The BJP’s impossible task in Kashmir Valley

Sofi Yousuf stood before a gathering of workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party in early September and reeled off a list of promises.

The BJP candidate for the Srigufwara-Bijbehara constituency in South Kashmir in the coming Assembly elections, Yousuf had even drafted a bespoke manifesto for his voters.

It promised new water filtration plants in the area, better roads, allotment of timber so that the poor can build homes, ensuring regular supply of ration and cooking gas; a park and a playground. It made no mention of Article 370 or statehood – both of which were cancelled by the BJP government at the Centre in August, 2019.

“I want to give pen, Quran and computers to the youth of Kashmir… unlike our local regional party leaders who had handed them only guns and stones,” Yousuf thundered during the meeting in Srigufwara in Anantnag district, drawing an applause from the 100-odd party workers in the crowd.

Yousuf also spoke about the plight of Kashmiri youth in prisons in mainland India. “Thousands of youths from this area are behind bars. I promise the people of Bijbehara whose kin are in jails that Sofi Yousuf will get them released,” he said.

He then moved on to tackle more difficult subjects, including Kashmir's aversion towards the saffron party. “You didn’t give anything to the BJP. But BJP gave you so much,” Yousuf said.

The biggest gift of BJP to Kashmir, according to Yousuf, was “peace”. “We ended hartal [shutdown] calendars, stone-pelting and cross firing,” Yosuf said, referring to the improvement in law-and-order situation in the region after the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood.

Towards the end of his speech, Yousuf chose to address the elephant in the room. “I am not going to lie and talk about bringing back Article 370 because nobody has that power,” he said, in an apparent jibe at regional political players like the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party, who have promised the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under the Indian onstitution.

On September 7, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in Jammu to release the party’s manifesto for the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections, he repeated much of Yousuf’s pitch. “I want to tell the nation that Article 370 is history now,” Shah said. “It is not part of the Constitution anymore. It will never return and we will not allow it to happen.”

The broader BJP manifesto promised more welfare measures, including increased pension for the elderly and widows, assistance to farmers, 5 lakh jobs to the youth of the Union territory and an additional 1,000 seats in medical colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. It has also promised to increase health cover under Ayushman Bharat scheme from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 7 lakh.

“Give us a five-year tenure to ensure the development of the region,” Shah appealed to voters in Jammu and Kashmir.

Despite its elaborate list of promises, for the BJP the Kashmir Valley remains a difficult frontier to cross largely for its anti-Muslim politics in the mainland, observers said.

BJP’s Kashmir drought

Since 1983, when it first fought Assembly elections in the Kashmir Valley, the BJP has failed to win a single seat. In the recently held Lok Sabha elections, BJP did not contest even one of the three parliamentary seats in the Valley.

The credit for the party becoming a significant political force in Jammu and Kashmir goes to its performance in Jammu.

In 2014, the party’s victory in 25 assembly seats – all in Jammu – propelled it to become a ruling coalition partner in the Muslim-majority state.

At that time, Jammu region had 37 seats in the 87-member-strong Assembly, while Kashmir had 46 seats. A controversial delimitation exercise in 2020 increased Jammu’s representation to 43 seats, improving BJP’s prospects in the Assembly.

The party’s strategy in the upcoming elections is a tacit acknowledgement of its unpopularity in the Valley. It has decided to field candidates only in 19 of the 47 seats in Kashmir Valley.

But it has not reined in its ambition of forming the government in the Union territory.

On September 6, Ram Madhav, BJP’s in-charge for the Assembly elections, said the party needs to win only 10 seats from Kashmir valley. “We will win 35 seats from Jammu and need 10 more from Kashmir,” Madhav said during a poll campaign in Srinagar.

While the party has not entered into any pre-poll alliance with another party, it has hinted that it will rely on 8-10 independents in Kashmir Valley to make an attempt to form the government.

“If we get one vote more than we took in the last election, it means we have been able to convince at least one voter about our agenda,” said Sajid Yousuf Shah, the party’s media head for Kashmir division. “It’s still a victory for us.”

