In many senses, the mood in all these states tells us about the direction of democracy in India. In a survey, that I carried out in Kashmir Valley, after the coalition government of BJP-PDP took over, we found a few surprising opinions (add the details of the survey here). Jammu & Kashmir held assembly elections in November-December 2014, soon after the BJP formed the government at the centre in May. The elections witnessed an unprecedented turnout. The BJP swept Jammu region with 25 seats but failed to open its account in the Valley. Afterwards, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP, most unlikely of partners, came together to set up a coalition government. In the Valley, the overwhelming agenda was to defeat the BJP, which the electorate succeeded in doing, with most BJP candidates losing their deposits. The post-poll BJP-PDP alliance, however, has been seen in far more pragmatic terms by the people of Kashmir. It is interesting that while a majority in the Valley sees the BJP as a ‘Hindu’ party, they nevertheless think that Kashmir can benefit in terms of development and governance with the BJP in power. In fact, a majority said that having close ties with a party in power in the Centre would benefit the Valley. The stance is partly because the Valley has a Muslim majority, whose confidence in PDP and Mufti Sayeed as a ‘local person’, responsive to ‘local sentiments’, is strong. It is also partly the result of fatigue with militancy and a perceptible decline in pro-Pakistan sentiments.
Voices from the Valley
The majority of those surveyed saw Pakistan as a ‘failed state’ and said that Kashmir could not afford to align its future with it. At the same time, however, most of them staunchly supported Article 370 and were confident that the BJP would not tamper with it. One middle-aged gentleman said, ‘Duniya ki koyi taqat Article 370 ko hata nahi sakthi. Jo ye hateyenge, us waqat inquilab ayega’ (No force in the world can remove Article 370. Whoever removes it will face an uprising.) Many said the force of the response to any attempt to remove Article 370 would be bloodier than 2008 when the Valley saw the violent ‘Ragdo Ragdo’ protest against allotment of land to Amarnath pilgrims.
A surprising majority of respondents said that Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) might actually be necessary but that it should be restricted to border areas rather than used indiscriminately. Many expressed anguish about the relevance of the provision in Srinagar. Many of them said they felt a deep sense of ill treatment when they are repeatedly checked and asked for identity cards ‘in their own home’. The issue appears to be one more of dignity than of full-stinted support for militancy. (The mood-of-the-electorate survey, using a semi-structured questionnaire, was conducted across seven districts of Kashmir. Nearly 150 people, from students and vendors to professionals and businessmen, were interviewed over one week.)
This, however, does not mean there is any decline in the support for azadi (freedom). Almost all the people we spoke to argue in favour of azadi, which they translated as self-determination for Kashmir and Kashmiris. It had layered meanings and multiple articulations, including a desire for an ‘Islamic state’, especially among the youth, who have very little memory of the grand tradition of Kashmiriyat and composite lives with Pandits and other communities. For these young people, the Valley essentially belongs to Muslims, and they had very little knowledge of the Pandits or what they had suffered in the 1990s. A majority thought the Pandits represented India and the humiliation that comes with it. It was the older generation who said that Kashmir was incomplete without the Pandits, and, in fact, that education in the Valley had suffered after the Pandits left.
From the survey, we gauged the essential mood in the Valley as one between pragmatic understanding and a deep sense of hurt and distance from ‘mainland’ India. While they see the need for development and for jobs for their young people and therefore, the advantage of moving closer to India, they also resent the way local people are treated. For instance, many respondents expressed anger and resentment against the hanging of Afzal Guru, arguing that it was patently wrong, that he was not a terrorist, and that his hanging and the refusal to return his body to the family violated the norms. Similarly, many respondents said that the release of Masrat Alam was justified, as he was not involved in terrorist activities but represented the popular mood of the Valley by organizing protest rallies.
The ball, it seems, is now in the court of ‘mainland’ India. The Centre should have carefully treaded between these opposing sentiments in the Valley. It could do so by encouraging dialogue and putting an end to exceptional methods in the State.
