KASHMIR SITUATION

Rita Manchanda on a Hollow Victory for Indian Democracy

That the Indian state can hold elections in J&K, was demonstrated in the elections. A massive coercive presence of security forces ensured a massive turnout of voters. Beyond that, what do the assembly elections signify? Newspaper reports on the first phase of polls are exulting over "J&K voters say 'yes to democracy" or, "Kashmiris turn to the ballot for peace".

The same refrain was echoed during the Lok Sabha polls. Then too the media gloated over "Polls prove Pak lost proxy war" and celebrated the people's eagerness to participate in the democratic process. The same newspapers which had reported that villagers and security men were matched in strength in the long queues of voters, exulted over the turnout as a "Decisive rebuff to terrorists", a vote for democracy.

Tossed aside as "propaganda" were the media's own eyewitness accounts of the security forces and armed "surrendered" militants descending on villages, calling out people to vote and checking on the proof the indelible mark on the finger.

In May, the vote for democracy was 40 per cent or so, the J&K administration claimed. This time round voter turnout was more than 50 per cent. But the issue of "zabardasti" and "marzi" this time has become almost irrelevant. For the logic of a proxy war under the prevailing circumstances flattens before it the democratic objection to voters coerced by guns to vote.

Within that logic, a legitimate democratic activity like the door-to-door campaigning by political leaders like Yasin Malik and Shabbir Shah against elections, is clamped down upon by the security forces. The Hurriyat leaders are arrested, beaten up and hospitalized. Their monitoring cells are broken up. The people turning out to vote coerced or otherwise is hailed as a rejection of militancy and, more important, of the political question which the Hurriyat leaders pose. Hurriyat is an uneasy coalition, often working at cross purposes. But they are the political voice of the last seven years of militant struggle. They are out of the electoral reckoning. evidently irrelevant to the revival of the democratic process.

Back in the political arena are the discredited political parties which through rigged elections have been coming to power in J&K only to barter away the state's autonomy. Their new allies are to be the political parties of the surrendered militants. The National Conference is busy cataloguing "booth capturing" by these armed renegades. But the Union Home Secretary, Padmanabiah, has made it clear that these surrendered militants will continue to bear arms. Their "friendly" role in decimating pro-Pakistan militants is not to be impeded.

That civil liberties activists and journalists engaged in legitimate democratic activity are becoming the bloody targets of these unaccountable renegades is apparently of little concern. Far from an elected government negotiating a withdrawal of the massive security presence which has turned J&K into a garrison state, the Governor General K.V. Krishna Rao has warned that an elected government should not indulge in "populist refrains and condemn the army and paramilitary forces" It would affect the tempo of the anti-insurgency drive, the General argues.

So what kind of democracy have the tired Kashmiri people opted for? After seven bloody years of militancy. after suffering the systematic subversion of fundamental rights typical of an "occupied" state, where every Kashmiri is the "enemy" and the ubiquitous security forces the law, have the Kashmiri people turned their back on the political question which made them take to the gun Kashmir's political identity The question is important for the assembly elections have nothing to do with that basic political question.

The revival of the democratic process has not been preceded by any kind of a dialogue with the political elements active during the seven years of militancy. Instead, the people are being asked to vote for parties which at best may deliver development but have no relevance when it comes to the basic political question of the struggle for the political identity of Kashmir. It was not for a better economic package that the Kashmir people took up the gun but to get a political solution to a political dispute.

The political issue of autonomy is to be taken up by the newly elected government. But are the people to believe that the same political party which bartered away autonomy before will today defend it? Or, that the majoritarian Indian state will loosen its hold?

The contrast between empty polling booths in the Jamaat-e-Islami strongholds of Sopore and Baramulla and the crowded rush to vote in other polling centres, is an ominous portent of a people being forced to choose, of a people getting divided, of the flare up of a civil war.

Ultimately, it will depend on what the elected government can deliver. How much real power it will eventually be able to wrest from the entrenched security forces is the critical question.

