In Kashmir, voting begins in first local elections since India revoked autonomy

PULWAMA, India — Men and women filed into gender-segregated lines, huddling in shawls early Wednesday morning in this Himalayan territory. Many prepared to do something that they’d never done before: vote.

Across Indian-controlled Kashmir, residents are casting ballots in assembly elections that are being held for the first time in a decade — and since the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi stripped away the territory’s statehood in 2019, a move that rights activists say was followed by a dramatic clampdown on people’s freedoms.

The folks lining up to cast a ballot included Shahid, a 33-year-old businessman. He requested NPR withhold his family name, fearing reprisals by authorities if he spoke freely, nodding to the police, border forces and soldiers who had fanned around the polling area. Ever since Kashmir’s statehood was dismantled, Shahid says, “We are in an open jail. We can't protest against anything, even power cuts or water supply.”

Shahid says he once ignored elections, like many in Kashmir who boycotted to protest India’s rule of the territory. Now, he says, he’s voting “so someone can fight for us.”

It’s a fight for the prosaic, like employment and services, and the political: to restore Kashmir’s statehood, although analysts say a return of its partial autonomy is unlikely. That past autonomy was a nod to its unique status: it was India’s only Muslim-majority state, part of a region straddling India and Pakistan, which both claim it. Kashmir was fought over by those nuclear-armed neighbors in three wars, and each administers part of it.

Its special autonomy in India was largely symbolic, but analysts say its very existence irked Hindu nationalists, who saw it as a form of appeasement to India’s minority Muslims. That was echoed in a campaign rally by the powerful interior minister, Amit Shah, who rallied supporters during federal elections this year, roaring into a crowd, “Tell me: Is Kashmir ours, or not?”

Perhaps to prevent violence, just as Kashmir’s statehood was revoked in 2019, its phone lines and internet access were cut, a curfew was imposed, journalists and politicians were detained. So were hundreds of men, say residents, some over critical Facebook posts.

Even five years on, most residents — from those manning roadside stalls selling apples to shopkeepers and fertilizer traders — declined to speak to NPR reporters when asked about elections, saying they feared being punished by authorities. They described friends and relatives who received threats from India’s security agencies and loved ones detained for weeks and months at a time, sometimes over social media posts.

Real or perceived oppression is pushing people to vote, say analysts, because people feel they have no other way of expressing their discontent.

“The vote is truly the new stone,” says the former Kashmir finance minister, Haseeb Drabu, referring to young men hurling rocks at security forces in years of upheaval in Kashmir.

“This is not going to be a vote for something,” says Drabu, “it’s a vote against [the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party], at least in the Kashmir Valley,” he said, referring to the Muslim-majority region. The other part of the territory, known as Jammu, is dominated by Hindus and is expected to elect BJP-loyal candidates.

Voting in Kashmir will be undertaken in three phases to end on Oct. 1 — but the new legislators will have few powers, with analysts saying the real power will lie with the governor, chosen by New Delhi. But that’s not the point, candidates say. A strong anti-BJP turnout would send a message to the government in New Delhi, as well as the courts and international observers, that the status quo must change.

“There are no powers with the assembly. All of us know it,” says Waheed ur Rehman Para, of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party. “But this is a democratic mandate which will give a lot of legitimacy,” he says, to the push to restore Kashmir’s statehood.

Kashmiri residents say reclaiming statehood is more than symbolic.

They say bureaucrats from New Delhi have been running their affairs badly. Apple growers say their market has been pounded by a 2023 agreement to relax import duties on American apples. Many residents NPR interviewed spoke of a growing problem of drug addiction among young men, and there are so few jobs that “you’ll see graduates selling bananas on the street,” lamented 30-year-old toy seller King Maqbool, a university graduate himself.

These elections have seen a proliferation of independent and first-time candidates, including some with the party led by Shaikh Abdul Rashid, a politician who was elected to India’s parliament from jail, where he has been held for five years on terror financing charges. Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party has formed an alliance with independents widely understood to be loyal to the influential Jamaat-e-Islami, a banned Islamist outfit whose members in the past joined militant outfits.

If the Kashmiri Muslim vote is divided among multiple independents, it could produce an assembly with the Hindu nationalist BJP as the largest party, and in control of a coalition. “The government's hope is that this will divide the vote,” says Siddiq Wahid, a professor in the department of international relations and governance studies at Shiv Nadar University near New Delhi. “The BJP obviously will be in the driver's seat,” he says, arguing that it will allow the assembly to “put the stamp of approval on the dismantling of the state.”

But even critics of the BJP concede that militant attacks have declined, and stone-throwing and strikes that shuttered shops and schools on and off for years have halted. “I’m absolutely an anti-BJP kind of person, but I will never deny the truth,” says Rouhani Syed, a Kashmiri model and artist from Srinagar.

Syed says with violence quelled, tourists have flocked to the area’s postcard-pretty meadows, lakes and snow-capped peaks. That’s shifted the culture here, which she says was once deeply conservative. “There is less misogyny, which was like hardcore in Kashmir towards modern women,” she says.

A few miles away, in the Habba Kadal constituency, BJP candidate Ashok Bhat says the area “was one of the worst affected” during the most violent days of the insurgency that raged in Kashmir. “The first shot of an AK-47 rang out from this place.”

He says that’s precisely why the BJP set up its campaign office here — to highlight the contrast between the years of violence and the years of quiet. During campaigning, Bhat says they remind residents: “If your son steps out of the house, they’ll be able to return safely.”

Bhat is a Kashmiri Hindu. Most fled this area over the years as they became the targets of violent attacks by Muslim militants, unraveling a once famously syncretic culture. He says now, with peace in the area, his party has plans for their return.

But quiet is not peace, says candidate Para of the PDP.

“There are less killings,” he says, “but more arrests.” He estimates that more than 2,000 Kashmiri youths, including students, activists and journalists, are in jails outside the region, where their families struggle to see them. Many of them were accused of throwing stones or militant activity, and arrested after Kashmir’s autonomy was curbed.

Para himself says he spent 18 months in prison in 2020 on terror charges. He says it’s because he spoke out against the Indian government. In detention, he was “stripped, tortured, locked up,” he says, and began craving the simplest of things, like sunlight.

At a rally that Para held in Pulwama, a town near the administrative capital, that jail time seemed to resonate with thousands of Kashmiri men and women, who tripped over each other to greet him and kiss his hands. Many spontaneously shouted a chant that has become a refrain across Kashmir this election season: “We will avenge jail with our votes.”

Omkar Khandekar reported from Kashmir. Diaa Hadid reported from Mumbai, India. Bilal Kuchay contributed reporting from Kashmir.