Election Sans a Boycott Call

As the election campaign for the parliamentary polls heats up in Jammu and Kashmir, one can’t help but notice the absence of the call for boycott of the exercise from any quarters. And while this has happened for the first time since the beginning of the separatist struggle in 1989, it doesn’t guarantee the absence of an election boycott this time around. Alternatively, perhaps the people may turn out in overwhelming numbers to vote. And in both cases, the outcome of the polls will be profoundly impacted. 

Since the early nineties when separatists began championing boycott of the elections, the trend has experienced diminishing returns: It is now only in urban areas where a significant section of population stick to boycotting the exercise, while in countryside the people generally go out and vote. 

Now, the question arises whether people in cities and towns will vote in large numbers in the absence of a public boycott call. Many of them may choose to still boycott. And a range of emotions or absence of them may lead them to act in this way.  For example, a substantial section of people still do believe that casting a vote is a betrayal of Kashmir cause, irrespective of the independent merit of this thinking. 

Overall, the people may also not vote as they have no previous experience of doing so. Over the past more than three decades, generations of people have grown up boycotting elections in the Valley. This has entrenched a culture of election boycott that would be hard to shrug off, more so in urban areas.  The people wouldn’t vote because the exercise remains deeply stigmatized. Or they wouldn’t vote simply because they haven’t. 

What would, however, dictate outcomes in the ongoing exercise is the percentage of people who wouldn’t vote. There is a dormant separatist constituency which, if it chooses to vote, would certainly give a distinct advantage to a candidate with a strident pro-Kashmir stance. And should this constituency boycott, then everything is up in the air. The result could become distorted and even an unpopular candidate could win. There are numerous such examples over the past three decades when candidates with little to no political standing won elections by margins of a few hundred or a few votes and went on to occupy top positions in the government. The precedent can very well repeat, if the anticipated voluntary boycott does come to pass. 

So, in hindsight, one can ask, if boycotting the elections was the right strategy? The tangled question cannot be answered in yes or no. The question isn’t new; it’s been discussed before, even within separatist ranks. In fact, over the past decade and a half, the moderate separatists had chosen to distance themselves from the electoral exercise rather than issue a call for boycott. Their reasoning was simple: exhorting boycott of elections made them a party to the democratic exercise and, in the event of people voting in large numbers – as happened often – they would logically be deemed to have no public support for their brand of politics.

However, the hardliners never bought into this argument. They argued that they needed to publicly reject an exercise that they opposed and saw as undermining their political goal. The debate has never been resolved in favour of either party. Nor is it likely to be settled in the near future. Despite the invisibility of separatist politics following the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, its legacy continues to resonate in the present. And election boycott is one such issue. But it would be interesting to see how Srinagar and the towns in the South and North Kashmir would vote. More so, Srinagar city which has consistently boycotted polls since 1987 when the allegedly rigged Assembly polls were held. The city has been in a limbo ever since. Though there has been an occasional furtive urge to re-assert its electoral power, Srinagar is still a long way off from political participation. Will this election change this? It remains to be seen. 

True, the Valley has witnessed an unprecedented change in the past five years. Politicians are now able to campaign deep into the interiors of Srinagar, itself a huge change from the past. But the city remains far from active participation in politics.   Ditto for other major towns in south, north and central Kashmir. This may take a long time to become a reality. Conversely, things could very well go back to square one.  The debate about boycott and participation in polls might rear its head again. Kashmir may have changed beyond recognition in recent years, but it is also true that much of this change is not organic but forced and could easily unravel. 

• Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer 

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