Kulgam (J&K): On October 29, 2015, a heated argument broke out between two groups of agitated youngsters in the Bugam village of south Kashmir over who was the rightful custodian of the body of a top Pakistani militant killed by Indian security forces.
Abu Qasim, a senior Lashkar-e-Toiba commander and resident of Bahawalpur, was one of the longest-surviving Pakistani militants in Kashmir. He spent most of his time in the villages of Pulwama, but was trapped and killed in Khandipora of the adjoining Kulgam district earlier that day.
As a small procession marched with Qasim’s body from the district police lines in Kulgam to the main town, it swelled into a large crowd. Along the way, some agitated mourners clashed with security forces at many places. There were injuries on both sides.
To settle the dispute between Khandipora and Pulwama over the ownership of Qasim’s body, the procession halted in Bugam, a bastion of the socio-politico-religious outfit Jamaat-i-Islami, which was banned by the Union government in 2019.
Taking advantage of the procession being in their home turf, Bugam unanimously decided that it was better to nip the evil in the bud by burying Qasim in the village itself. The villagers found support in the crowd, many of whom had come from far-off places.
As night fell, attempts to exhume and steal Qasim’s body from the grave were foiled.
With Jammu and Kashmir choosing its lawmakers for the first time in a decade, electoral politics is making a silent and surreal comeback in pockets of south Kashmir villages where voting was seen as a betrayal of the cause that has kept Kashmir in a simmering cauldron for more than three decades.
In the Kulgam assembly seat of south Kashmir, the appearance of the Jamaat – which was once the ideological fountainhead of the Hizbul Muhajideen militant outfit – on the electoral turf could pose a significant challenge to the Left’s only political bastion in J&K.
According to political analysts, the village of Bugam and other hotbeds of the Jamaat in south Kashmir such as Buchroo, Tarigam, Sangas, Shuch, Wokai, Arie-Mohamadpora, Chansar, Matrigam, Khandaypora, Ashmuji, Bhan, Damduli and other adjoining villages could throw a spanner in the works of CPI(M) leader M.Y. Tarigami, who is facing deepening anti-incumbency in the constituency.
These villages have traditionally stayed away from “Indian elections” after armed insurgency erupted in Kashmir in the early 1990s, but the decision of a Jamaat panel to contest the upcoming election, even as the outfit’s leadership remains behind bars, could mean the end of the Left’s uninterrupted stint of power in Kulgam.
The south Kashmir constituency sits at one of the centres of the ideological clash that has claimed thousands of innocent lives in Kashmir in the past more than three decades.
A banner at a village in Kulgam with the CPI(M) flag and an appeal to voters. Photo: Jehangir Ali.
Jamaat stronghold
Following the broad-daylight assassination of Abdul Razak Mir of Buchroo village – a senior Jamaat figure and former member of its top decision making body, the Majlis-e-Shura, who was elected to the assembly twice from Kulgam constituency – Tarigami has pocketed this south Kashmir constituency in every assembly election held in J&K since the eruption of militancy.
Mir, known for his philanthropic work, was killed in 1995 by the government-sponsored militia Ikhwan.
In the 2014 election, the Left leader barely managed to sail ashore, winning a thin margin of 334 votes over Nazir Ahmad Laway of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), who came second.
In the 2008 polls, Tarigami’s lead of 236 votes was even thinner at the end of the counting day with the last-minute addition of migrant votes.
But the new electoral arithmetic could give Tarigami the jitters.
The National Conference (NC) conceded the seat to the CPI(M) as part of a seat-sharing arrangement with the INDIA bloc in J&K, reportedly after Farooq Abdullah’s intervention, even though NC candidate Imran Nabi Dar – whose father and NC leader Ghulam Nabi Dar was assassinated in a grenade attack by militants in 2006 – had prepared to throw his hat in the electoral ring for the first time.
The elder Dar won Kulgam twice, in the assembly elections of 1977 and 1983, and the decision to deny the mandate to his son has riled many NC workers who can turn the tide against Tarigami.
“From the last four years, Imran saheb has been working hard to win the constituency back for his party, but he has been stabbed in the back,” said an angry NC worker who declined to be identified.
On the other hand, the PDP, led by Mehbooba Mufti, has been reeling under an existential crisis.
Like in its other strongholds, the party has struggled to keep its flock together in Kulgam, which has 117,322 registered voters who will exercise their franchise at more than 130 polling centres in the first phase of the assembly election on September 18.
In many places in Kulgam, residents recall Mehbooba’s poor handling of the post-Burhan Wani unrest in areas of south Kashmir with horror. A weakened Laway sensed the anger on the ground against his party over its ‘unholy alliance’ with the BJP and was expelled from the PDP, following which he switched over to the Peoples’ Conference led by Sajad Lone.
The PDP has, meanwhile, fielded Mohammad Amin Dar, Tarigami’s old associate, in place of Laway.
