Kashmir at the Boiling Point as Elections Loom

As Kashmir gears up for its first local assembly election in a decade, there is a battle underway. It’s not just a contest for the hot-seat of power but a duel of competing narratives, each underlying how a Muslim-majority region should adapt to the ignition of Hindu nationalist rage seen in the Narendra Modi years.

Should the people of Kashmir surrender to Modi’s unrelenting commitment to pursuing majoritarian agendas and accept his animated audience’s arbitrary dictations regarding Kashmir’s political and social disposition, to secure tolerance for their existence? Or should they resist it? What would be the fallout of resistance at a time when there is a proclivity to view any articulation against the Hindu hegemonic order as a globally coordinated campaign to weaken India’s territorial integrity?

The electorate of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)  – around 8.8 million people – will vote in three phases on September 18, September 23 and October 1. The counting will be held on October 4.

As polling inches nearer, the Modi regime can be seen making more powerful expositions of its pledge to run a reforming government in the region. Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha gave carefully crafted interviews timed around the fifth anniversary of the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status on August 5. They cataloged his administration’s determination to uplift Kashmir’s ramshackle economy. “About 42,000 government jobs have been filled… We have received investment proposals to the tune of Rs. 1,25,000 crore [1.25 trillion rupees, or $14.9 billion],” boasted Sinha.

Sinha’s stress on the economy is deliberate. By framing the genesis of a vexing political conflict as a mere corollary to economic instability and arguing that Kashmir’s special status scuppered economic development, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aims to legitimize its monopolization of power in J&K and deflect focus from the organized disempowerment of Kashmiris, which has intensified in the past five years.

But the National Conference (NC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the two principal political entities in J&K, aver that the solution to anti-India alienation in Kashmir lies not in the exercise of coercion to suppress people’s political aspirations, but has to come through dialogue with stakeholders. Their immediate task is to preclude the BJP and its political proxies at the upcoming election.

In an exclusive interview with The Diplomat, NC leader Omar Abdullah outlined the importance of the polls. “An elected government, by its very nature of being representative of the people’s will, will be able to push back against the use of the executive powers by the lieutenant governor,” Abdullah pointed out, visibly tired after a grueling day campaigning, but poised and attentive.

The bigger challenge, according to him, will be combating the right wing’s mobilization of emotion across India. In India’s communally simmering landscape, any assessment of the J&K election – or elections in any other province for that matter – merely in terms of numbers will be mechanistic. They have to be capitalized upon as an opportunity to generate an optimistic political vision to take on the BJP’s daily staple of hate, division and prejudice, and the inward-looking society it has begotten.

“Every effort is being made to paint Muslims as second class citizens in this country... It is so deep-rooted now that even a change of government in New Delhi will not be able to pull this poison out immediately,” Abdullah vented out his exasperation, speaking from his study in the basement of his serene Gupkar Road bungalow. Embellishing the compact chamber is a neatly organized, floor-to-ceiling repository of books. Abdullah’s large collection includes languages, history, treatises on philosophy, and books on India’s spiritual heritage, such as “Land of Sadhus,” which illustrate his family’s faith in India’s syncretic tradition.

But in primetime news telecasts, there are howling campaigns to vilify Kashmir’s Muslim majority and its leadership as the “dangerous other.” The news cycle also circulates the Modi government’s specious argument that ending Kashmir’s special status was necessary to uproot militancy. Giving potency to that discourse is a record tourist footfall in J&K. There are relentless visuals on television of people roaming freely at the daintily renovated Lal Chowk, a place emblematic of Kashmir’s separatist politics, and listening to bands performing by the Dal Lake’s still water.

But several questions remain: Can economic implements such as income-generation and infrastructure be an elixir for the social, political, and psychological enablers of militancy? Can the state be allowed to suspend individual freedom, public deliberation, and autonomy of institutions for the purpose of stamping out an armed conflict? Who will watch against underlying racial and religious motivations?

The NC is expected to witness a phenomenal turnaround in the upcoming election. Although Omar Abdullah has often drawn flak from critics, who tend to describe him as an “aloof elite,” or less disapprovingly as “serious” and “reticent,” there is an overwhelming willingness on the ground to vote for him. A cross section of voters in Srinagar, Baramulla, Sopore and Kulgam believe he has the aptitude to deliver a discerning leadership. These are not Abdullah’s loyal and dependable followers; their current predilection for him is triggered by a realization that a well-planned and calibrated navigation is needed to surmount the Modi regime. They see the Abdullah family, with nearly a century of experience in politics, as well-suited for that role.

