THE election to the vidhan sabha in Jammu and Kashmir has been far from peaceful and in that sense not quite free and fair. Even so the results should by and large be accepted as reflecting the popular will.
By any reckoning, it has been a momentous election. It is bound to have far-reaching repercussions for the state and possibly for the whole country. The identity of the principal contestants – the National Conference and the Congress (I) -, the determination with which they have fought the electoral battle, the violence that the fight has generated, and finally the results (not fully out) have all combined to give the poll an extraordinary importance.
A lot of people in the state and the rest of the Union were keen that a contest between the Congress (I) and the National Conference be avoided. Indeed, it is reasonably certain that even the leaders of the rival formations, Mrs. Gandhi and Dr. Farooq Abdullah, would have preferred an alliance if they could agree on the terms. Both had their hotheads and their compulsions. While it was, for example, not possible for Dr. Abdullah to concede anything like equality to the Congress (I) in the valley without making himself highly vulnerable, Mrs. Gandhi could not accept the status of a junior partner and keep out of the valley without a loss of face.
For Mrs. Gandhi the choice must have been particularly painful. Her role as leader of the Congress (I) clashed with her role as Prime Minister. If she had to protect the party’s honour, she could not be insensitive to the dangers inherent in taking on the heir of Sheikh Abdullah. She would have known that the defeat of the National Conference and the installation of a Congress (I) government in Srinagar could offend the particularistic sentiment which remains quite strong in the valley and perhaps even push Dr. Abdullah himself into playing the kind of disruptive role that his father had played in the fifties and sixties in order to maintain his popularity.
Polarization Not New
The fears which a lot of well-meaning people expressed when the talks for an alliance between the Congress (I) and the National Conference broke down last April have not been allayed by the election results. It is not a happy situation that a party which rules at the Centre should in the state vidhan sabha represent mainly the predominantly Hindu constituencies in the Jammu region.
A polarization between the Kashmir valley and the Jammu region is not new. It is as old as the state itself. It existed under the Dogra rule and it has existed ever since. Events after independence – merger of the state with the Indian Union, removal of the Dogra dynasty and the establishment of popular rule – have not eliminated this divergence between the two parts of the state. It is also not for the first time that the National Conference has run away with most of the seats in the valley and a party in power in New Delhi has annexed a majority of the constituencies in the Jammu area. It happened in 1978 when the Janata was in office at the Centre.
But that was a familiar situation. The Janata in the Jammu region was a euphemism for the Jana Sangh which had been well entrenched in the area since in the late forties. Indeed, the agitation mounted by it against Sheikh Abdullah in the early fifties was perhaps one of the major factors which pushed him into an intransigent posture. The Congress (I) is a different proposition by virtue of its secular character and the secular credentials of its leader, Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
This is the first time that the Congress has contested elections in the state in the proper sense of the term. The party did not exist in the state till the sixties. When it was “formed” during Mr. GM Sadiq’s chief ministership, it was no more than another name for that section of the National Conference which had sided with Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Mr. Sadiq and Mir Qasim in their confrontation with the Sheikh in 1953. The first genuine election in Jammu and Kashmir was held only in 1978 when the Congress was in utter disarray.
In fact, it will be fairly accurate to say that while Congressmen in the sense of nationalists have always existed in the state, the party did not exist till quite recently. It truly came into being when during the emergency Mr. Sanjay Gandhi brought together a number of Muslim young men and promoted them. They began to assert themselves in 1980 when Mrs. Gandhi returned to power in New Delhi.
Eclipse Of Qasim
Naturally, these young men have reacted very differently from those who had grown and lived under the shadow of the Sheikh. Thus while Mir Qasim believed that in the circumstances it was in the state’s and the country’s best interest to let Dr. Abdullah succeed his father both as chief minister and as undisputed leader of the people in the valley, Mufti Sayyed and others of his persuasion have opposed this view for the obvious reason that they cannot survive as a party if they are not prepared no challenge Dr. Abdullah. Mrs. Gandhi has favoured them which explains the steady eclipse of the Mir Qasim group.
It is difficult to say what precisely have been Mrs. Gandhi’s calculations. For all we know, she might have been guided at least initially by factors related strictly to Jammu and Kashmir, her distrust of the Sheikh, for instance. But as it happens, the election in the state has taken place in a specific all-India political context, resulting from the Akali agitation in Punjab, the defeat of the Congress (I) in Andhra and Karnataka, followed by the party’s spectacular victory in the Union territory of Delhi and its fairly good performance in a series of by-elections in various states.
The defeat in Andhra and Karnataka last January convinced Mrs. Gandhi that she had to fight hard to survive. The elections in Delhi last February thus virtually become a battle for survival. A defeat there would have made it difficult for her to resist the demand for an early poll to the Lok Sabha. Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee had already demanded it in the wake of the elections in Andhra and Karnataka. The Congress (I) threw everything it had into the Delhi fight and won handsomely. It is still not possible to be sure of the relative importance of the factors which accounted for the Congress (I) victory. But the results indicated the possibility that a significant section of the caste Hindu vote might have shifted from the Bharatiya Janata party (Jana Sangh in a new incarnation) to the Congress (I).
There was an element of speculation in this assessment when it was first made in these columns on February 16. But the evidence was indisputable. The Congress (I) had increased its share of vote in the Union territory from about 39 per cent in January 1980 to around 49 per cent; it had done so despite the loss of a certain percentage of Muslim vote; and the RSS cadres had been less than enthusiastic in their support for the BJP.
BJP Has Lost Ground
Delhi had been a Jana Sangh stronghold and the Congress (I) had successfully stormed it. Mrs. Gandhi has now repeated it in the Jammu region. And it appears certain that if there was a poll in Punjab tomorrow, a vast majority of the Hindus there would vote in favour of the Congress (I) and not the BJP.
This does not necessarily mean that the BJP has gone into an irreversible decline, or that the Congress (I) has captured a good chunk of the BJP’s popular base in north India on a longterm basis. For one thing, the pressures on the voter in UP or Bihar, for example, are different from those in Jammu or Punjab or even Delhi. For another, the Indian political scene is too fluid to permit one to make a firm assessment and say that the trend will continue to favour the Congress (I). But right now that appears to be the case. The BJP has clearly lost ground to the ruling party in the Union territory of Delhi and in the Jammu region and possibly in Punjab.
It would be difficult to say, for sure, that Mrs. Gandhi had the BJP in mind when she decided to fight the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir. But the Hindu voter in the Jammu area must have been impressed by her willingness to take on the National Conference which he distrusts. By this logic she would have been handicapped in her struggle against the BJP in the Jammu region if she had made common cause with Dr. Abdullah. No one can say how many seats she would have won in the Jammu area if she had entered into an alliance with the National Conference.
It is perhaps premature to say that by inflicting a crushing defeat on the BJP first in Delhi and now in the Jammu region, she has strengthened her position in northern Indian states, including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh where the BJP has been her most formidable challenger. But such a possibility should not be ruled out. And if that has happened, we are witnessing changes of historic propositions in the working of the Indian political system.
The Times of India, 9 June 1983