Volume 3, No. 9, September 2002

It is a tale of two states. In one the killings are carried out by the security forces, in the other the security forces look the other way when killings are carried on. In one, the elections are manipulated beyond extremes to carry on the agenda of national oppression, in the other not much manipulation is required to implement the agenda of saffron oppression. In one governor’s rule is needed to carry on the democratic exercise, in the other democracy takes its own course and no outside interference is needed. At both places the ballot will decide on expected lines. Whether you wish it or not the ballot carries the wish of the rulers or their class. In reality, the wish, the real wish of the people, is never carried through it. Were it so, the life of the people would not have been the way it is.

Democracy of the oppressors and political gangsters works on as ever, without an end. The sufferings only tend to multiply after every grand exercise of the ballot box. Though the whole country witnesses it time and again, yet there are states that bear its extremes. Foremost among them is the State of Jammu & Kashmir; followed by the north eastern ones. As for Gujarat, it is the re-emergence of a phenomenon, in its full force, that had gripped the country at the time of partition and has been active in a limited way in various states throughout the previous five and a half decades, with increased intensity with the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Nevertheless, this time it has been carried through the ballot box-arranged government and no one can say that it was due to the conspiracy of the British. The loyal successors of the imperialists have carried on the tradition successfully. Those who have gone through the partition days, or have an intense memory of those days, know what it was. When Gujarat happened they went through those horrors once again. Now, a new election has been declared there, to show that those who presided over the carnage have acted correctly and legitimately.

Democracy works in such a way that it does not stop a criminal from seeking the so-called mandate, let alone punish him. In most cases, they get re-elected and again become the ‘representatives’ of the people. Criminalisation of the Indian political system is an undeniable thing. If Modi’s party is not returned this time, it might come the next. This system does not stop him, his cohorts, his mentors and his colleagues. Justice department fails to book and punish them. The killers ride around in chariots raising V-signs. The ballot does them no harm. On the contrary, this so-called democracy enables them to push themselves over the heads of the people. Remember the elections to the panchayats held after the Gujarat carnage? The democratic show goes on, undisturbed, and without disturbing the killers in the least.

And, don’t forget that Modi is there with Advani and Vajpayee backing him to the hilt. Also, keep in mind the Goa conclave where murderers were not only exonerated but even patted on the back. Democracy did not come to the rescue of the victims. Now the Home Minister Advani is more than exerting himself to defend Modi and the election process in the state. Modi is not alone in ordering the elections in the state. The decision has been made by the top brass in the BJP to capitalize on the gains that they think have come through the Gujarat inferno. The debate that whether there should be governor’s rule in the State has little significance. Governor’s rule does not stop Modi and his cohorts and mentors from again deceiving the people. When the vast minority population in the state is still shocked and wants bread, shelter, work and security, democracy is offering them the option of casting the ballot. The elections do not have any link with the problems of the people. These are for the rulers to take turns in governance. The democratic show must go on whether fire engulfs the people or poverty, hunger, starvation and insecurity haunts them in all ghastliness.

In the other state, the State of J&K, the rulers have long been accused of nakedly interfering with the "democratic process." There have been no denials to such allegations by the rulers even. But this time they are hell bent to prove that "the game" will be free and fair; that the manipulation that had given rise to the insurgency will not be around this time and those who have taken up arms should either participate in this great act of amelioration or welcome it. To prove their good wishes they have considered pushing away the "tainted" Farookh Abdullah and imposing governor’s rule so that the exercise is carried out without the interference of the state machinery. For this they are requisitioning the services of lakhs of the "un-tainted" security forces to thwart any misconduct by some hundreds of state officials and corrupt politicians of the National Conference, and to instill ‘confidence’ in the people who have suffered at the hands of the "armed elements." Thus, entire reality is being turned upside down. They have launched a vehement propaganda campaign to paint the security forces as innocents and that the only culprits are the state government and its previous collaborators, the Congress party, who had never wanted a fair settlement of the issue. Now the Indian armed thugs are there to behave as friends and protect the life and property from the "inimical forces."