In their public meetings, Abdullah and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti – both are former chief ministers of J&K – have pledged to fight the ominous political shadow looming over Kashmir: a perceived threat to local demography, affronts to people’s religious sentiment (congregational prayers at the historic Jamia Masjid are continually suspended), and an administration run by a handful of bureaucrats who have walled themselves off from contrarian viewpoints.

The two parties have promised to restore J&K’s statehood and its special status in their manifestos. On August 5, 2019, New Delhi abrogated Articles 370 and 35A of India’s Constitution, which accorded Kashmiris several exclusive privileges, including exclusivity in jobs and owning immovable assets. Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded into a union territory, with Ladakh – formerly part of the state of J&K – split off into a separate union territory.

At the time, the central government had turned Srinagar, the capital city, into a bobbin of concertina wire and trigger-happy snipers, an illustration of the enormity of its unilateral action which has since become a norm. Under Sinha’s watch, a bureaucrat-controlled, repressive power apparatus operates in Kashmir with impunity, tasked with enforcing silence. This is achieved by waging horrific harassment campaigns against dissenting individuals and members of the press.

For Kashmir’s political protagonists, the path ahead is arduous. The Modi regime has disproportionate capital and control over investigating agencies, which it unleashes on political opponents to coerce them into switching allegiance. In March 2020, Altaf Bukhari, an affluent businessman and former finance minister of Jammu and Kashmir, who was expelled from the PDP, floated a new political outfit, the Apni Party, breaking away about 40 politicians from the PDP, the NC, and the Congress. The Apni Party and Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference (PC) are widely perceived to be in a clandestine arrangement with the BJP.

Apparently, the BJP was eyeing to form a coalition government in J&K by sweeping the Hindu-dominated Jammu region and relying on the PC and the Apni Party in the Valley to write an epitaph for the Abdullahs and the Muftis, whom its embedded journalists often berate as “inept dynasts.” But the NC and the PDP were swift to expose the machination. In the recent parliamentary elections in Kashmir’s three Lok Sabha (lower house of India’s Parliament) constituencies, the NC registered comfortable victories in Srinagar and Anantnag-Rajouri whereas jailed politician Abdul Rashid won from Baramulla, riding on a wave of sympathy. Rashid has been in jail since August 2019 over charges of funding terrorism, which people believe to be politically motivated.

Sensing the inevitability of an NC-led alliance securing power, the Ministry of Home Affairs in July widened the administrative role of J&K’s lieutenant governor. Abdullah admits that even if his party formed the government after the upcoming local elections, it will not be easy to reckon with “unbridled bureaucrats” in whom the lieutenant governor has concentrated power.

The last assembly elections in J&K were held in 2014, culminating in a PDP-BJP coalition government, which collapsed in June 2018. The fractious Himalayan region has since been administered by New Delhi-appointed governors with an iron hand.

Over the last three years, the J&K administration has dismissed 74 government employees “in the interest of the security of the state.” In 2023, the administration revoked 98 passports – of journalists, academics, civil society activists, and students.

New Delhi’s armory of tactics against journalists includes raids, look-out circulars, denial of passports, and use of anti-terror laws. The Jammu and Kashmir Media Policy 2020 enunciated various dos-and-don’ts for journalists, and conferred on the government the power to decide what constituted “fake, anti-national, or unethical” news and initiate action for violation of its guidelines. Fahad Shah, Irfan Mehraj, and Asif Sultan are among the scribes who were detained under draconian anti-terror laws.

Civilians have had equally harrowing experiences. During the November 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup finals between India and Australia, seven Kashmiri students studying at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Ganderbal district were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for allegedly cheering for the winning Australian team. In July, four participants in a Muharram procession in Srinagar were arrested under the UAPA for carrying Palestinian and Hezbollah flags.

In an earlier interview with this reporter, Mehbooba Mufti, described post-2019 Kashmir as an “open air prison”: “Every day a new edict is issued by the Union government to disrupt and disempower the people of Jammu and Kashmir, especially Muslims. The state [now a union territory] has been converted into an open-air prison since 2019 where any kind of activity, especially political, has been choked…” she lamented.

Mufti has been a feisty challenger of the Modi regime’s incursions in Kashmir. This has considerably boosted her public image, which was stained by her party’s unpopular alliance with the BJP from 2015 to 2018. The parliamentary election outcome suggests that people are, for now, inclined to rally behind the NC.

The deployment of retributive actions have had a profound effect on local people, who are uneasy about voicing their lived experiences. When I interacted with a cross-section of civilians in Shopian, Pulwama, Srinagar, and Budgam, they were mostly evasive. Some alleged that they lived in a “surveillance state.” Apparently, the government has infiltrated places of worship with “informers.” According to a shopkeeper near the Government Degree College in Pulwama, “even if we discussed politics inside the mosque, the local police gets a cue of it. There are mukhbirs [informers] everywhere.”