For the Kashmiri people, the face of "the rest of India" has come to be the security forces. Today, it is an Election Commission prepared to turn a blind eye to subversion of democratic process in the name of special circumstances.

(Source: The Communalism Combat, October, 1996)

Tavleen Singh on Kashmir Problem

Will the assembly elections in Kashmir bring peace? Finally, a solution? No. They cannot for the simple reason that they are irrelevant to the real problem which is that everyone continues to lie through their teeth about nearly everything to do with Kashmir. The militants lie when they tell us that Kashmiris have always wanted azadi and that the violence that began in 1989 was only the culmination of a long freedom movement. This is rubbish. Right up to 1988 the Valley was the favorite summer destination of Indian holiday-makers (and) also where Bombay's filmwallahs went to shoot song sequences in the meadows and the snows.

The Indian Government lies when it tries to convince us, and the world, that the real problem in Kashmir is a Pakistan sponsored terrorist movement Privately, even the most hawkish of our bureaucrats and politicians admit that the violence was the result of our own stupid, short-sighted policies. Our government also lies shamelessly about human rights violations by pretending that the only innocents that have died are those that were caught in 'crossfire'. If this were so, they need to explain why the average Kashmiri is so bitterly anti-India even if he has no love for Pakistan.

We come then to the Pakistan Government which lies constantly about the armies and trained terrorists that it exports across the line of control pretending that this is only 'moral' support. It also lies when it tells its people that the 'unfinished business of Partition' will only be finished when Kashmir is absorbed into Pakistan. It also lies, every day as does our own Government, about virtually every event that takes place in the Valley.

There are, sadly, other liars in this game of lies. Journalists, on both sides of the border, lie about what is going on and do so because they consider it in their 'national interest. So, the Pakistani press hesitates to investigate the terrorism that their government sponsors and the Indian press hesitate to investigate blatant violations of human rights. The result is that in Pakistan most ordinary people believe that Kashmir will one day be handed to them on a platter and in India the average Indian believes that Kashmiris are basically a bad lot who spend their time killing our patriotic soldiers and policemen. (He) considers them ungrateful to boot. Sheikh Abdullah put a stop to subsidized rice when he became Chief Minister and most of the aid poured into the Valley since 1989 has gone towards the deployment of our troops and para-military.

Lying is clearly infectious because even Western observers in Delhi and Islamabad appear to become afflicted by it after they have spent a few months in either capital. Western journalists often report stories entirely on the basis of what they have been told by Kashmiri militants.

Janak Singh On Lesson for Farooq Abdullah

The people's disenchantment with Pakistani propaganda promising liberation of the Valley and the general disgust with militancy which had paralyzed normal life were important factors in determining the outcome of the poll.

The people have, by and large, come to realize that all those promising azadi could not succeed. They have proved pragmatic in reposing their faith in a party which had come to be regarded as anathema when militancy was at its peak in the Valley. However, it cannot be assumed that the verdict is an outright rejection The electoral outcome merely reflects the feelings of a of Pakistan or indicative of a newfound love for India befuddled people, looking for a way out of a tunnel. Whether it would lead to normalcy in the Valley depends on Farooq Abdullah.

The ISI-funded and armed militants are not the only threat to peace in Kashmir. The All Party Hurriyat Conference, which made a vain bid to dissuade people mischief. They have the young Omar Farooq, the from participating in the poll, could still create much Mirwaiz of Kashmir, as also hard-boiled politicians like of the elections can only harden the resolve of these Abdul Ghani Lone, on their side. The successful outcome trouble-makers. Kashmir has never been free from anti- Indian sentiment. It would be better to appreciate certain peculiarities about Kashmir. One such is that Kashmiri sub-nationalism is a very strong factor in the ethos of the people.

(Over 11 years) misgovernance became synonymous lessons from the past (and) avoid all that made the with the Abdullah clan (Farooq Abdullah should learn) Sheikh family unpopular in the first place.

(Source: The Times of India, 11 October, 1996)