United Colors of Democracy

Your history gets in way of my memory
Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001)
Kashmiri-American poet and intellectual


It is election time in India. Can Kashmir be far behind? Since Kashmir is an integral [that misused, concubine smelling term] part of India, whether or not some people like it, polls are being held in the hills too. It is a completely democratic exercise, mind you. Only 700,000 troopers, equipped to the boot, watch over three million eligible voters. One soldier for every four Kashmiris. The highest civilian military ratio anywhere in the world. There shall be no coercion though. Rigging the ballot-boxes isn’t fashionable anymore. It is going to be one big democratic exercise.

Consequently all dissenting voices have been locked up and others imprisoned in their homes. They can till their sward gardens or watch cable TV while people queue up to cast their votes without any anti-poll noise pollution. That is mandatory, feels the Kashmir chief minister’s pontific dad. When he is not playing golf or talking in a theatrical, almost comical way, the old man likes to give free advices and address himself in third person singular: Farooq, Farooq.
If he had all his marbles, he would know that dissent, like debate, is part of a democratic polity. If you gag your opponents, and then sit back to enjoy free and fair elections on TV over endless sun-color cups of Kehva – it amounts to nothing.

There are blokes who think Elections are a solution to Kashmir.
Yet others enlighten that elections do no mean a solution but pave a surefire thoroughfare to progress. A large chunk however feel these elections only go on to legitimize India’s title in Kashmir. There is a little driblet of truth, perhaps, in all these stated positions and each party to the dispute is acutely aware of that. But herein lies the rub: there is a lot of double-dealing. You can’t give Lone II a free run with his band of rural volunteers in tow, gonging village after village, while old boy Geelani isn’t even allowed a short stroll to his brick-colored mosque.

One cannot have the cake and eat it too. While the mainstream media never runs out of ink, writing plaudits for democratic forces at work in the little valley, it carefully chooses to photo-shop the autocratic whip the same forces use to bully anyone who dares differ with them. Hence they go after those who ask people to resist from pressing the button on the voting pads. Ideally in any democracy it should be left to the people – after getting a fair chance to hear both sides – to decide whether to go dab their index finger or not. In Kashmir, alas, that is often not the case.

Is a frail, ailing old man or his ideas such a threat to the biggest democracy on the planet? Why should the pro-feedom camp not be allowed to run a counter campaign against elections? Why should the state claim to hold free, fair, fearless election while it imprisons, summarily locks up and puts out all dissenting notes? Why should the area going to polls on a particular day be sealed off, insulated and declared inaccessible to anyone from outside the district? Why the in-your-face hypocrisy? Why tom-tom democracy when you actually make a light-hearted mockery of it?

Blockading the political views of a group under the guise of security is such an absurdly tyrannical arguement. A society can't be free really unless it attunes itself to listen to dissent. Voltaire, the greatest of French thinkers once beautifully remarked, 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'

So are we headed for the big breaking news, ready to be broken to us on May 16: Sajad Lone wins Kupwara/Democracy triumphs.
Do we have the two-bit mike-brandishing journos gearing up to run barefoot after him like those kids in the old tale [was it Pied Piper!] for their two-bytes?

Quite possible. United Colors of Democracy.

Sameer

The curious case of Sajad Lone

Vote for the man who promises least. He'll be the least disappointing
~Bernard Baruch (1870-1965)
Politics is a competing enterprise. People will often act lickerish to get to the top. Power, the general thinking goes, brings great clout. History, after all, gets written by conquerors. We have, I fear, confused power with greatness, I recall of Stewart Udall. The truth be told, it is the quest for power that brings out the endless spiel, the big promises, the empty rhetoric. These days no one comes to politics for public good. Kashmir ain't any exception.

Sajad Lone’s decision to run for Indian parliament didn’t come as a bolt from the blue. In our neck of woods, it was perceived as, another seasonal political jolt which we have grown so used to. Didn’t we all stand to attention -- like dazzled cavemen -- to a tall, nationalistic, Hadith quoting Sheikh? And the lion of Kashmir roared and growled and a frightened people clapped. And the confused Maharaja panicked. The lion rechristened his party to make it sound more secular. An Indian prince charming, who always kept a rose in his coat's third button hole, took a liking for the lion and made palsy overtures. The lion didn’t realize that the prince was going to be his master and not a friend. And the day he realized it, the poor thing was thrown into a moth-eaten cage. Only to be tamed forever. Thence he would only purr like a domesticated cat. His progeny continue to be relevant to Kashmir.

Sajad, in that respect, comes from a lesser tribe. He isn’t exactly a lion. His dad was a popular mainstream politician turned separatist leader. As a ninth standard student in Sopore high school Lone Sr was arrested in connection with the Zachaldara bomb blast case. He became a lawyer and later a cabinet minister twice [under Sadiq and BGM]. He joined the separatist bandwagon in the late 80s and was shot dead in 2002. Sajad is the youngest of the Lone sons, the eldest being a permanent fixture in the Mirwaiz court.

Sajad went for higher studies to London. At the time of his father’s death, he accused both India and Pakistan for Lone’s murder. Sajad is married to Asma, the daughter of Amanullah Khan, boss of the separatist Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) the group credited with starting armed insurgency in Kashmir.

Sajad, a blunt bloke never got along well with the separatist leadership in Kashmir, who harbored doubts about his credibility. To his credit Lone II is the only leader to have come out with a comprehensive document ‘Achievable Nationhood’ that discusses various dynamics of the Kashmir issue. He perhaps understood, before anyone else in Kashmir, that the proverbial tide is turning and the last assembly election was the final clincher. Being part of the elite crew helps and Lone II's connections in Delhi proved helpful.

