Volume 3, No. 11, November 2002

In a highly politicized state like Kashmir, if 44% (taking the official claim to be true) turn up to vote then one does not have to stop to think that a majority of the people do not accept the democratic credentials of the Indian State. This has happened at a time when the Indian state has tried to the hilt to prove that India’s is a democratic set-up and it is capable of giving the Kashmiris a way to express their will through the ballot. No doubt, this capacity has expressed itself through 400 companies of paramilitary forces in addition to the already existing about six lakh troops of military and other kinds of forces to police the democratic exercise. This ‘great exercise’ was completed in four phases to thwart any sharaarat (mischief) by the Kashmiri freedom groups, or by those, India claims to be "operating from across the border." The present election has been one of the bloodiest in Kashmir’s memory in spite of the unprecedented arrangements and control over the ‘border’ and the freedom of movement of the people.

Leave aside the reports that the security forces have tried every means, including beatings at various places, to force the people to come out and vote; snatching the identity cards from the people and telling them to collect these from the polling booths after they cast their vote; and no doubt, by telling them "you know what we can do" to compel the voters through terror threats. Even if we accept that the people who voted, came out to vote, of their own volition, an exercise of vote without an agenda to be decided upon, is far from the verdict that people accept. Everybody knows how the elections are made to serve the interests of the rulers. People are called to exercise a right for a day, after that everything goes against their own interests. Especially when there is a horde of candidates to chose from and the winner hardly gets more than 20 percent of the total electorate. Taking the consent of 20% to rule over 80% is no democracy. We cannot dwell on the conflicting reports about the percentage of votes polled and the incidents of bogus (as the famous word Jaali Vote signifies) voting that has been reported from many places. Of the latter, the journalists have only mentioned: till 3 O’clock, 211 votes were polled when there were no voters to be seen.

However, there is something more to this sort of exercise than to the untrustworthy and treacherous calculations of mere numbers. Kashmir is not a number game but is a vital political question. And democracy is not merely the number of ballots polled for or against, rather, in a fundamental sense, it is the issue at stake that decides whether it was a democratic exercise or not.

The issue at stake, which in fact was not the real issue at all in the combined theater of the ballot and the bullet, is the will of the Kashmiri people or the independence of Kashmir i.e., whether the Kashmiris want to live in India or not. But the elections were not meant to decide this issue. This makes the whole of exercise not only obnoxious but also undesirable and not even democratic.

The Kashmiris expressed a vast range of opinions throughout this blaring and long affair. While most of the people who opted not to vote, recounted dissatisfaction with the state of corruption, unemployment, bad civic amenities, police torture, Indian occupation and a yearning for Azaadi, quite a few said they were afraid of both the security forces and the militants. The number of boycotting people ranged from 40% to 100% in various sectors of various constituencies. While those who voted expressed their own views about things, ranging from a need to change the corrupt National Conference regime, a hope that their problems would be looked into, local influence of the bourgeois political forces, a desire for peace, and of course, a fear of the security forces.

As Kashmir is a highly politicalized state, this again indicates that a majority of the people has no faith in the state or the central government. Either there is no hope or there is only a faint expectation that things might take a better turn. This makes the elections a matter of little significance and a non-event in the sense that a turn for the better never happens in our kind of democracy. The elections in Kashmir may help the Indian government in the way that it is bent upon deriving it through the worldwide publicity campaign. While on the ground level, there will be little help coming.

A cursory glance over all this indicates there were no specific issues for the people, though for the rulers it was a case to prove their ‘democratic credentials’ to the world. In fact, everything was in a blurred and an ambiguous state. One thing is clear that a majority of the people whether they voted or not, were dissatisfied from the whole state of affairs. A very large number of the boycotting electorate, and those who voted, said that they did not think that the elections would solve the Kashmir problem. They were right. Those were more correct who said that the question was of the independence of Kashmir and not whether the elections were fair or not. The latter, they argued, was just to push the real issue into obscurity and to focus at the less important aspect of the process, which has any credibility only when the real issue is being decided.

The boycott effectivity has been enormous where the Hurriyet has a strong base. This has happened when a good part of the top Hurriyet leadership was behind bars. Though this time the boycott has not been as overwhelming as in the last election yet the Hurriyet has regained much of its representative character that it appeared to lose in the past few years due to the complexity of the situation and interplay of so many forces it could not manage to control.

The Hindu rightist forces like the RSS and BJP have been routed. According to the results, a great part of their constituency in the Jammu region has been lost due to their vicious anti-Muslim propaganda and the RSS’s demand for the trifurcation of the state on communal lines. The BJP did not openly support the RSS demand for trifurcation, as also the Congress and the National Conference. It only harped on the ambiguous talk of devolution of powers. Due to its anti-Kashmiri role it has only succeeded in losing more support. Cornered by the widespread criticism for its role and handling of the situation in Gujarat it refrained from sending Modi to the state as a hate campaigner.

