32-year-old Mehnaz*, a government school teacher in Srinagar casts an apprehensive glance as she stands against a street light at 5:15 in the morning. She is waiting for her cousin who is also a teacher at a school on the outskirts of Srinagar.
It was the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was slated to address a large gathering at Bakshi Stadium in the city. At 6 am, they reached Sri Pratap Higher Secondary School at MA Road. There, a fleet of buses that the administration has requisitioned from private schools, drove some of them to the International Convention Centre (ICC) on the banks of Dal Lake. Others were ferried to the stadium.
“We have been giving instructions in advance,” Mehnaz told The Quint. “We are supposed to be constantly grinning, clapping our hands periodically, and waving at PM Modi.”
PM Modi’s first visit to J&K since the revocation of Article 370 has re-energised the political climate in the Union Territory (UT) ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But as politicians sharpen their rhetoric, it has also sparked controversies.
Forced Presence of Bystanders Instead of Free Will
Former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti took to their social media feeds, denouncing what they described as the forced participation of government employees (at least 7000 of them from 13 different government departments) in the rally that PM Modi addressed.
“The godi media and agencies will be gushing about the 'historic crowd' gathered to hear PM Modi in Srinagar,” he tweeted. “What they will conveniently forget to mention is that almost none of the people there will be attending of their own free will.”
Mufti posted a video of the employees being huddled into buses early in the morning. She regretted that employees are being “forcibly mobilised to paint a pretty picture that all is well post-2019.”
This is also the sentiment that Faroona*, Mehnaz’s mother, shared with The Quint, as she accompanied her daughter during the early hours to a secluded spot 700 metres from her house where her cousin was supposed to pick her.
“She was on the final days of her maternity leave,” she said. “But for this day, she had to forfeit it.”
A Grand Event
On 7 March, ie, Thursday afternoon, picture streaming on TV news and social media showed a crowd numbering thousands descending the sprawling Bakshi stadium in Srinagar where a big podium had been decked up for the occasion.
Some of the attendees were also donning turbans, and caps themed on the colours of the BJP flag as well as the Indian tricolour. Traffic routes close to the stadium were diverted, and Srinagar was declared a ‘ temporary red zone’. Local schools were closed for the day while motorists had been asked to take alternate routes.
PM Modi unveiled Rs 5000 crores worth of comprehensive plans aimed at boosting the agri-economy of J&K. In addition to this, he also launched a ‘Holistic Agriculture Development Programme’ that will entail imparting skill development to 2.5 lakh farmers in the UT through the ‘Daksh Kisan’ portal.
Around 2000 ‘Kisan Khidmat Ghars’ are also being set up as part of the project. Additionally, the PM launched 52 tourism-related initiatives worth more than Rs 1400 crores under ‘Swadesh Darshan’ and ‘PRASHAD’ schemes.
Taking the Fight to the Home Turf
Interestingly, the PM also unveiled an ‘Integrated Development of Hazratbal Shrine’ in Srinagar. The venue has for decades been a political preserve of the National Conference (NC). Choosing the Hazratbal mosque, which hosts the relic of Prophet Muhammad as a site that will be refurbished to attract more worshippers, is more than just a development-related step.
It appears to be a political manoeuvre aimed at wooing potential voters, while also signalling that BJP is determined to take the fray right into the cherished political turfs of the established political parties.
PM Modi, during the rally, also renewed his attack on some mainstream political parties asserting that they misled the people of J&K on Article 370.
He said that some political families - a clear allusion to the NC and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) - were taking advantage of the scrapped provision for their own personal benefit. “People have realised they had been misled and were shackled to the chains,” PM Modi said. “But now that [Article] 370 is gone, people are being respected, and receive equal opportunities.”
While the reception for PM Modi’s rally was electrifying, it is also true that J&K is finding itself at the intersection of political and economic crises. The last time J&K saw a major electoral process was in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The erstwhile state last saw an elected government in June 2018, and the last assembly elections were held in 2014.
BJP's Control Over the Administration Gives it an Advantage
The revocation of Article 370 and the host of changes pushed as a consequence of that have led to a structural overhaul. With the successful enforcement of delimitation; the enfranchisement of West Pakistan refugees, and new domicile and land rules; older strategies are no longer operative.
This is where the BJP has a clear advantage. Having presided over this radical reordering of the J&K, it is the central government - and by extension, the party - that is now more acquainted with the nitty-gritty of things.
For instance, look at the case of redrawing the contours of the Anantnag Parliamentary seat during delimitation in 2022. The old Anantnag seat covered almost all four districts of South Kashmir. Traditional parties were familiar with the voting patterns and had invested their political capital accordingly.
But now, many older areas from the Anantnag seat have been lopped off, while areas of Rajouri and Poonch situated across the Pir Panjal mountain have been annexed to the seat. This has disturbed the traditional political calculus, especially because the BJP appears to have wooed ethnic and linguistic communities like the Paharis living on the other side by bringing them under affirmative action programs.
Having these Pir Panjal regions as part of the Anantnag constituency is likely to reward the BJP, should the voters in South Kashmir decide to boycott the polls, or show up at the booths in lesser numbers. The turnout in Rajouri and Poonch, by comparison, tends to be way higher.
Continuous Central Rule Isn't Making People Happy
There are other vicissitudes that Kashmiris believe have visited them in the aftermath of the decisions taken in August 2019.
The metering of electric connections (making electricity costly), land evacuation drives, runaway inflation, soaring unemployment, and political repression — all of them have deepened the political anger most of which is directed towards the current dispensation. Some of it is also against the PDP, which the locals accuse of having brought the BJP into the erstwhile state in the first place.
It appears that the only tangible way in which the administration has kept the more overt and manifest forms of dissent at bay is by reinforcing its strong-arm policing tactics from time to time.
On Wednesday, while the local government was busy corralling public employees into the Bakshi stadium to attend PM Modi’s address, the J&K administration announced disciplinary action against 26 government employees for attending an event chaired by NC leader Mian Altaf in Rajouri.
Altaf, who the NC is likely to field as its Lok Sabha candidate for the Anantnag constituency, is a very popular leader among the nomadic tribe of Gujjars who form the majority in Poonch and Rajouri areas.
It Is The Mainland Voters That Count
But political analysts in J&K believe that all this ill-will is hardly going to affect the BJP as Thursday’s event was more directed at the national audience than the local. “There’s a new narrative that BJP has to cross 370 Lok Sabha seats in Parliament,” one political observer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. “Clearly when the country approaches elections, the Kashmir issue invariably resurfaces.”
The analyst said that Thursday's rally was mostly self-congratulatory and characterised by a fervour as though a conquest had been achieved. “For Modi, it is important that he tells his mainland voters that there’s been a sea of change in Kashmir. Mehbooba Mufti once said that if 370 is removed, no one will be left in Kashmir to carry Indian flags. But on this occasion, Srinagar was festooned with Indian flags. So it has more to do with optics than anything else.”
A Srinagar-based journalist who covered politics in J&K told The Quint that except for the stage-managed crowd that BJP’s powerful election machinery managed to marshal, there wasn't much that people in the region expected from the rally. “Why would people listen to the party that took away their identity from them,” he asked, anonymously.
He drew attention to previous BJP leaders who made it a point to enthuse people in J&K by invoking approaches such as democracy and a healing touch. “Today, even that didn’t happen. There was no mention of statehood. Clearly, the rally was meant to galvanise the PM's own voter base.”
*names have been changed to protect the identity
(Shakir Mir is an independent journalist. He has also written for The Wire.in, Article 14, Caravan Magazine, Firstpost, The Times of India and more. He tweets @shakirmir. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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