At National Conference (NC) gatherings ahead of polling for the 2024 Lok Sabha, Dr. Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar are greeted with chants of “Aaya, Aaya, Sher Aaya” (The lion is here). Recently, in Baramulla, Omar Abdullah, after filing his nomination, was cheered with the same fervour.

Similarly, supporters of the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Srinagar candidate Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra and People’s Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone chant,“Nakli shera yeti wat dera, asli shera aa gaya” (Fake lions should leave, for the true lion is here).

While “Aaya ,Aaya, Sher Aaya” is a common political slogan, old separatist phrases like “Jis Kashmir jo khoon se seencha gaya hai, woh Kashmir hamara hai ” (The Kashmir drenched in blood is our Kashmir) have also seen a revival, albeit with a twist.

At PDP rallies, another separatist slogan resurfaces: “Na biknay wali PDP, na jhuknay wali PDP, national hari” (The PDP doesn’t sell out, the PDP doesn’t bow down, it’s the national champion). Iltija Mufti, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, passionately shouted these slogans at a rally in South Kashmir, standing atop a vehicle. Previously, these slogans were associated with the late separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani for his ‘unwavering’ political stance.

However, the most striking occurrence of sloganeering occurred at a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rally in Pulwama, where party workers chanted “Jis Kashmir jo khoon se seencha gaya hai, woh Kashmir hamara hai ” (The Kashmir drenched in blood is our Kashmir), alongside the slogan “Ragdo Ragdo, NC Ragdo, PDP Ragdo.” The ‘‘ragdo’’ slogan, traditionally linked with anti-India protests, gained traction during the 2008 mass protests in the Valley. Its adoption by the BJP in Pulwama garnered widespread attention.

Beyond the borders of Jammu and Kashmir too the slogan ‘‘Sher Aaya’’ too holds sway. When Tashi Gyalson, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Ladakh, went to file his nomination, he was welcomed with chants of “Dekho, Dekho, Sher Aaya” (Look, look, the lion is here).

The popular reference to the lion, the king of the jungle, in sloganeering in Kashmir originates from ‘‘Sher-e-Kashmir Zindabad’’ (Long live the Lion of Kashmir), honouring the National Conference patriarch Sheikh Abdullah’s leadership. It symbolises Kashmiri pride, strength and unity. In recent years, the reference to the sher (lion) has been embraced by candidates during Panchayat and District Development Council (DDC) elections, gaining traction on social media amid political shifts post-Article 370.

However, as traditional political parties reclaimed their influence, these social media sensations gradually dwindled. The resurgence of traditional politics has overshadowed the fleeting fame of these self-proclaimed sher personas, indicating a transition towards more substantive political involvement.

As new slogans echo through Kashmir, so do the narratives put forth by the region’s political parties.

In Srinagar’s old city, a playground in Hawal is adorned with banners showcasing generational leaders from the NC: Sheikh Abdullah, his son Dr Farooq Abdullah, and Omar Abdullah alongwith Srinagar’s constituency candidate, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi. The atmosphere buzzes with festivity.

Traditionally, Srinagar residents have avoided voting due to separatist boycott calls. But this time, things are different. Most separatists are either in jail or have chosen silence.

Mohammad Shafi, an artisan, says he will vote, no matter what. “There is no work, no jobs and no one to turn to,” he says.

Local NC workers feel upbeat about the expected voter turnout for the upcoming polls. On May 6, party leaders like Tanveer Sadiq and Salman Sagar took the stage. Their perspectives differ from those of Shafi.

“Who brought the BJP into Jammu and Kashmir? Those people who sought your votes against the BJP in 2014,” Sadiq, refers to the alliance between the Peoples Democratic Party and the BJP in 2015, which resulted in the formation of the BJP-PDP government. The alliance collapsed in 2018 when the BJP withdrew from the government, ushering in a seismic political shift in Jammu and Kashmir.

A year later, on August 5, 2019, J&K underwent significant changes: it was reorganised into two Union Territories, J&K and Ladakh; Article 370 and Article 35A were repealed; and the J&K constitution was nullified. Since the fall of the PDP-BJP government in 2018, J&K has not seen assembly elections and the present parliamentary election is the first major electoral exercise since the Abrogation.

According to Salman Sagar, the forthcoming elections transcend mere infrastructure concerns like electricity, roads or housing. He says voting in the polls for the NC would indicate that people have rejected the monumental decision made on August 5, 2019.

