP won’t get seats.



Experienced at the great game of Kashmir, the wars, the covert and overt operations, the Mufti talks of operating within Indian law in every public speech. “This election is very important because this has been a complicated place. Every PM of India has to deal with the Kashmir issue. When I was chief minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee came to Srinagar and from here declared he would talk to Pakistan. If within the Constitution of India you do not give a decisive mandate, Kashmir is finished. India is about diversity, there are Tamils, Biharis, Kashmiris....”

Why would Kashmir be finished if people did not vote? Here’s what the Mufti says to people: “The people of Hindustan have given a mandate to a government that wants to change Article 370. The Indian Parliament does not have the mandate to repeal 370. The Constituent Assembly of Kashmir does. So to save your country, give a decisive verdict. If you do not, then Kashmir is finished, all is finished.” Perhaps the PDP’s relentless campaign on voting in the Valley is the reason for the large turnout. “Hamari taqdeer ki parchi hai vote,” says the Mufti in each rally.

The BJP’s presence in the Valley for the first time is the other reason why the separatists withdrew their call to boycott elections: it is argued that telling people not to vote would only ensure that a few BJP candidates slip through thanks to the postal ballot of Kashmiri Pandits and the clear preference of the security agencies. The other reason for withdrawing the boycott is because signs in the countryside were clear that people had every intention of voting, hence the separatists would have looked fool­ish. In Srinagar, which votes later, figures will still be low but likely higher than ever before. It is in this city and in Sopore that the big stone-throwing agitations of 2008 and 2010 played out. The town and the countryside do work on different dynamics.



The road ends here? National Conference workers on a road show in Norbal, Kashmir

What is also fascinating is how invoking Narendra Modi’s name is not proving to be a disadvantage in this Muslim-majority Valley, although the party is not expected to get seats here. The contours of the secularism-communalism debate in mainstream India are different here. Modi is just seen as a strong leader and people do hope he will bring jobs and economic growth to the Valley and have the power to eventually approach the Kashmir tangle. Why blame him for Gujarat, they ask, when no one else really gets arraigned for disappearances and massacres in the Valley, they ask. But should the BJP sweep Jammu and somehow manage to form a government and impose a CM from outside the Valley, then the script will certainly change rapidly.

A youngster in Warpora village in Kupwara district says: “Azadi is a different issue. Election is for development.”



Hakim Khaled, a leading businessman who has dealt with the Modi government and also runs the organisation Humanity First, which helped during the recent floods, says that the way Modi has been projected, he has been able to generate expectation. “People hope that a strong leader will take action to resolve Kashmir and bring development here. For Modi it is now or never to come to Kashmir. There will not always be such floods that will make people desperate for any answer, any way. Yet I don’t think India is still in a mood to own Kashmiris. They just want to manage us,” he says.

Getting seats in the Valley should not be considered the sole benchmark of success for the BJP. Just the fact that they have candidates is itself significant. Among them is the picture-perfect Hina Bhatt who is standing from Srinagar’s Amira Kadal seat and happily poses on a shikara in Dal Lake. She smiles, charmingly, and says that there is a “Modi wave here...I have not met him but would love to.”

The BJP’s strategy is two-pronged: In Jammu, win through the formula of uniting Hindus, while also going for Muslim votes that will get divided between parties. In Kashmir, just put a footprint in the poll arena and showcase candidates. In many parts of the Valley, there are posters saying Mission 44. BJP strategists believe it’s not impossible. In the Valley, people still maintain it’s quite improbable.

There is, however, some revealing anecdotal evidence from the ground. In Warpora village in the Rajwar block of Kupwara district, a huge crowd gathers around Sajjad Lone who is campaigning after a much-publicised meeting with Modi in delhi. Nazir, a student, explains: “Azadi is a different issue. Election is for development.” People gather around this correspondent and shout slogans saying “Sajjad and Modi will bring development.” The PDP and NC candidates meanwhile have raised banners against Sajjad saying “Jo Modi ka yaar hai; gaddar hai, gaddar hai (he who is a friend of Modi is a traitor.)”

“For Modi, it is now or never in Kashmir. There won’t always be such floods that will make people desperate for answers.”

Hakim Khaled, Humanity First “For Modi, it is now or never in Kashmir. There won’t always be such floods that will make people desperate for answers.”

This is a border area and Rajwar is known both as “Chhota Afghanistan” and the “reception area of terrorists”. Villagers say they still slip in and have to be fed. They hide in the forests and hills. Even as Sajjad’s motorcade moves with music, women singing en route, the dholak playing, rose petals being showered, it suddenly stops and shifts to the side of the road to give way. A single army vehicle has to pass. Kashmir is, after all, one of the most heavily militarised zones in the world. Regardless of who forms a civilian government, the Indian army will always be king of the valley.

