POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Democracy Wins in Kashmir Elections

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 17 2002 (IPS) - Whatever the final outcome of the ongoing state assembly elections in Indian Kashmir, the ownership of which is hotly contested by neighbouring Pakistan, the first phase of polling Monday has shown up its real winner — democracy.

Despite threats from Pakistan-based ‘jihadist’ groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of the Pure) and a boycott call by the secessionist All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an umbrella organisation of some 24 political groups, an average 44 percent of 1.5 million total voters had cast their ballots in Monday’s crucial first phase.

The APHC’s influence was apparent in the general strike it enforced in the Kashmir valley and in the three-percent voter showing in its stronghold of Sopore.

But in places like Uri and Gurez, the voter turnout was as high as 60 percent –showing an enthusiasm in the electoral process rare even in other parts of India.

“The elections are meant to restore the democratic spirit and are not an end in itself,” said G Parthasarathy, India’s former envoy in Pakistan and now an independent analyst and commentator.

The credibility of the elections has been contested by Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who declared on Aug. 14 that they are “farcical” and “yet another effort to give a mask to India’s illegal occupation of the state”.

India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee responded by saying that his country did not need to learn lessons in democracy from a military dictator and accused Pakistan of trying to grab Kashmir by infiltrating ‘jihadists’ into the state after having failed to achieve its aim of getting it through military means.

India’s powerful Election Commission did its bit by throwing open the elections in its Jammu and Kashmir state to scrutiny by foreign diplomats and by international media, which, on the whole, have given the first phase a clean chit.

In Washington, a U.S. official was quoted as saying: “The elections were free, there were only one or two incidents but by and large there was no violence, participation was good The elections were conducted in a good manner and there are no reports of intimidation.”

With the elections going smoother than expected, the dispute over the elections spilled over into the media. Pakistan’s state-controlled, Pakistan TV (PTV) claims that voters in Indian-controlled Kashmir were dragged out of their homes by the army and forced to vote.

In Monday’s prime time bulletin, a PTV anchor said that “people were dragged out by Indian army in Lolab constituency and forced to vote”. In fact, elections to the Lolab constituency were countermanded after the assassination of state law minister Mushtaq Ahmed Lone last week by the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

PTV also said that several officials were killed when militants ambushed polling stations in Kupwara, Baramulla and Rajouri districts, but these border districts were reported in India as having had an average 40 percent polling.

Kupwara saw a fierce contest between “proxy candidates” set up by the People’s Conference of Abdul Ghani Lone, who was assassinated in May by ‘jihadists’, and candidates of the ruling National Conference.

Lone was killed after he expressed support for the elections and his son Sajjad Lone, who now leads the People’s Conference, was nearly expelled from the APHC for refusing to comply with the boycott. He later settled for setting up ‘independent’ proxy candidates.

The Indian government has said that it would only deal with “genuine representatives” of the Kashmiris that emerge through the current electoral process.

New Delhi’s determination to see the elections through and stamp out any attempt to disrupt them was evident in the army’s killing of 17 ‘jihadists’ attempting to cross over from Pakistan-administered to Indian-administered Kashmir since Sunday night, and the display of their bodies and weapons over television channels.

Some 700,000 troops are positioned along the Line of Control, which separates Indian Kashmir from its Pakistan-administered portion, and will remain there at least until the elections are over.

Indian troops have been deployed there since December in response to an attack on Indian Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan. Subsequently, the two nuclear-armed countries had to be restrained from going to war by intense international diplomacy led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

During a visit here in July, Powell said that credible elections in Kashmir would be a step towards peace and the resumption of diplomatic dialogue between the South Asian neighbours, which broke down in 1999 after they engaged in extreme hostilities short of a declared war on the Line of Control at Kargil.

Meantime, most observers are laying their bets on the National Conference returning to power and settling for autonomy within the Indian state. This has the backing of important leaders within the APHC, such as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the hereditary spiritual leader of Kashmiri Muslims who is currently in the United States.

Farooq had in fact joined hands with the slain Lone to in saying that post-Sep. 11, the ‘jihadist’ approach to a solution in Kashmir was no longer viable.

“I will go for any solution that restores the dignity of the Kashmiri people,” said Farooq, whose father was killed by militants in 1990 when a movement for independence turned violent and soon became complicated by the arrival of militants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and from Islamic countries as far away as Sudan and Chechnya.

Farooq has blamed the advent of militancy in Kashmir on the 1989 elections in the state, which by all accounts was rigged. “The people had no hope left and responded with militancy,” he said.

Vajpayee has admitted that mistakes have been made in Kashmir. On Aug. 15, India’s Independence Day, he pledged that the current elections would be an opportunity to “heal the wounds of the past and build a prosperous future”.

Vajpayee and then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had tried to find a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue through the Lahore Declaration of February 1999. But the agreement was opposed by Pakistan’s army led by Musharraf, who in October that year took over in a bloodless coup.