At Shopian Court Road, a clothes and accessories store owner said there was suppressed, collective anger against the “government’s bid to erode Kashmir’s Islamic ethos.” Prominent public places and institutions are being renamed after Hindutva ideologues. The Chenani-Nashri tunnel, for instance, has been renamed after Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a Hindu right-wing politician. Sinha’s administration has discontinued the official commemoration of Martyrs’ Day on July 13 – the day on which 22 Kashmiri protesters were gunned down in 1931 by the forces of the autocratic Dogra ruler.

The store owner at Shopian gravitated toward the phrase “boiling pot with a lid” to describe the situation there. People particularly abhor the way Kashmiri Muslims are depicted on television and in cinema, such as the “The Kashmir Files,” a Hindi language film released in 2022 which was accused of stoking Islamophobia.

“The Indian media blacks out news of rights violations in order to strengthen the normalcy narrative they have built in cohorts with the government,” a government teacher in Srinagar said scornfully. He was referring to the Shopian staged encounter of July 2020, Hyderpora killings of November 2021, and the custodial killing of three Gujjar men in Poonch in December 2023.

The systematic transgressions witnessed in Kashmir in the past five years give away the government’s underlying intent: gaining legitimacy for a political culture where the minorities must live as minorities, without the agency to protest, articulate, or influence the politics unfolding around them. The slightest resistance, down to cheering for another nation’s cricket team, is presented as a threat to national security and crushed vindictively. It is naive to imagine that this bolstering of state power will be restricted to Kashmir.

As the tidal wave of uncertainty continues, the Modi government’s relaxation of norms for obtaining a domicile certificate – a necessary document for people from other states and union territories to settle in the region – has stoked widespread fear of a demographic change. The J&K Reorganization (Adaptation of State Laws) Order of March 2020 stipulated that any individual who had lived in Jammu and Kashmir for a period of 15 years, or had studied there for a period of seven years and had appeared in a class X or XII examination from an educational institute there, would be eligible to be granted local resident status. Up until August 2019, receiving a domicile certificate was hereditary, which was seen as necessary to preserve J&K’s unique demography and culture.

Anuradha Bhasin, eminent journalist and author of “Kashmir: A Dismantled State,” feels the apprehensions regarding a demographic realignment are not unfounded. “The [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)] and the BJP have in the past spoken about demographic change as a remedy. But now, by changing the political status of Jammu and Kashmir in the most undemocratic manner, a set of new rules, laws, and policies are being framed to begin a process of systemically outnumbering the locals in jobs, businesses, landholdings, and voting pattern. This makes the apprehensions of a demographic change valid,” she told The Diplomat.

As a backlash to the government’s perceived plans of settling outsiders in Kashmir, insurgents have resorted to targeted attacks on Kashmiri Pandits – that is, Hindus – and non-locals, which experts say will be hard to contain. A spate of targeted violence swept the valley from the autumn of 2021, prompting many Kashmiri Pandits to flee to Jammu.

Belying the government’s claims of eliminating militancy, it has penetrated the adjoining Jammu region. On June 9, 2024 the day Modi was sworn in as prime minister for a third consecutive term, nine civilians were killed and dozens wounded when terrorists attacked a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims, forcing it to fall down a Himalayan gorge in the Reasi district of Jammu. The number of security personnel killed in Jammu in 2023 tripled to 21.

The escalation of violence questions the legitimacy of a policy that eschews dialogue, deliberation, and engagement with stakeholders as methods to address the vexing political issue of Kashmir. M.Y. Tarigami, a senior Kashmiri politician, underlined the importance of civilian engagement in uprooting terror: “Violence can’t be contained only through tough security measures. People’s support for isolating such elements is required but is unfortunately missing,” he told The Diplomat.

But New Delhi continues to believe in the myth of the effectiveness of military coercion in dealing with insurgency. While the Modi regime’s vilification of Kashmiris and and exhibition of unchecked state power against them feed contemporary nationalists’ basest impulses, they may be assaulting the general consensus regarding the relevance of a liberal democratic order.

Though multifarious livelihood issues and caste arithmetic reduced Modi’s majority in India’s national elections recently, the number of people who are willing to go along with, or ostensibly ignore, his government’s hostility for critics and political opponents astounds. Jammu and Kashmir has been the BJP-RSS’ laboratory to manufacture this approval for hate. It is time the secular parties there dismantled it.