But there is a shift in the “doctrine of war” that the Indian army has applied to Kashmir. Sources in the military establishment concede that it was during the “conflict initiation” stage that began in 1989 with the infiltration across the Line of Control that egregious human rights violations such as the Sopore massacre took place and its signs like the mass graves came up. At that time, Kashmir was totally disenchanted with the electoral process that had been blatantly rigged in 1987 and was ripe to support a movement for azadi. There is a thinking in the circles who devise military strategy that they “responded very hard” and created an institutional memory in Kashmir of the army as an oppressing force.

That will not change but the army is taking certain steps to “soften the blow”. The forces are there to stay, so there have been efforts to scale down the visual aggression. Soldiers have been told not to position themselves so aggressively in their body language when they travel in convoys even as those manning the roads roughly hustle people off, when army movement takes place, a constant reality outside Srinagar. Soldiers have also been told to travel in and out of Srinagar airport in civilian clothes so that it does not look like a military bunker. The number of road checks, say between the 70 kilometres between Uri and Srinagar, have also been reduced, from around five in the past, to one currently.



The BJP presence Hina Bhatt on the Dal Lake in Srinagar

But what is more significant is that within the political class in Srinagar there is a belief that the recent shooting by the army of two teenagers was handled well when the army HQ in J&K owned up responsibility for the mistake. Says a leading member of the PDP: “We hear the PM made his own inquiries with HQ about what happened and although the army was initially denying it, they were told to take responsibility. Otherwise instead of an election we would have had a protest.”

“The Machil conviction was a political decision. It was done two months ago but has been made public only now.”

Khurram Parvez Spokesperson, J&K Coalition of Civil Society “The Machil conviction was a political decision. It was done two months ago but has been made public only now.”

Also, in September this year the Indian army had in a court martial sentenced five of its personnel, including five soldiers, to life imprisonment, for the murder of three Kashmiris. The incident that took place in Machil, a township close to the LoC, had triggered the first round of the 2010 protest. It is revealing of how encounters can be staged: the two officers of the Rajputana Rifles, known as RR, whose 80,000 personnel are the main counter-insurgency unit in the valley, needed to claim an encounter in order to get a citation, and hence lured young Kashmiris with the offer of work and killed them.

The news about the court-martial judgement became public in mid-Nov­ember when chief minister Omar Abdullah hailed it as a “watershed moment”. Yet human rights activists disagree. Says Khurram Parvez, spoke­sperson of the Jammu Kashmir Coal­ition of Civil Society, “The Machil conviction is a political decision. The conviction was reportedly done two months ago, but has only now been made public, on the eve of the assembly elections. It is clear that the court-martial system is conscious of and guided by larger political interests.”

So what next in this interplay between Kashmir, politics and the Indian army? Military sources say that they now see Kashmir in a stage of “conflict stabilisation”. The army presence is certainly not going to be scaled down and the rules of the game of engagement are being changed by Narendra Modi. In their estimate, if the political process succeeds, it will render the separatists increasingly irrelevant, and Modi is not inclined to talk to them. It is only after a government is formed in the state that the Modi policy will be given final shape. A new governor will be appoin­ted and the name doing the rounds is that of Lt Gen Syed Atta Hasnain, who served in Kashmir till 2012 and is seen as having tried to reshape the army approach to the state. He is currently a member of the Vivekananda Foun­dation, the most influential think-tank in Delhi since Modi took reins as the prime minister.

In the military’s estimate, if the political process succeeds, it will make separatists irrelevant, and Modi won’t talk to them.



Sources say that militants still cross the LoC and in the month of September, when floods had drowned Srinagar and parts of south Kashmir, 18 were shot dead by the Indian army, and the estimate is that about 30 got through. Military intelligence, however, expects future encounters and skirmishes to be on the LoC and not inside the Valley. Certainly, there has been since the announcement of the elections, been a crackdown on those who would have tried to campaign for a boycott, and about 1,000 youth have been picked up. They are expected to be released after the polls are over. There is an iron fist behind the gloved hand of the election.

In the beauty of the Valley, the polls do dazzle today with their energy and the brief moments of normalcy and freedom they suggest. But there is alw­ays an air of unreality about politics in Kashmir: who knows what can come next from over the mountain, which gun can fire off that shot, how swiftly the mood can change. The vote of the Valley is as delicately poised as its beautiful people and extreme seasons.

By Saba Naqvi with Showkat A. Motta in Kashmir Valley; Photographs by Narendra Bisht