(The mood-of-the-electorate survey, using a semi-structured questionnaire, was conducted across seven districts of Kashmir. Nearly 150 people, from students and vendors to professionals and businessmen, were interviewed over one week.)
What Is BJP’s Kashmir Policy?
As stated earlier, Kashmir has remained in the headlines all through the Modi regime. It began with the killing of Burhan Wani, followed by surgical strikes in Uri (and Pathankot in neighbouring Punjab), the house arrest of Pervez Khurram, and increased stone pelting.
It then moved on with the events of the video of a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan being heckled and then the photos of a Kashmiri being tied to the jeep also going viral, finally culminating in the statement by the union home minister Rajnath Singh that the government will announce a policy frame for ‘final settlement’ of the Kashmir problem. If the issue survives and keeps hogging the headlines, will it be the contentious issue on which the BJP will fight the general elections in 2019? Kashmir is one issue that holds a pan-India appeal and a chronic crisis in the Valley and a growing threat of its secession from India will create the anxiety that can consolidate the support for the BJP.
Kashmir is an emotive issue that has the potential to sideline all other issues including that of development, growing unemployment and inflation, dipping Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the agrarian crisis. It is an issue that combines nationalism with communalism. The media and the response from the government has gradually built a common sentiment that while India is tolerant and willing for a dialogue and also develop Kashmir, it is Kashmiris who are unreasonable, unrelenting, and intolerant, because the demand grows from a growing Islamic sentiment; rising stone pelting, growing militancy from across the border, a palpable support to it and early signs of a rising Wahhabism and Salafism replacing the more tolerant Sufi-Kashmiriyat stand testimony for this.
Sufism to Salafism?
In the popular imagination, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced development packages and inaugurated new roads, the topper in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) was a Kashmiri a few years ago. and 14 of them got selected in 2017. Further, Modi seems to have made concerted efforts to extend a meaningful hand of friendship with Pakistan; made friendly overtures by visiting his counterpart Nawaz Sharif’s family event; shook hands; spoke to him in international gatherings and even presented a shawl to his mother, which was reciprocated with a saree for Modi’s mother by Nawaz Sharif.12 In return, what we are getting back are militant attacks, sustained conspiracies, unrelenting Kashmiris refusing to dialogues—a tolerant India being repeatedly rejected and insulted by the Kashmiri leadership aided by Pakistan.
The way leading postcolonial scholar Partha Chatterjee had been hounded and reprimanded for his argument—that tying up of a Kashmiri to the jeep is the ‘Gen Dyer’ moment of post-Independent India—is a case in point.13 Not many bothered to read the critique of Chatterjee of the Pakistani Army in the same article, and it remained willfully ignored. The conflict and the crisis are simmering even as more than 100 chapters of the Jammu and Kashmir study forums have been launched more than two years ago across India. These forums are being used to project a sustained version of how Kashmir was a Hindu land that witnessed mass conversions and has henceforth displaced the Pandits. This narrative eventually has the potential to recreate a consolidated Hindu sentiment that overlaps with hyper nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment across India.14
What then could be the pe
rmanent solution that the home minister Rajnath Singh was referring to?15
Hurriyat Ban?
Could it mean banning of the Hurriyat? Or arrest of its leaders, including hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani? And an attempt to repeal Article 370? Or a repeal of Article 35(A)? If any of these steps were to be taken by the current dispensation, the Valley will erupt in unprecedented violence, dividing the nation vertically into those who wish to stand for an integrated India and those who wish to aid in weakening it. It is precisely around these issues that the BJP broke the alliance with the PDP. They argued that there is a growing radicalization in the valley and that the PDP is doing precious little.
