Belated New Year Ruminations

“All power comes from the people. But where does it go?”, asked Bertolt Brecht the great playwright, poet and theatre director. While most people in the Valley may not have watched Brecht’s powerful play, they are asking the same question today. We gave the power to National Conference only a few months back. Where has it gone?

Seemingly, the political opponents of the National Conference have an answer. It has gone to the wrong party and person, they say. Implied in this are two assertions; first, Kashmiris are tin eared to have fallen for the demagoguery of the Abdullahs, yet again. And second, compromise and sell out is in the DNA of the National Conference. How can one ignore 1975 or 1986 or 1996, they ask.

Is this the right answer? Would the surplus of political elites that Kashmir has, have fared any different, let alone better than the current elected regime? In their own reckoning, for sure. But any well considered opinion would be a resounding no. The track record certainly suggests only that.

Perhaps, some of the political leadership, even within the National Conference, would have been confrontationist in public; even as they would be crawling conformists in private. But that is more a matter of optics and style. What about the substantive part? Bound by the new structure, the latitude to force a change or a roll back of contentious policies is not limited; it is non-existent. This was known to all and sundry before the elections.

It doesn’t seem to have dawned on all those politicians and parties, especially those who lost the elections, that the August 5^th, 2019, action was more an act of power than of law. This realisation will perhaps dawn on them only when they themselves are in power.

To beat the National Conference government with the stick of “normalising the downgrade” is politically disingenuous. Normalising -- endorsing the new norm, leading people to conform to it without endorsing the Act per se -- happened when all the political parties fell head over heels to contest the elections for the UT legislature (the new norm), and getting people to vote and participate (conforming). All the 407 candidates who contested, normalised the disempowerment of the legislative and executive institutions. The 64 per cent electors who cast their vote in 2024, gave it the required legitimacy.

Beyond the representative legitimacy, their participation institutionalised the structure of the Union Territory of J&K, with Legislature that was stipulated in para 4, Part II of Reorganisation Act. There can be no “normalisation” of the August 5, 2019, greater than voluntarily choosing to become its creation. Till the election to the legislative assembly were held, the legislature of the Union Territory was a creation without a corresponding reality. With the constitution of the legislature, the institutional structure – legislators, delegation of powers, business rules, etc -- came into being. That is how each one of the 90 legislators normalised it.

So too Omar Abdullah. First, as a candidate, contesting in a system laid out in the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019, tantamount to a formal acceptance of the new laws. Then, as a legislator swear allegiance and adherence to the system which replaced the earlier empowered position. Finally, being in the government, as the Chief Minister, legitimising it. The culpability of normalising it rests with everyone; every political party that participated, and every candidate who contested irrespective of whether he won or lost.

The only route that could have bought matters to a head and forced talks on past positions and future possibilities was for all parties to contest collectively and making the elections a referendum on the abrogation of Article 370. But Peoples’ Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) which was born of an instinct and impulse, died of intrigue and lack of integrity leaving no choice for individual parties but to fall in line. From a point in 1947, where Kashmiris made a choice based on a conviction, it reached a stage in 2024 that there is no choice, no conviction, only compulsions.

Had, for instance, the PAGD decided not to participate in the elections to the legislature of a Union Territory, it would have delegitimised the process and the credibility of the outcome of elections. That was not to be.

Or perhaps, contest the election and collectively decide not to form a government until the restoration of statehood. That too was not to be.

Whether it was National Conference or the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or the People’s Conference which was responsible for the collapse of PAGD, is only a matter of detail. What is relevant is that PAGD disintegrated before elections despite a loud and clear mass sentiment for a show of solidarity. The Valley, for sure, wanted the political class to show a collective spine; move beyond politics of power to politics of identity. They all promised it individually but failed to agree on it collectively showing how party politics superseded ideological interests.

The sentiment of solidarity worked in favour of the National Conference. The wholesome mandate that National Conference got is the consequence of the negative vote; there is barely any increase in their vote share of 23 per cent. In popular perception, it was better placed than all other political parties. Especially in contrast to PDP, the only local alternative to National Conference for the last 25 years now. It was decimated overnight soon after the PDP-BJP coalition government collapsed. Whether it imploded under its own internal contradiction or exodus was engineered, the lack of organisational strength was evident. The organisational weakness was validated by the plummeting of the vote share from 23 per cent to 8 per cent.

To be sure, the exodus of the entire leadership was not because of the “disastrous” political choice that PDP made of forming a coalition with the BJP. It had more to do with the inability of the leadership to run the alliance. This is evident from the destination of the deserters. Almost all of them enmasse went with the new political start up, Apni Party, which was perceived to be the closest to the establishment; political and bureaucratic. PDP, of course, did pay for its “sin” in the electoral arena by losing every single election contested since. Mehbooba Mufti herself has lost both the elections she contested since.

When political relevance is under threat, political parties engage self-absorption as a coping and survival mechanisms. But what needs to be pondered over is that it is future of mainstream regional politics that is at stake. With one third of the legislative assembly with the BJP, taking it to a simple majority with the nominee but voting MLAs and a few floaters is not an unlikely prospect. It is in the enlightened interest of the Valley-centric politics that National Conference delivers and delivers soon.

The author is Contributing Editor Greater Kashmir