Also read: The NC and the Congress’s Hubris Has Put Them – and All of Kashmir – in a Risky Place
New electoral map
Spread on the banks of the Vishow tributary in south Kashmir, which merges into the Jhelum river at Sangam, Anantnag assembly constituency’s electoral map was redrawn by the 2022 delimitation commission with the addition of some villages of the Yaripora and Kulgam tehsils, which were earlier part of the Homeshalibugh constituency.
After the delimitation exercise, the villages of Malwan, Banimulla, Nihama, Bogand, Daniv and Makinpora, which are widely believed to be Tarigami’s strongholds, were merged with Damhal-Hanjipora (Noorabad) and Devsar constituencies, while the Jamaat hotbeds of Yaripora, Hum, Kokergund, Matibugh and Nunmai, which were with the Pahlu and Damhal-Hanjipora tehsils, were merged with the redrawn Kulgam constituency.
With the Jamaat entering the electoral fray, a new arithmetic seems to have emerged in this south Kashmir constituency, which could change the traditional boycott behaviour of voters.
Sayar Ahmed Reshi, who headed the Falah-e-Aam Trust, the Jamaat’s educational wing in the district, is contesting the election as an independent candidate. With a postgraduate degree in political science, Reshi has emerged as a strong contender in the bastion of four-time MLA Tarigami.
A resident of Kaharwat in Kulgam, Reshi taught at a government-run college on a contract and some tuition centres in Kulgam. His simple demeanour, rigorous work ethic and honest image have earned him respect in Kulgam over the years.
But it is too early to assess whether this respect will convert into votes on election day.
The houses of Reshi and 95-year-old former Jamaat chief Sheikh Ghulam Hassan were raided by the National Investigation Agency in a terror funding case on several occasions in the past five years.
Reshi’s apple orchard, the major source of livelihood for his family, was seized by the government.
But he has also come to exemplify the paradoxes in Kashmir’s politics.
Sayar Ahmed Reshi (garlanded) stands by as a community elder in a Kulgam village urges voters to exercise their franchise in the upcoming election. Photo: Jehangir Ali.
Despite the seriousness of the charges, a security ring has been thrown around Reshi’s office in a rundown, under-construction building in Kulgam. A cavalcade of paramilitary forces in trucks and policemen in jeeps accompanies him on the election trail.
There is scandalous speculation that the BJP is using the Jamaat, which has backed four candidates in the upcoming election, to mainstream the idea of separatism to leverage its own presence.
“It won’t make much of a difference,” an ailing Hassan, the former Jamaat chief, told The Wire at his residence in Kulgam’s Tarigam village in response to a question on the Jamaat’s decision to enter the electoral contest.
However, some former and serving Jamaat members, who are in favour of the election, don’t agree with Hassan.
Ubaid Mir, grandson of former Jamaat leader Abdul Razak Mir, is one of them.
A social activist with political ambitions, Ubaid said that the Jamaat was never against the idea of democracy.
“Boycott politics has enabled corrupt people … who never worked for the welfare of people [to enter the assembly]. A vote is a power in the hands of ordinary people and they should use it judiciously,” Ubaid told The Wire at his residence in Buchroo village.
Asked about the Jamaat’s speculated links with the saffron party, Reshi said that the outfit had boycotted elections as a protest against the rigging of the 1987 assembly polls, something that is widely blamed on the NC.
“We got encouraged by the fairness of the Lok Sabha election in J&K. The era of political terrorism is over. Our opponents are using labels to defame us, but our people are mature enough to see through these lies,” Reshi said.
Raided by the National Investigation Agency, the office of Jamaat candidate Sayar Ahmed Reshi has got 24×7 security cover. Photo: Jehangir Ali.
On the campaign trail, a small group of supporters, curious youngsters and village elders assembled in a village square in Matrigam to listen to Reshi. Some young women watched the small gathering behind closed windows and others peeked from the corners of the narrow alleys.
Grabbing a microphone, Mohammad Shafi, a community elder, urged people to vote for Reshi on September 18.
“We won’t be like our recent rulers who built palaces for themselves while the commoners suffered. A revolution has come and we urge you to become a part of it. The Jamaat’s members were told that they don’t have the right to hold their heads high. We were silenced and labeled as terrorists. But Allah has found a way for us,” he said, peppering his speech with Quranic verses.
In the distance, two young workers pasted Reshi’s posters featuring his election symbol, a laptop, on the walls of some shops in the village.
“I have voted for both the CPI(M) and the NC. But I am fed up with voting for the same people again and again. I want to see change, which is why I will vote for Sayar [Reshi] this time,” said an elderly man who claimed to be a Jamaat sympathiser.
A political analyst acknowledged Tarigami would face stiff competition from his arch-rivals. “If the entire Jamaat cadre chooses to break their tradition of boycotting the polls and participates in voting, the Left leader could struggle to keep his seat,” the analyst said.
However, he pointed out that within the cadre, this decision is thought to lack official endorsement from the jailed leadership. The Jamaat cadre believes that the decision has come from a small, moderate faction within the party.
“This uncertainty within the Jamaat’s ranks could give Tarigami an advantage,” he said.