“Caught between a cycle of jails, raids and intimidations, Kashmiris in the last five years have been silenced apart from being humiliated. Suppressed and silenced, their vote was a medium of expression that broke this five-year-long silence. Primarily, their act of voting is a defiance against their forced silence.”
Anuradha Bhasin
In the last three decades, the highlight of polling in Srinagar has been empty booths, some with no votes polled, and low-key campaigning enthusiasm. Srinagar-Pulwama parliamentary constituency recorded almost 38 percent polling, up from 14.2 percent in 2019, and the highest since 1998. Though Baramulla and Anantnag constituencies have yet to vote, high voter turnout in Kashmir does not come as a surprise.
It is a natural product of what the Modi-led BJP government has done to the erstwhile state, and particularly the Kashmir region in the last five years. The BJP would like to frame the improved voter turn-out as the ‘fruits of development and progress’ after the abrogation of Article 370. The liberal apologists would celebrate it as peoples’ restoration of faith in democratic institutions. The locals can tell them how wrong they both are, only that they can’t.
For people, who have been rendered invisible and voiceless under acute suppression and panopticon surveillance, free speech is a luxury they can ill afford for it comes with the assurance of reprisals. In the absence of that voice, it is difficult to assess the changing trend with exact precision. Yet, it is not difficult to recognise the core elements.
To understand Srinagar’s transition from near total boycott to voluntary voting, one needs to understand what those who voted have endured in the last five years. In 2019, Jammu and Kashmir did not only lose its autonomy under Article 370. It was also dismantled and dismembered into two disenfranchised Union Territories. Loss of representation and scuttling of political space by jailing all political leaders, pro-India and anti-India alike, was further compounded by the acute exacerbation of repressive tactics in a highly militarised Kashmir. Caught between a cycle of jails, raids, and intimidations, Kashmiris in the last five years have been silenced apart from being humiliated.
Suppressed and silenced, their vote was a medium of expression that broke this five-year-long silence. Primarily, their act of voting is a defiance against their forced silence. Additionally, it is a vote to break the spell of disenfranchisement by choosing representatives, who can bring meaningful development, and jobs and address their day-to-day grievances.
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can go on and on trumpeting a list of development projects and investments. On the ground, none of these advertised projects, have benefited the people. On the converse, ground realities reveal a dismal tale. Businesses have suffered losses, unemployment is rampant, roads, bridges, and drainage system are in shambles, power tariff is sky-rocketing and electric supply faces more interruptions. People are reeling under acute price rise, soaring unemployment, and diminishing resources and basic facilities.
They feel continuously punished politically and economically. In the national narrative that the Hindu Rightwing and its cronies peddle, they are vilified and humiliated.
If the higher voter turn-out in Srinagar can be attributed to the improvement in situation and development on the ground, pray why should the same logic not apply to Jammu region, where polling in the two constituencies of Jammu-Samba and Udhampur-Doda dropped from 80% and 79% in 2019 to 72% and 68% respectively? Jammu’s Hindu majority areas in the last decade have overwhelmingly voted for the BJP and the party has expanded both horizontally and vertically. Yet, the increasing public disappointment post-2019 disabled BJP’s local party unit from organizing robust election campaigns even in their strongholds. They left the job of garnering votes to star campaigners like Modi, Shah, and Rajnath Singh.
In light of these facts, the only explicable reason for the voter turnout patterns in Kashmir and Jammu, though both moving in different directions, is the increasing disenchantment, disappointment, and anger. The elections provided an opportunity to articulate these emotions through the ballot. In Jammu, the drop in voter turnout is not very significant. In Kashmir, it is. But it is also in Kashmir that the government’s actions have been more suffocating and pervasive.
For the regional political parties, which have been largely diminished under repressive and intimidatory tactics since 2019, the elections were an opportunity to reclaim their lost space. For the common masses, it was an opportunity to assert their existence.
The high voter turnout carries a promising message. Yet it could be dark and foreboding. It suggests there is still space for engagement and dialogue with Kashmiris. Given a crack of an opportunity, Kashmiris have used it to speak democratically. The present scale of suppression is unsustainable. What happens when it can no longer be sustained? Whenever Kashmiris find the space and opportunity, the articulation of pent-up anger would be louder and would come in multiple ways, some unimaginably dangerous.
The message the Kashmiris have delivered through the act of voting must not be misunderstood or lost. It needs to be heeded and reciprocated with immediacy, provided the reach-out is meaningful and sincere, not cosmetic.
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