The seven per cent turnout in the Srinagar bypoll marks a new low for Kashmir’s pro-India parties.
“The youngsters here are angrier than they were in the 1990s,” Andrew Whitehead, who had been to Kashmir several times during that tumultuous decade as a BBC correspondent and went on to write A Mission in Kashmir, told locals who had come for his talk at a café on Residency Road near Srinagar’s Lal Chowk a few days ago. Recalling his conversation with an elderly woman with no separatist leanings, he said she remembered the 1990s as a time when the people were “angry and scared”, unlike now when most of them are “angry and fearless”.
Anger and fearlessness, indeed, were abundantly on display in the streets— and especially around the polling booths as Srinagar went to polls on April 9. With almost all separatist leaders either under house arrest or in jails, internet connections snapped, government forces in huge numbers manning the roads, streets, lanes and bylanes, the constituency that had in 2014 elected the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Tariq Hameed Karra—the MP who resigned protesting against the crackdown on protests following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen’s 21-year-old commander Burhan Wani last July— saw just 7.14 per cent (90,050) of the electorate (12,61,395) cast their votes for deciding who would represent them in the Lok Sabha—former CM Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference (NC), who had lost to Karra by a record 40,000 votes in 2014, his first poll defeat in a four-decade-long political career, or the ruling PDP’s Nazir Ahmad Khan.
This story is from the April 24, 2017 edition of Outlook.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 24, 2017 edition of Outlook.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
The Propaganda Files
A recent spate of Hindi films distorts facts and creates imaginary villains. Century-old propaganda cinema has always relied on this tactic
Will Hindutva Survive After 2024?
The idealogy of Hindutva faces a challenge in staying relevant
A Terrific Tragicomedy
Paul Murray's The Bee Sting is a tender and extravagant sketch of apocalypse
Trapped in a Template
In the upcoming election, more than the Congress, the future of the Gandhi family is at stake
IDEOLOGY
Public opinion will never be devoid of ideology: but we shall destroy ourselves without philosophical courage
The Many Kerala Stories
How Kerala responded to the propaganda film The Kerala Story
Movies and a Mirage
Previously portrayed as a peaceful paradise, post-1990s Kashmir in Bollywood has become politicised
Lights, Cinema, Politics
FOR eight months before the 1983 state elections in undivided Andhra Pradesh, a modified green Chevrolet van would travel non-stop, except for the occasional pit stops and food breaks, across the state.
Cut, Copy, Paste
Representation of Muslim characters in Indian cinema has been limited—they are either terrorists or glorified individuals who have no substance other than fixed ideas of patriotism
The Spectre of Eisenstein
Cinema’s real potency to harness the power of enchantment might want to militate against its use as a servile, conformist propaganda vehicle