In such a scenario, even the liberal constitutionalists would feel the pressure to stand by a dispensation—that is fighting a tough battle in Kashmir. Going in for a general election in such an atmosphere can only be best left to the imagination of the readers. Can Kashmir be handled differently? In my own survey that I elaborated on in the previous section, many responded by saying that there is nothing much left in Pakistan other than ‘bomb blasts’. There is much less support to the militancy in comparison with the 1990s, and many of them, especially the older generation, see militancy as eroding the social life while offering no palpable solution.
However, many will have a problem with remaining as a part of India, but this is, however, on the issue of autonomy and dignity and not essentially on religious grounds. Religion plays a role to the point of becoming the medium and the matrix of the dissent and disenchantment in the Valley. When young men waive the flags of the terror group Islamic State (IS), it is more to create anxiety and hurt the sentiments in India than a belief in its ideology. This, however, does not mean the young Kashmiris do not have the potential to move towards making Kashmir a religious-fundamentalist/religious-nationalist demand from that of its current demand for self-determination. This, to a large extent, depends on how we engage with Kashmir and treat them as citizens and not subjects of a history denied.
Kashmiri Pandits: Precariats of Indian Democracy
Kashmiri Pandits have emerged as the new precariats of the Indian democracy. The proposal by the BJP to set up separate zones for Kashmiri Pandits to facilitate their return to the Valley is creating more anxiety than opportunities to heal old wounds.16 Although the PDP—BJP’s coalition partner in Jammu and Kashmir—initially supported the proposal, it eventually retracted from it, sensing the hostile reaction from Kashmiri Muslims and other political forces. There is an apprehension that rather than bringing the Pandits and the Muslims together, this move will create a situation like that in Palestine. It is against this perceived ploy that Hurriyat and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) called for a shutdown in the Valley on 11 April 2015. The shutdown is also seen as an objection to any renewed claim that India might make over Kashmir in the name of the Pandits. The 1990 displacement of Pandits is still a contested idea for many in the Valley. The Pandits feel it was mainly due to militants with silent support from the local Muslim population, who did not come forward to protect them even if they were not actively involved in the hate campaign. Kashmiri Muslims who debate this issue, however, feel that Pandits left of their own accord and contend that it was part of a planned move by then Governor Jagmohan, who ensured there was no significant threat to the minorities. The proof of this is cited in the perfectly ‘normal’ and safe lives that the Pandits who stayed back in the Valley lead, by which they mean as secure or insecure as that of the non-Pandit population.
Local Pandits versus Camp Pandits
What the five-decade-long conflict in Kashmir has meant for the Pandits raises intriguing questions for India as a democracy. Despite being a minority in the Valley, they are considered part of the ‘majority’ in the rest of India. But this socially privileged group—both in religious and caste terms—continue to face hardship in living the lives of migrants. It is imperative to note that Kashmiri Pandits are no longer a homogeneous group that imagines a shared future together. It is widely perceived that those who were economically poor stayed back, and it was the well-off who could afford to migrate. Today, the Pandits are divided in the Valley between migrants who stay in camps and those who reside with the rest of the majority Muslim population in the towns and the villages.
Pandits living in the camps are perhaps the worst-off, with little freedom to move around, and suffer from a sense of anxiety. They returned to the Valley as part of the prime minister’s relief and rehabilitation package, announced in 2008, to resettle them by offering jobs. However, local Muslims and Pandits who had stayed back treat them with suspicion. The resettled Pandits often refuse to make a distinction between the militants and the locals, since many who joined the ranks of the militants had come from villages and towns in Kashmir, and not from Pakistan. While the local Pandits feel that these migrants get benefits and privileges and they do not, Muslims believe that the majority Hindu population of India by and large harbours a false idea of Muslims in the Valley as being fundamentalists, and even terrorists. The local Pandits see the Pandits in the camps as part of that majority.
The local Pandits feel that they are left with no narrative of their own, in spite of continuing to hold on to their Hindu identity and preserving the local temples, while those who migrated are counted as victims despite doing well for themselves. As a corrective measure, the state government in 2012 announced an employment package for the Pandits who chose not to leave the Valley. These endemic divisions within the community tell us about the effects of violence, militancy, and territorial rule, essentially through extrajudicial mechanisms. The loss of a coherent narrative for the Pandit community that comes close to self-blame is a historical tragedy of no small proportion, which is what I referred to as ‘intractable symbolism’ in the ‘Introduction’.