And, not to say of the "free exercise of the will" when an occupation army is not only present but also conducting the whole affair. With the baton over his head, the child is being asked to respect the teacher on his free will! The exercise of the free will requires, first and fore most, the withdrawal of the instrument of terror, the occupation army. Only then a people can be expected to come out on their own. But in Kashmir they have decided to add 350 more companies in addition to the already existing 6 lakh armed personnel in the State that has trampled over them for decades. How fair and how free? This is just injustice compounded. Not to say of the managers of the whole affair, the rulers, who a moment ago, have emerged from the tandav in Gujarat where they pushed the people into fire, and patted and congratulated each other. Giving Hitler the moral authority to supervise over the security of the Jews! Nothing more disgraceful and fraudulent can be there. With the blood of more than sixty thousand people on their hands the Indian rulers have lost the right to conduct any free and fair election in Kashmir. Only some neutral and disinterested agency can do that, that has no axe to grind for itself.

But the Indian rulers reject any such arrangement and detest the "interference" of others in its internal matters. It does not matter if they are happy to receive these "others" almost daily; call them almost daily; carry their dictates in all important matters that determine the life of the entire people of the country; invite every interference on the economy; open up the country’s defence installations for their use; kowtow before them in international fora; make and amend laws, economic, labour, penal and all sorts, at their behest; never lose an opportunity to please them when it comes to betraying the interests of the people in whose name they rule; so on and on. Yet, they don’t like it when it comes to Kashmir or Gujarat. Is it really? For years they have been cringing before them to declare the Kashmir freedom fighters as terrorists, for years they have been urging them to declare Pakistan a terrorist state, for years they have been seeking their advice to how to control insurgency, for years they have been asking for secret information about various organisations active in Kashmir, yet they brook no interference in the "internal matters" of India! It all looks strange and detestable. Does it not?

When the US imperialist boss Powel stated that India should allow foreign observers in the coming Kashmir elections, as the Kashmir question has become an international one, the latter unashamedly declared that Kashmir is an internal matter. There it talks with the Pakistani authorities every few years, carries on secret channel diplomacy with it whenever an opportunity arises, declares to take back Pakistan occupied Kashmir and at the same time demands that the LoC be recognised as an international border, yet Kashmir remains its "internal matter"! Indian rulers have learned well how to call white as black and black as white. They excel in it. Now the US dictates almost all policy decisions on Kashmir, right from the question of when to go to war and when to hold back. It carries all Indian decisions to the Pakistani rulers and extracts promises from them "to not disturb the election process in Kashmir." It has tried, and pressurised, to make the Pakistani authorities yield to Indian demands. Diplomats and State leaders from Britain, the EU, Russia, China, Germany have made a beeline to India and Pakistan over the military build-up on the border, yet the Indian rulers state that Kashmir is an internal matter of India and not an international one. Nobody believes it, they even laugh over such a naive assertion. Whatever may be their viewpoint about the Kashmir question one thing is clear to all that Kashmir is not India’s internal affair.

But let us see what the Indian rulers and various political bourgeois opportunist parties are doing for the people of Kashmir in this edition of the farcical democratic elections?

The BJP, which is itself a Hindu fascist organisation, is promising the Kashmiri people a democratic solution through the "most free and fair democratic elections ever held in the country." It is a strange combination, of fascism and democracy. But it happens. Hitler too ascended to power through bourgeois democratic elections and then curtailed every bit of democracy and went to war against every nation to impose his power over the world. The BJP showed its Hitlerite face before the world in Gujarat where it is again seeking a ‘mandate of the people’ through elections. In Kashmir it has been a past master to fan communalism and communalist politics. Its previous political incarnation, the Jan Sangh, was the first to vitiate the social environment in Kashmir through communal carnages. Now it is pressurizing, appeasing and trying to buy off the activists of various pro-independence parties to participate in the elections while it has incarcerated the leaders of these organisations under the most undemocratic of the Indian laws, POTA. It is an irony of democracy where the Hurriyat leaders are being pressurized to partake in the farce as the condition for their release. In other words the truth is out; they have been arrested, not for possessing foreign currency as made out in the case, but for their "free will" to not participate in the elections. Having themselves proved the falseness of their case, they must all be released unconditionally.

