Election Boycott Theory

Election to the south Kashmir’s Anantnag Assembly segment, left vacant due to the demise of Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, is due to be held on 19 June 2016. It is a very significant election because the sitting Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, would have to contest from there.

The Constitution of the State, Section 37(2), requires her to become member of either House of State Legislature within six months of her taking office. If she loses the election she would be disqualified from holding office beyond a certain date and consequently the PDP-BJP coalition would be in disarray.

However, two factors may ensure her victory. One, she will now indulge in what is described as “soft-separatism” to befool people. She will now talk of revocation of AFSPA; implementation of Self-Rule Scheme; return of power projects; zero tolerance against human rights violations by armed force. And, above all, she will vehemently oppose the establishment of exclusive townships for migrant Kashmiri Pandits; and for ex-servicemen of Indian Army. Secondly, she will benefit from election boycott call (to be) issued by “separatists”.

The “separatist” logic against election participation is that voting, according to them, signifies rejection of the idea of self-determination and endorsement of Kashmir’s accession to India. This is absurd. Kashmir is an international dispute, election or no election. The “separatists” harp upon UN resolutions on Kashmir. Yet they conveniently forget the resolutions of March 30, 1951 and January 24, 1957 which respectively state that “any action that Assembly might take to determine the future shape and affiliation of the entire State or any part thereof would not constitute a disposition of the State”; and that “the final disposition of the State would be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the UN.”

Even so, if the “separatist” logic against election participation be accepted as genuine, then the participation of the people in the election process should be read as a call to the “separatists” to shut shop.

But instead of renouncing politics they declare Kashmir to be disputed territory after every election.

Now, if some pro-self-determination elements proceed to flout the “separatist” call for election boycott and participate in elections to take Kashmir Dispute to the Assembly floor, they would run the risk of being labeled as “traitors”. Plus there are apprehensions that New Delhi may deal with such people as they dealt with the supporters and candidates of Muslim United Front (MUF) in 1987.

Should New Delhi administration repeat the blunder of 1987, they would be rubbishing their own gains of the last 26 years in Kashmir; Kashmir would be back to square one; and the whole world would condemn India as a fake democracy. The elephantine Indian State may not care about international condemnation, yet India would be the looser in this great game because repeating 1987 will consume their energy and attention. They would be left with no time or will to cook nasty schemes like the Pandit Enclave and the Sainik Colony which Kashmiris read as attempts on part of India and their local minions to change Kashmir’s demography by settling non-State Subjects along with State Subjects in these settlements and then justifying permanent deployment of troops in the name of security of these settlements.

On the contrary, “separatists” shying away from elections will give India’s darlings, the “mainstreamers”, a walk over to the corridors of power; and will provide them ample time and energy to hatch imperial conspiracies on Kashmir.

“Separatists” should remember how India proved itself untrustworthy in 1960s when on the one hand they talked of resolving Kashmir Dispute with Pakistan and even sent Sheikh Abdullah to talk to President Ayub Khan of Pakistan, and on the other, eroded, with the “concurrence” of the State Legislative Assembly, the autonomy of Kashmir.

At that time the Plebiscite Front movement was at its peak. Even then the Front could not stop the Indian juggernaut from overrunning Kashmir Constitution because they (the Front-men) were absent from the Assembly from where New Delhi extracted “concurrence”.

Plebiscite Front patron, Sheikh Abdullah, enjoyed a political stature to which the present day resistance politicians of Kashmir stand no comparison. If Sheikh Abdullah could not stop constitutional erosion in 1964, then Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umer, Syed Ali Shah Geelani also cannot stop India from executing nasty schemes on Kashmir unless pro-self-determination people throng the Assembly and withhold “concurrence”.

Struggle weariness may in future force them to accept a fate that Front-men accepted in 1975. Therefore, it is high time that the “separatist” camp desists from issuing election boycott calls once for all, contest elections and fill the Assembly. If that is not done now, it would be difficult to do so after the demise of the aged leader, Syed Ali Geelani, the man who is the most ardent proponent of boycott philosophy, because after his death, his blind followers, whose numbers have been swelling since 2004, will say that “these traitors” had all along been waiting for his death so as to participate in the elections to sell out Kashmir.