Sajad’s decision to run for Elections-2009 is a huge gamble which he must have thought over and over in his head. He might as well make it to India’s House of Commons and there will be people back home who wouldn’t like the sight of an erstwhile separatist sharing pews with right wing senators, the likes of whom pushed around and humiliated his late dad in Jammu long years back. Political expediency makes you forget things quickly. The problem is that you may like to give voice to your grievances at the altar of democracy but since democracy is all about numbers -- you are bound to be gradually piffled away. The bravado gets lost in the din.

In hindsight fighting for your rights is oft times toilsome. You could very well smirk at the relative impatience of Sajad’s arguments. Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary [made into a fashion icon by the MTV gen these days] was cut up in Bolivian jungles for daring to challenge the powers that be. Freedom is never ASAP. The mainstream Indian media is showering praise on Sajad not for nothing. The poster-boy of separatist camp has switched sides. Geelani and his old ilk can’t be trusted. Sajad can be!

Kashmir has had a trust deficit with India. Locals are more likely to tell you that they trusted India when the Indian troops landed in Srinagar for the first time in October 1947 [Kashmir was a princely state before Oct 47] but the much-promised plebiscite was never held. All elections were historically rigged. One gentleman who lost to an infamous rigged election result from Srinagar’s Habba-kadal constituency in 1987 went on to become the boss of United Jehad Council [an amalgamation of major militant outfits in Kashmir] and calls himself by his code-name Syed Sala-din. His polling agents, Yasin Malik, Javed Mir and Hamid Sheikh all became top militant commanders. While Sheikh was killed, Mir is in Hurriyet, while Yasin Malik, is a major separatist leader.

I’ve no doubt that Sajad is a bright fellow and sounds sincere, especially in the apologia that he wrote for the media the day he officially declared his candidature. He talks about delusions of grandeur, peddling of failed methods or escapism, and avoiding tendencies towards defeatism – nice psychology talk. It remains to be seen how he delivers on the floor of the house. He is going to take oath, if he ever gets elected with his hand on the constitution of India ~ a document that calls Kashmir an integral part of India.

The psychologist knows what the heart wants.

Sameer

Azadi from Litter

The biggest cock and bull story doing rounds in New Delhi is that the recently held elections in Kashmir are a tacit endorsement of Indian dominion in the valley. There is no truth to it because it is an utterly mistaken belief and diametrically opposed to reality. Looks like the spin doctors are back to work, doing what they always do: Confuse. Given that public memory is short-term, it doesn’t help to fuddle things. I jotted about this phenomenon in one of my preceding posts. A transcription follows.

The election verdict is majorly about three things. One: Kashmiri people want a basic decent life -- good roads, good education, better jobs and they know an elected, political government is best equipped to do that. No governor speaks Kashmiri and Kashmiri's have trouble explaining themselves in Hindi. Two: People in the countryside were always less likely to take the separatist call for a complete boycott seriously. [2008 is not 1990’s. Dissent, we know, has its shelf life].
The boycott call was summarily ignored, at least in rural Kashmir. And lastly: The Azadi sentiment lives on, and is not expected to die anytime soon.

In reality Kashmir is too bruised to be soothed by a winter election, held under the heels of half a million troopers – the highest civilian-military ratio anywhere in the world. You lock up the entire separatist bandwagon, brook no dissent and stamp out any protesting voices. And then have the gall to call it a democratic exercise. That is unabridged nonsense.

While the mainstream camp has been mostly inept, the separatists continue to live in relative comfort. The top chaps belong to a class – the like of us included – whom Marx would have easily called bourgeoisie. The chief protagonists -- Mirwaiz Farooq is loaded and happily married to an American [He occasionally slips away to the US for holidays minus the Kara Kul]. Syed Ali Geelani’s son safely practices medicine far from the madding crowds and the Lone brothers drive around in luxury SUV’s. Sajjad went to a prestigious college in UK and is married to Asma, daughter of JKLF founder Amanuallah Khan]. The list is long and rich.

In hindsight the boycott call was perhaps pushing the envelope a little too far. I’m pro-choice. The separatists may not be. Buoyed by the million-strong marches in the August of 2008, they issued blacklists. At a much fundamental level the people who formed part of those long marches perhaps understood well enough that Freedom being freedom, no one is going to come to their rescue. There are bills to be paid, children to be sent to school, roads to be repaired, garbage to be cleaned. You also need Azadi from the stench emanating from litter outside your home.

There are real issues that an average Kashmiri has to deal with. With the first snow, the electricity lines snap. The roads continue to be antiquated, pre-1947. Traffic is plain crazy. Clean water is a priority. Healthcare is a sham. Employment stays stalled. Kashmiri politicians, owing their allegiance to India, positioned themselves on exactly these issues and managed to garner votes. Ergo this is a vote for development. Period.

The vote must not be mistaken for an embrace. Kashmir has multiple wounds dark and deep. They can rip open at the shortest notice. And let’s not fool ourselves. The UN position is clear on Kashmir. Elections in the state of J&K – previous as well as present – and all subsequent decisions of the elected government are going to have NO bearing on the final status of Kashmir.

Where is the ambiguity?

Let’s hope Omar and his team luck. He has got some shady guys on board but that is the nature of coalition politics in this part of the world. Barring his stint with the rightwing BJP – which he has since atoned for -- he has a clean slate to write a new chapter for Kashmir.

Sameer