Pandits Symbolize India
In many senses, Pandits in the Valley camps have become the representatives of India and its army for many, and thereby sometimes attract the ire of the local Muslim population. It has been established that today, the divide between the Muslims and the Pandits is more political than religious. Many Pandits continue to believe that Muslims on a personal level are warm and friendly but are a ‘different lot’ at the level of the community. This idea of the community is essentially constructed through available political discourses, and in that Pandits in the Valley have positioned themselves against the majority Muslim population. They, therefore, believe that scrapping Article 370 would allow more Hindus to buy land in the Valley and change the demography of the place. Similarly, they perceive the Indian Army as being friendly to the Pandit population, especially those in the camps. This counter-narrative of the Pandit population continues to provide the support necessary for the statist discourse of exceptionalism, and Pandits remain the precarious symbols of why such strategies remain relevant.
Kashmiriyat to Radical Islamization
In other words, Kashmiri Pandits constructed a discourse that is in opposition to the popular sentiments of the region—the hurts and grievances of the majority Muslim population. This, in turn, has triggered off a process of Islamization, only furthering the difference in identities and gradually smudging the gap between a political and a religious divide in the Valley. The majority Muslim population is visibly moving from a culture of Kashmiriyat to perceiving a need for an Islamic state, one with the implementation of Sharia and special status of Islam in the Valley.17 Radical Islamization is perceptibly more pronounced among the younger generation of Kashmiri Muslims who have taken little interest in what the Pandits had to undergo. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the majority of youth, who have become the face of the protests in Kashmir, begin to believe that Pandits no longer belong there. The latest proposal by the BJP to create separate zones for Pandits might trigger a point of no-return for both communities.
Much of Right-wing political mobilization remains in maintaining this enduring gap between communities and drawing the fault lines between ‘us versus them’. In this dependence
of redrawing the political map in India, for Right-wing populists, Kashmiri Pandits are of the most significant symbolism. Suggesting the settlement of the Pandits in separate camps is a continuation of this deep-rooted populist strategy. The question that however remains unaddressed is whether populists are only building on the silent hiatus that existed all through Kashmir’s history, and were not being ‘invented’ by the populists. It is somewhat similar to debate after the Partition, as to whether the British constructed the enmity between the Hindus and the Muslims or built on the tensions and conflicts that had already existed between the communities. ‘Two Nation Theory’ did not emerge from the ‘Divide and Rule’, but it could well be the other way round, which calls for a more deep-rooted understanding of history rather than a political colouring of a difficult narrative. This complexity of the historical memory remains a strong source for populism in India.
Of What Value Is NOTA?
Modes of protest have been changing across the globe. Long-term protests have been replaced by short-term and explosive ones, and organized struggles by spontaneous and issue-based movements. To add to this is the provision of NOTA in India as part of the electoral process, that allows voters to protest by refusing to give their vote to any of the candidates seeking election. What type of a protest is NOTA? What purpose does it serve?
NOTA was used for the first time in the 2013 assembly elections in five states—Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Madhya Pradesh—and later in the 2014 General Elections. It was introduced into the electoral process following the 2013 Supreme Court Directive in PUCL versus Union of India. The Supreme Court reasoned that the NOTA option would allow voters to express their discontent with the political parties and the candidates they put up and thus help cleanse the political system. According to a bench headed by then Chief Justice of India P. Sathasivam, ‘Negative voting will lead to a systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates. If the right to vote is a statutory right, then the right to reject a candidate is a fundamental right of speech and expression under the Constitution’.18 Further, NOTA has been extended by the Supreme Court to the elections to the Rajya Sabha, refusing the Congress Party’s plea to stay it.19
India After Modi Page 14