And for that matter, with the will of the people? The answer can be both yes and no. It may be a fake as well as a real one. It depends on what issues are at stake and how the people are driven and motivated to vote and a system that gives genuine democracy. But our rulers say it was real. The media has propagated this canard without being critical of the ground reality. No doubt, there is some difference between the form of government in a bourgeois dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. All the same, there is small difference as far as the policies go. Don’t we know that the communalist BJP is governing in the name of a democratic alliance when democracy has no relationship with communalism, rather they stand opposed to each other? And Modi too ascended the throne through votes. Thakre’s fascist Shiv Sena too participates in the elections. And what do the people get? State terror and all the undemocratic measures against them, not only threatening their livelihoods but also their lives. Will the people chose such elements if they know before hand what will happen afterwards with these men and women in power?

One can say that even then a majority of the people, when fanned with frenzied feelings, can choose them. Right. But the kind of dispensation that comes into being after such an election curtails and destroys the democratic and human rights of the people, turns a good majority into beasts or mere onlookers and works against the interests of humanity. This cannot be equated with democracy.

Voting, though it gives a person the right to cast it in the name of choosing a government, does not ensure the rights and well being of the people. Vote politics and a democratic environment and system stand in two different realms in the Indian context. The first, working against the second. The two things cannot be equated with, or be taken as supplementing, each other. If only casting of a vote is democracy then one has to find what a real democracy is.

A democracy that would not curtail the democratic rights of the people; would not turn one section of them against the other; would not allow one nation to be oppressed by the other; and would not permit the rise to power of the forces that are obscurantist, anti-people and fascist. When democracy is only on a paper and not real it is merely a sham, a way for allowing the concentration of power in a few hands at the top, which is no better than a government installed by a military putsch.

In short, if Hitler, Bush and Modi can rise to power through the vote system then Saddam, Musharraf, etc. cannot be considered worse. "Democratic" Britain has ruled and terrorised the whole world through brutal colonization. And there is nothing to say of Israel where every government is chosen through the ballot and it applies the worst kind of state terrorism in the world. In this sense, the elections in Kashmir cannot be termed democratic, and far less the expression of the will of the people. The will does not express itself when a vote ultimately becomes an instrument to be used by the powers that be to continue, or lead to, national oppression of a people, their division on communal lines and the massacre of a good part of them.

Is it not a fact that the people were not given the right to reject or choose from the options of privatization, disinvestments and globalisation but all this happened afterward when the governments took control of the reins? This has happened throughout the world. People are given the right to vote BUT not to decide on the policies. And the policies later taken up are anti-people without exception. Vote=Democratic Set-Up without giving them the right to decide over the policies and their fate is just an illusion as it can also push towards curtailment of rights of the people and naked fascism.

If the people of the whole of Kashmir are given a choice to decide on their fate through a ballot and decide to remain either with India of Pakistan or opt for a separate country then only will it be possible to know their will. Otherwise, the whole exercise becomes misleading and deceptive. Moreover, if the vote is cast on the basis of religion and caste, it loses all credibility of being democratic. And this was also a part of the overall environment in Kashmir and this environment negates the claims of a successful exercise in democracy. A worst situation exists in Gujarat where the elections will be more of an exercise in fanning communal hatred than a certificate for democracy.

Moreover, the elections held in Kashmir have been the bloodiest in Kashmir history. Hundreds of militant actions were executed during the whole period of elections, in which more than 160 security forces and more than 250 militants died. This means something. This happened in spite of massive security arrangements and division of elections in four long phases. This again vindicates that there is massive support for the militants without which they could not have carried out such large-scale armed activity. This proves that the talk of cross-border elements engaging in armed activity is just a lie and that there is a strong movement from within.

Even though the elections in Kashmir were far from democratic (and free and fair) yet they have brought out certain important facts. The successful Hurriyet campaign has this time encouraged many to openly air their views on elections. On the poll days general strikes were called. At some places, mass demonstrations were staged on the last Election Day and the people confronted the security forces in the eyes. The mass and active boycott at a number of places has only enhanced the prestige of the Hurriyet position that a solution to the Kashmir problem cannot be arrived at without negotiating with it. This has happened despite the fact that a few of the Hurriyet ranks had not taken up the boycott campaign actively and even some of them participated in the election through the backdoor or by leaving it. Yet, it too lost some of its esteem among the masses as a few of its leaders talked of abandoning the stand of independence and settling for internal autonomy (within the Indian State) that will only work to perpetuate the wrong and unlawful division of Kashmir.

The elections, in the last analysis, have proved a futile exercise on the part of the Indian leaders who want the mere holding of elections as a certificate of its democratic credibility. It is of less significance what the US or the EU validate this election as long as such an effort fails to satisfy the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

October 12, 2002

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