To convince Kashmiris to elect candidates affiliated with the BJP is a tough nut to crack, Shah conceded. “But we have to remember that once the Congress was also seen as an outcast in Kashmir. Now, it’s an acceptable player in Kashmir,” he said. “It may take us hundreds of years more to convince Kashmiris and we are ready for that.”

Besides, the party’s acceptability in Kashmir Valley has grown over the last one decade, Shah argued. “Earlier, we would see BJP workers in masks and trying to hide their faces when they would attend rallies. Now, our workers are openly admitting that they are with the party,” he said.

In a restive place like Kashmir Valley, joining a Hindu right-wing party has come at a deadly cost for many party workers. For example, between August 5, 2019 and August 2021, at least 23 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and workers were shot dead by militants in Jammu and Kashmir.

The draw of a party at the Centre

One of the key strategies for the party in Kashmir Valley pertains to the far-flung areas of North Kashmir that have a mix of different ethnic groups.

Take the case of the Gurez, a seat in Bandipora reserved for the Scheduled Tribe communities. A region that remains cut off from the rest of the Valley due to snow in winter, Gurez is home to the ethnic Dard tribe.

In the 2020 district development council polls, one of the three seats BJP could win – its only electoral success in the Valley – was in Tulail area of Gurez.

“Unlike Kashmir Valley, people in Gurez have always been pro-India and separatism hasn’t found a foothold here,” a party functionary in Gurez told Scroll. “People here crave basic facilities and development of roads and hospitals. They feel BJP is in power at the Centre and it may help them if they chose a representative from the same party.”

The party has fielded former Member of Legislative Assembly Faqir Mohammad Khan from the segment. “The party leadership has already answered the concerns of the people of Gurez by announcing the Razdan tunnel pass for Gurez in its manifesto. If that happens, we will have road connectivity throughout the year,” the BJP functionary added.

‘What they do in the mainland’

Observers in Kashmir valley say the party’s drought in Kashmir Valley is likely to continue in this election as well.

That is primarily because of the party’s attitude towards minorities in mainland India and the local grievance against the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood.

Even though the party under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee had adopted a “humanitarian” approach towards Kashmir in the past, it did not translate into victory.

“The reason for that is the overall hostile attitude of BJP towards Muslims. It’s not what they say in Kashmir, it’s what they do in the mainland,” said a political observer in Srinagar, asking not to be identified. “Lynching, demolition of houses of Muslims, declaring Muslims foreigners. In this era of information technology, whatever happens in India, Kashmiris go through it and imbibe it and accordingly formulate their attitude towards the BJP.”

Such is the unpopularity and widespread anger in Kashmir Valley against the party for scrapping the special status and statehood of the erstwhile state, that several parties in the fray have accused their rivals of being secret allies of the BJP.

According to the Srinagar-based observer, this is not new.

In the 1970s, when the Janata Party had contested elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah had raked up its links to the Jana Sangh and the Praja Parishad to turn the electorate against it.

The Jammu Praja Parishad, formed in 1947, was a Hindu right-wing organisation fiercely opposed to the “communist-dominated anti-Dogra government" of Sheikh Abdullah. It was against the granting of special status, autonomy and a separate Constitution for Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, it called for the "full integration" of Jammu and Kashmir with India.

“Since Praja Parishad and Jana Sangh were allies of Janata Party in the 1970s, Sheikh Abdullah brought up their links and it ended up giving him a sweeping majority in 1977,” the observer said.

Something similar is happening ahead of the Assembly elections. Political players like National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party have been trading barbs at each other, accusing them of being in cahoots with the BJP. Even formidable independent candidates, parties like Apni Party and the Peoples Conference have been accused of being BJP’s proxies. Maverick Kashmiri politician Engineer Rashid, who was released on bail on Wednesday, and his party have also been accused of being “proxies” of the BJP.

“I doubt if BJP will be able to debut in Kashmir in the given environment,” the observer added.