Jammu & Kashmir elects to vote

The day showed the Kashmiri people’s seeming resolve to look beyond the gun and participate in elections, even as dissenters, report Neelesh Misra & Rashid Ahmad.

Jammu and Kashmir surprised itself on Monday with a 55 per cent voter turnout even as thousands of people – including those seeking freedom from India – cast ballots in a new turn in the region’s saga.

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The day showed the Kashmiri people’s seeming resolve to look beyond the gun and participate in elections, even as dissenters. And people boycotted it in large numbers but in a peaceful way – all of that adding up possibly to the biggest opportunity for peace on the road ahead in Kashmir.

The numbers came despite the fact that anti-India sentiment runs deep in most parts of the Valley after months of bloody clashes and protests. They were tempered by a few facts: the percentage includes voting figures in parts of Ladakh and Jammu regions as well; this is only the first of seven phases; and many voters said they were voting for good local governance, not expressing their faith in Indian rule.

It was a continuation of the process started in 2002 in parliamentary elections, when Kashmiris saw that election-rigging, one of the final provocations for the militancy in the late 1980s, was a thing of the past. “I want peace. I have seen so much here that very little matters to me now. I want good roads and water supply and electricity,” said first-time voter Khalid Mohammed, a Class 10 dropout who sells cosmetics. “I don’t want my mother to walk four kilometres to fetch water.”