Our politics, an obituary?!

Do elections to the J&K Assembly, 2024, mean anything to us? Sometime back there was a dominant feeling that people should now vote in numbers and start a new phase of collective politics; if anything was left of it! People expected the prominent mainstream electoral parities to form an alliance and fight the juggernaut that disrobed them all some years back. Those who normally stayed away from this exercise were also expected to silently weigh in favour of the alliance. In an extraordinarily abnormal situation that sounded like a normal response to what all happened to us all.

Come election time, and the scene is completely different. No alliance of the Kashmir based electoral parties, each one is competing with the other—shocking. A new force emerging in the shape of the people in jails contesting elections—surprising. And those who up until yesterday declared voting an act of apostasy fielding candidates—appalling.

So this election presents the picture of our politics as lying on a ventilator, struggling to breathe.

Election, no matter when and where, matters. Yes, it matters differently to different people linked to the exercise. Global powers watch it their way; the state that conducts it has her own mind; the agencies within and outside draw their own calculus; the parties and the candidates have their interests laid out. But despite all this, elections hold significance for the people who participate in them. People who vote have a definite and direct relationship with elections. No matter what level of democracy is allowed through elections, it acts as a check on power.

Unfortunately, for the people in Kashmir, this relationship is neither defined correctly nor conducted efficiently. Though this time the dominant thinking in Kashmir, contrary to earlier decades, is that casting a vote is an existential act, there is still a deep undercurrent that election may not get us finally anywhere. It again signifies that a lot needs to be done at the level of society to ensure that each political instrument, in thinking or in action, is deployed wisely, to the benefit of people.

It means our relationship with elections needs to be defined without emotions, anger, bitterness, and cynicism coming in the way. If our politics has to survive, we cannot take our gaze away from elections. It is a moment of realisation for us all that not having a political party that can negotiate on behalf of the people in different situations with different powers, is suicidal. People sustain crises as long as there is political leadership. And political leadership knows the value of elections. We undermined this fact, and we are where we are.

Politics has only one address: people. We know this. The postcard-size politics, sometimes couriered to Kashmir from Delhi, is addressed to anyone but the people of Kashmir. We know this as well. The test for Kashmir’s collective political self is to hold this contradiction with grace, with care, and with practical wisdom. As long as this contradiction persists.

This contradiction has bruised our body-politic all along, and now it’s all set to rip us apart. Like a body on a landmine finally strewn all over, not even worth a burial. Just a feast for insects. Look at the number of candidates and see which part of the body-politic you have to put in which parcel.

This erstwhile principality, erstwhile special state, and now no longer even a state in the union, is a curious case of the gradual disappearance of people from politics, and politics from people. Five years ago, this gradual and incremental dimming, merged into a conclusive vanishing of the entire thing. With elections, some of us stupid sensibles thought it was time for political parties to face the darkness together. But when you are internally blind, how does the darkness outside matter?

It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen. But elections are here, and all the political parties are in the race. All the regional parties stick to the same rhetoric, nevertheless. Getting dignity back, reclaiming what has been lost, recovering what has been stolen. It is another thing they couldn’t say it together, and they compete on this turf with each other. The colours of politics! Anyway, elections are here, and casting a vote is no longer an act of treason, or apostasy! Not just that; casting a vote is now a matter of survival, some would think.

This time the vote may not be for a party or an alliance, but an act of lending some breath to the body on the ventilator—our politics. As a people, we cannot afford the death of our politics. As a people, we cannot afford to see it comatose. We may dislike a political party, we may despise a political face, we may denounce a political idea, but we need all of this—a political idea, a political party, and a political face. We can never have all of this in an ideal form, but keep working on our society to give us improved versions of all this.

Right now, whatever we have, we must make an informed choice. But choice we must make. An obituary to our politics in no choice.