"Bijbehara’s pledge not to vote"

Bijbehara was known for its defiance. Security convoys that passed through the town, when militancy was at its worst, were extra careful: grenade attacks were common. And so were harsh retaliations. Today, the town is relatively calm but that’s just the surface.

Defiance replaces pain on Tasleema’s face when she hears the word "elections". "I have taken a pledge over the body of my brother that I will never vote for the Indian hakoomat (establishment)," her voice hardens, her widowed mother Fatima stares at her.

Manzoor was younger to her, theonly brother to five sisters and the sole breadearner. He had asked her to prepare tea when he left home to offer namaz at the mosque. Within half an hour, he returned home dead. "They unleashed barbarism on us. My son was unarmed and he was not even a militant," says Fatima. The graveyard where the young men were buried is just a few yards away from their home but the family doesn’t go there. "It is unbearable for any mother," she adds.

The firing — in which 49 young men, between 18 and 20 years of age, were killed and over 200 injured — left several other women with the same fate as Fatima’s. Elections bring back to this town, 30 km from Srinagar, the image of securitymen. And the people here — like elsehwere in the trouble-torn areas of the State — carry the cross of memories even though the weight is now unbearable.

"We will not vote, come what may," says Fayaz Ahmed Tak who lost his brother, Mukhtiar. "I remember how my Mukhtiar lay in a pool of blood in an overflowing drain before Imanaged to drag him out from a heap of injured and dead people."

Hamida Turey, a 35-year-old housewife, was given a government job as compensation for her husband’s death in the firing. Yet she did not vote in the election last time. "What will I gain by casting my vote?" she says.

In the last Assembly elections, the percentage of votes here was in single digit, perhaps one of the lowest turnouts anywhere in the country. In one booth, only three votes were cast. For militants, the grief is a minefield: they ask for a boycott and people respond.

"Last time securitymen came in the evening and asked people to cast their votes," says Ashique, a BA student, who lost nine of his classmates in the incident. "We managed to dodge them by escaping from the narrow bylanes of the town and putting a false ink mark on our finger," he says before breaking into what is now a fairly predictable speech on the "long-drawn battle of independence of Kashmiris".

The impact of violence is so deep-rooted here that peopleeven tend to overlook their routine problems which are generally attended to only during the elections. They live with an acute scarcity of water, ironically on the banks of river Jhelum. The lanes and bylanes are litterred with trash. No one’s complaining.

"I don’t care," says a middle-aged woman who looks after a son who became physically disabled after the firing. "Nobody from my family will vote," she says as tears roll down her cheeks. "She has almost sold off everything to see her son back to health," explains a neighbour.

However, there are a few others who think there’s nothing to lose if they vote. "Will my son come back if I don’t vote?" says Hanifa, whose son, Mohamad Shafi, died in the firing. "I voted last time — on my own will," she says.

Bijbehara, which falls under Anantnag Parliamentary constituency, is the hometown of former Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Saeed. His daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, made it to the Assembly from this constituency last time. "Mehbooba is a nice person,"says Tasleema, who works as a clerk in a government office — a job offered to her by the government after her brother’s death. "She generally seems to be talking in favour of people but that is not enough to soothe our injuries."