The RSS, the mother of Hindu communalism and Hindu communalist organisations has called for the trifurcation of the state on communal lines. If it does not field its own candidates in the elections the majority of the BJP candidates will be happy to take up its cause.

The VHP has openly called on the Muslims to leave Jammu [or face another Gujarat]. The social atmosphere is already being charged communally right before the elections.

The Congress that has always carried on conspiracies against the Kashmiri people and has always manipulated the elections in Kashmir is now calling for fair elections. Its leaders are castigating the National Conference for playing into the hands of the communalist BJP without conceding now that it has always been the Congress that hobnobbed with the National Conference and put it into power time and again, despite the opposition of the vast majority of the people.

And the National Conference that has long involved itself in conspiracies against the people by collaborating with the Indian rulers is again trying to hoodwink the people by raising the demand of autonomy, which is nothing but legitimizes the accession to India. It offers autonomy as an alternative to independence, but has never tried seriously to secure it while it has been in power, except at those times when governor’s rule was imposed. It has always used the autonomy demand as a ploy at the time of elections or crises as a hoax to win peoples’ sympathy and votes.

All the parties who are trying their "luck" at the elections have one common propaganda focus: that the people are tired of violence and so desire elections, but they do not specify as to what the real causes behind the violence are. Moreover, they never differentiate between reactionary state violence and the violence that is carried out for a just cause when all other channels get blocked.

As for the US imperialists who are energetically mediating in the Kashmir conflict, the more thoroughly understood about them the better. They have rejected plebiscite, scorned the demand of self-determination, condemned all the freedom fighters as terrorists, branded the freedom struggle as "cross-border terrorism," have tried to pass the present elections in Kashmir as "an expression of the will of the people," exerted the utmost to make these elections appear most free and fair, and advocated that thousands of Kashmiri prisoners who are not ready to participate in elections should be kept behind bars. The US rulers too are elected through universal suffrage and yet they are the biggest enemies of the people of the world.

The so-called elections and the expression of the will of the people through them, is not the answer to the real problems. The Kashmir problem too will not benefit from it in any way. Had such been the case the Indian masses would not have carried mountains of problems and wretched living conditions for the last fifty years. For the people of Kashmir and the Northeast this is even truer. Elections are an eternal trap that destroys the movements of the people for justice, freedom, democracy and revolution. It is trap for the Kashmir Freedom Movement that seeks liberation from the Indian yoke. It is an ambush, which is more deadly than any other known in the world. It seeks to disarm the guerrillas and entice them to enter into the wicked and poisonous (main) stream that drowns whatever is positive and good. It is a trap for the people of Gujarat who seek justice and want to send to the guillotine those who destroyed their lives and livelihoods. The rulers want the people to say: let bygones be bygone. This is sheer deception and nothing else. Why forget the crimes of the past and let the rulers begin their game anew to repeat the same old story?

For we the people in India, who cherish freedom and a dignified life, and for the people of Kashmir, the question of Kashmir in essence is the question of freedom from occupation by the foreign forces. A question that seeks its answer in the establishment of a free, democratic, secular and independent Kashmir. We emphatically state that the Indian occupation forces that have carried out massacres, mayhem and destruction on the beautiful land of Kashmir must stop all their criminal activities immediately and vacate it in no time. The farce of democracy, which is playing with the lives of millions in Kashmir and within India, must come to an end. Real democracy demands that the people of various nationalities be allowed to decide their own destiny. The reactionary Indian rulers have no right to dictate things to the freedom-loving people of Kashmir. It is time that the Indian reactionaries get out of Kashmir peacefully; otherwise they deserve to be kicked out. We, the people of India, refuse to be identified with the unlawful and immoral actions of our rulers in Kashmir and condemn all their logic, subterfuges, and deceptions that seek to continue the illegal and unjustified occupation.

August 1, 2002

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