Why Mood See-Sawed In Run-Up To 2008 Jammu & Kashmir Polls
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| Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow on Facebook |
In the second year of my decade-long stint with the Times of India, I got what I then thought was my first big break—covering the 2008 Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections. My mentor late Ranjan Roy agreed to depute me for the coverage at the request of Rashmee Roshan Lall, who was then the paper's weekend editor. I was at the top of my game thanks to Ranjan and Rashmee's support and encouragement at the beginning of the best phase of my professional life. I could not wait and hopped on to a bus as soon as I arrived in Srinagar to Pattan near Srinagar to meet Member Of Parliament Abdul Rashid Shaheen, who was contesting the elections on a National Conference (NC) ticket. Shaheen, who had seen better days in politics, appeared downcast. He was in his living room addressing half-a-dozen supporters when I walked in. Shaheen spoke about NC's heyday when iconic Sheikh Abdullah, the NC founder, held sway over the Kashmiris.
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The run-up to the 2008 election was a far cry from what they were like during Abdullah's time. Gatherings at Abdullah's rallies stretched as far as the eye could see, Shaheen recalled. He thought it was not the right time to hold the elections against the backdrop of the killing of dozens of people in firings on people protesting against ecologically-fragile forestland transfer to a Hindu shrine in violation of the region's special status. The counter-protests in Jammu and an economic blockade further vitiated the atmosphere and strengthened calls for an election boycott. The situation was so bad that political parties were unable to even hold rallies. In Shaheen's backyard of Pattan, I could not even spot even a single poster, banner, or flag of any political party.
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Commuters on board a Sopore-bound bus echoed Shaheen's assessment; people seemed to be reluctant to talk about the elections. The bigger issue was the restoration of dignity and honour, said one of them. Pattan's apathy towards elections was symptomatic of how dramatically the situation changed after the land row and subsequent blockade. The dispute over the forest land near the cave shrine of Amarnath polarised Jammu and Kashmir on communal lines. At least 60 people died after the row snowballed into some of the biggest demonstrations in Kashmir in two decades.
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The mood in Pattan was in contrast to the spring of 2006 when about 70 per cent of people voted in a by-election to the state assembly. The turnout was dubbed as a watershed and an indication of waning separatist sentiment as NC's Mustafa Kamal defeated influential religious leader Maulvi Ifthikar Ansari. Sajjad Lone, who has since flip-flopped and even allied with the governing far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was among the vocal supporter of the boycott calls. He called the 2008 elections in the aftermath of the blockade a non-issue. He told me the blockade left a deep psychological imprint on Kashmiris. For Lone, the subsequent agitation re-ignited irreversible separatist sentiment. He said the threat of starvation and disruption of economic activities was deeply embedded in the Kashmiri psyche.
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Lone, who authored 'Achievable Nationhood' on the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, thought the situation was such that voting constituted a stigma. 'I am not saying it. It is there for all to see how the so-called campaigning is lackluster. The force that the state is using against people espousing a boycott is perhaps the biggest indicator of the mood. Lone questioned if the anti-election people were not a threat why were they being arrested and barred from campaigning. In Delhi, columnist Prem Shankar Jha echoed anxieties over a possible low turnout. He felt if there is no or less Kashmiri participation in the government formation, the moderates among separatists will lose control over the angry young people. This is a disaster in making, he warned. But life had to go on as Shaheen told me in Pattan. He said politicians have no choice but to get on with the business. Shaheen felt they had to make adjustments. He was trying to mobilise people over the day-to-day issues, insisting they do not claim elections will resolve the Kashmir dispute.
In Rafiabad constituency, over 50 km away, there were also no visible signs of an imminent election with no banners, posters, or even party flags. 'The mood is not in favour of elections. The Amarnath agitation has turned the clock back. NC and PDP [People's Democratic Party] candidates are not even campaigning,' Congress candidate Abdul Gani Vakil told me. He added even he has been unable to hold public rallies. Vakil was relying on door-to-door campaigning. Amid the rumbling, Gundi Boon village in Bandipora district's Sonawari area appeared to be an exception. The village with no semblance of even basic human necessities had no access to safe drinking water and electricity. 'Elections are our only hope for change,' said Javed Ahmed Shah at a rally of Awami League candidate Imtiyaz Ahmed Parrey. Despite the boycott calls, Parrey had managed a decent gathering. Amid chanting and singing, he promised change as his supporters, mainly women, sang: 'We would not even have breakfast and the voting is the first thing we will do on the polling day.'
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The focus on day-to-day issues seemed to have worked with a dramatic shift in the mood and a high voter turnout despite boycott calls. There was an overall jump in the turnout from 44 per cent in 2002 to 61 per cent. But the turnout in Srinagar was just 20 per cent compared to over 80 per cent in 1983. Lone, who called for introspection within the separatist ranks after their poll boycott failure, rejected the excitement over the turnout as 'frenzied.' He maintained it was being seen in isolation from the ground realities. Kashmir issue, he argued, is a result of unfulfilled aspirations not unaddressed grievances. Lone maintained elections can address the day-to-day grievances and not the sentiment and called separatism 'an innate sentiment'. For him, individuals or elections as a process were too small to pose a threat to the sentiment, which he has since ditched.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the Vijay Times, which has since been rebranded as Bangalore Mirror, in 2005 as its national-affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. Khatlani has reported from Iraq, Pakistan, and the Maldives and covered elections and natural disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam.'
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