‘Polls a way to resolve day-to-day problems’

Take the time when my brother was picked up by the police. My family could do nothing. The police wouldn’t listen to our pleas. There was no one to turn to for help. Our local MLA was in Jammu — he had won the elections in 1996 when our entire area had boycotted it. He represented us in the Assembly for six long years, not bothered at all about us, rightly so since we had not supported him.

So, for me, these elections have nothing to do with the larger issue of Kashmir. Instead, they are more about administration — if we participate in them, we’ll have our own government. I have a question for those who want me to boycott the polls. How will the Hurriyat help me get relief from the harassment of police and security forces?

I believe the Hurriyat should have joined the poll process after delinking it from the larger issue of statehood. They could then have used the floor of the Assembly to raise their demand. It would have been more effective that shouting it out during Friday prayers or in newspapers. For, whether we like it or not, the Assembly remains the most credible democratic institution in the eyes of the international community. So if our representatives there seek a permanent resolution to the Kashmir problem, the world will listen.

We all know the struggle for political rights will take a long time. Poll boycott means we should forget all else. Can people live without roads or proper medical facilities? If the Hurriyat believes this struggle is only for political rights, they should evolve a conducive atmosphere. How can a political movement survive when people are not even allowed to move freely?

— As told to MJ

’Polls a sham, only to please the world’

Nineteen-year-old Mohammad Aslam Shah of Kupwara has decided not to vote in the first phase of polls on Sept 16

DEMOCRACY is about options, however skewed they may be. And that should include the right to not vote. I have resolved not to cast my vote even as my townsfolk are caught up in election rallies across the district.

My decision stems from my perception of Kashmir’s electoral history, discredited by massive rigging. The people who believe that voting will mitigate our sufferings and usher peace in troubled Kashmir are living in a fool’s paradise. Take for instance, the 1996 Assembly elections in Kashmir, during which candidates assured people that participating in a democratic process would ensure that their elected nominees would fight to stop human rights abuses and custodial killings. But I feel Kashmir, under a democratic set-up in the last six years, has seen the worst phase of violence and human rights abuse. If voting could have solved our problems,the situation here should have been normal by now.

In the last six years, I have known nothing but violence, guns, abuse and hopelessness. What are the incentives for voting in these elections? If we do vote, it would only lend legitimacy to the barbaric actions of people who have turned our lives into hell. I pity my generation for they have known no peace.

The current poll process is a sham that has only one agenda: to please the world. It will be rigged and the result is a foregone conclusion. It is just a ritual to show the world that democracy exists in Kashmir.

My rage over the poll process partly has its origin in my torn identity card. Even before the poll process kicked off, I got a taste of the kind of democracy I would have to put up with. Last month in Srinagar, I was stopped by security personnel who wanted me to prove my identity. I showed my identity card. But the officer tore it and told me that I would have to get a voter identity card. I wondered what kind of a democracy was this where a resident has to prove his identity to an outsider.

Yes, the gun will not solve our problems. It is only through dialogue that this issue can be resolved. But for that, the parties who matter will have to shun their intransigence.

— As told to Tariq Mir