PULWAMA, India — Men and women wrapped in shawls and stood in separate lines in this part of the Himalayas early Wednesday morning, many preparing to do something they’d never done before: vote.
Residents across Indian-controlled Kashmir are voting in the first state elections in a decade, a move that rights activists say has been followed by a dramatic crackdown on people’s freedoms since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government stripped the region of statehood in 2019.
Among those waiting in line to vote was Shahid, a 33-year-old businessman who asked NPR not to give his last name because he feared authorities would retaliate if he spoke freely. He nodded to the police, border guards and soldiers who had gathered around the polling station. Since Kashmir’s statehood was broken up, “we’ve been in an open prison. We can’t even protest for power outages or water supply,” Shahid said.
Shahid said he used to ignore elections, like many in Kashmir who boycotted them in protest against Indian rule, but now he votes “so that someone will fight for us”.
It’s a fight for the mundane – jobs and services – and the political: to restore Kashmir’s statehood, though analysts say it’s unlikely it will regain partial autonomy. Past autonomy is a recognition of Kashmir’s unique status. Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state and part of territory claimed by both India and Pakistan. Kashmir has been contested by three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours, each of which administers parts.
Kashmir’s special autonomy in India has been largely symbolic, but analysts say its very existence has irritated Hindu nationalists, who saw it as an appeasement of India’s Muslim minority. It was echoed at rallies by powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, who rallied supporters in this year’s federal election, yelling at crowds: “Tell us: Is Kashmir ours or not?”
Presumably to prevent violence, phone and internet connections have been cut, curfews imposed, and journalists and politicians have been detained, as was the case when Kashmir’s statehood was stripped in 2019. Residents said hundreds of men had also been detained for critical Facebook posts.
Five years later, most residents, from roadside apple vendors to shopkeepers and fertilizer dealers, refused to speak to NPR reporters when asked about the election, citing fears of punishment from the authorities. They described friends and relatives who were threatened by Indian security agents, loved ones who were sometimes detained for weeks or months over social media posts.
Analysts say real or perceived oppression is driving people to vote because they feel they have no other way to air their discontent.
“The vote is just another stone,” former Kashmir finance minister Haseeb Draabu said, referring to years of unrest in Kashmir when young people pelted stones at security forces.
“This is not a vote for anything,” Drabu said. “At least in the Kashmir valley, this is a vote against (the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party),” he said, referring to the Muslim-majority area. The rest of the region, known as Jammu, is Hindu-majority and is expected to elect candidates loyal to the BJP.
Voting in Kashmir will take place in three phases until October 1, but the new assemblyman will have few powers and analysts say real power will lie with a governor selected by the Indian government. But candidates say that’s not the point: A strong anti-BJP turnout would send a message to the Indian government as well as the courts and international observers that the status quo must change.
“Parliament has no power, everyone knows that,” said Waheed-ur-Rehman Para of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party. “But this is a democratic mandate and it will give enormous legitimacy to the movement towards restoring statehood to Kashmir,” he said.
Kashmiris say regaining statehood is more than just symbolic.
They say New Delhi bureaucrats are not running their affairs properly. Apple growers say a deal to ease import tariffs on U.S. apples in 2023 is hurting their market. Many residents NPR interviewed said drug addiction is a growing problem among young men, and there are so few jobs that “you see graduates selling bananas on the street,” lamented King Maqbool, a 30-year-old college graduate who sells toys.
The election has seen a surge in independent and first-time candidates, including from the party led by Sheikh Abdul Rashid, a politician who was elected to the Indian parliament after spending five years in prison on terrorism financing charges. Rashid’s Awami Ittehad party has allied itself with independent candidates widely believed to be loyal to the influential Jamaat-e-Islami, a banned Islamist organisation, some of whose members have joined extremist groups in the past.
If Kashmiri Muslim votes are split among independents, it could lead to a ruling coalition with the Congress, with the Hindu nationalist BJP leading the way. “The government is hoping that this will split the vote,” said Siddique Wahid, a professor at the School of International Relations and Governance at Shiv Nadar University near New Delhi. “It’s clear that the BJP will take the lead,” he said, arguing that the Congress could “put a stamp of approval on the dissolution of the state.”
But even the BJP’s critics acknowledge that militant attacks have declined, halting the stone-pelting and strikes that for years have shuttered shops and schools. “I’m completely anti-BJP, but I never deny the truth,” said Rouhani Saeed, a Kashmiri model and artist from Srinagar.
Syed says the end of the violence has seen tourists flock to the region’s picture-postcard plains, lakes and snow-capped mountains, which he says has transformed the region’s once deeply conservative culture. “There’s less of the deep-rooted misogyny towards modern Kashmir women,” he says.
A few miles away, in the Hubba Kadal constituency, BJP candidate Ashok Bhatt said the area was “one of the hardest hit” at the height of the violence in Kashmir. “The first AK-47 shots rang out from here.”
Bhatt says the BJP set up an election office here for that very reason, to highlight the contrast between the years of violence and the years of quiet. During election campaigns, he says, they remind residents: “If your son steps out of his house, he will come home safe.”
Bhatt is a Kashmiri Hindu, many of whom fled the region over the years as it became the target of violent attacks by Islamist militants and shattered its once-famous mixed culture. He said his party was planning for their return now that peace has come to the region.
But quiet does not mean peaceful, said PDP candidate Parra.
“Killings have gone down, but arrests have gone up,” he said. His estimates show that more than 2,000 young Kashmiris, including students, activists and journalists, are in prisons outside the region, where their families have difficulty visiting them. Many of them were accused of stone-throwing or militant activity and were arrested after Kashmir’s autonomy was restricted.
Parra himself said he spent 18 months in prison on terrorism charges in 2020 for speaking out against the Indian government. During his detention, he said he was “striped, tortured and locked up,” and that he began to crave the simplest things, like sunlight.
At a rally Mr. Parra held in the town of Pulwama, near the administrative capital, thousands of Kashmiri men and women appeared to sympathize with his prison sentence, stumbling over one another to greet him and kiss his hand. Many spontaneously chanted a slogan that has become repeated across Kashmir this election season: “We will avenge our prison sentence with votes.”
Omkar Khandekar reported from Kashmir. Diaa Hadid reported from Mumbai, India. Bilal Kuchai contributed reporting from Kashmir.