As the elections for the three parliamentary constituencies of Kashmir draw near, the conversation in the region largely revolves around the pre-August 5, 2019 discourse, including fake encounters, killings, Kashmir’s autonomy, relations with Pakistan, arrests of youths, 1987 election rigging and the long-drawn Kashmir conflict. The role of the ruling BJP is crucial to all, with almost all political parties accusing each other of either being proxies of the BJP or aligned with the BJP.

In the upcoming elections for the three seats in Kashmir—South Kashmir (Anantnag-Rajouri) on May 25, Srinagar on May 13 and North Kashmir (Baramulla) on May 20—the BJP has opted not to field any candidates.

Polling for the Anantnag-Rajouri seat, initially scheduled for May 7, was postponed to May 25 at the request of the BJP and the People’s Conference, despite neither party participating in the polls. This delay has been detrimental to the NC and the PDP, with party leaders labelling it a strategy to disenfranchise a significant portion of the Gujjar community. Nomadic Bakerwal Gujjars of Rajouri and Poonch traditionally migrate to higher mountains in Kashmir in the summer, along with their herds.

Despite not nominating any candidates in the three Kashmiri constituencies, the BJP continues to be actively vocal in the electoral campaign. The party’s leadership at the national level emphasises its efforts in bringing peace to J&K, quelling instances of stone-throwing and strikes and repealing of Article 370. But the BJP’s continued campaigning, despite not fielding candidates, has raised eyebrows.

“If they had fielded any candidate from the Valley, they would have faced defeat and lost even bail bonds,” says NC vice-president Omar Abdullah.

But the BJP remains undeterred.

The party’s state president, Ravinder Raina, is currently touring different areas of Kashmir. Its J&K General Secretary, Vibodh Gupta, addressed voters in Rajouri on May 7, urging them to dismiss what he termed “misleading narratives” from “power-hungry’ leaders of the NC, the Congress and the PDP in the Rajouri-Poonch-Anantnag parliamentary constituency.

“Voters should reject the NC and the PDP for spreading falsehoods and animosity,” he says.

However, the BJP has refrained from openly endorsing any specific candidate, which has created a sense of ambiguity. The BJP’s strategy of neither fully revealing its stance nor completely concealing it in the three Kashmiri constituencies has heightened political discussions about the party, which has ruled Delhi for a decade now.

In Rajouri, Mushtaq Bukhari, who joined the BJP in February this year, urged his Pahari community voters to support the PDP candidate for the South Kashmir constituency, Mehbooba Mufti. Mehbooba is facing the NC leader and Gujjar spiritual leader, Mian Altaf, in the constituency.

In North Kashmir, the political theatre unfolds with more clarity. The battleground for North Kashmir’s seat sees a clash between Omar Abdullah and People’s Conference chairman Sajad Lone. Omar seizes every opportunity to portray Lone as a proxy of the BJP, while Lone retaliates by accusing Omar of playing a dangerous game in Kashmir for which people in the past have paid with their lives.

On May 7, Omar journeyed to North Kashmir to address his supporters. Following a string of speakers, when his turn arrived, he departed from his usual rhetoric and directly implicated Lone as being closely aligned with the BJP for an extended period.

“You claimed that the prime minister is your elder brother. Congratulations to you. I don’t have any relations with him (the prime minister). He was your elder brother and as a younger brother, how did you use this relationship? Here, a spree of arrests took place and detainees were sent to jails outside the state. Did you try to stop it?” Omar asked, referring to Lone.

Omar says Lone became Minister in the PDP-BJP government on the BJP quota and even in 2018, after the fall of the PDP-BJP government, he got a letter of support from the BJP to form the government. “The BJP only supports those who are ideologically aligned with it for the Chief Ministership,” he adds.

Pointing towards Engineer Rashid, a former MLA currently held in Tihar jail on charges of money laundering since 2019, Omar alleges, “I am saying with confidence that you used this elder brother-younger brother relationship against your own people and sent them to Tihar jail. I am saying it with full confidence.” Rashid has filed a nomination from the North Kashmir constituency.

Lone says these accusations of being a proxy for the BJP are dangerous.

“All parties have had alliances with the BJP. The National Conference was previously allied with the BJP. The PDP and the BJP formed a coalition and the People’s Conference also had an alliance with the BJP,” Lone says. He says the BJP’s presence in Kashmir is peripheral. “In the last polls, the BJP garnered one percent of the vote in North Kashmir and 0.25 percent in Srinagar. We secured 23 percent of the votes, while the PDP also obtained 18 percent. Omar’s allegations imply that a party with one percent of the vote share has proxies who have 60 percent of the votes,” he adds.

“A year ago, I foresaw that the BJP would refrain from contesting elections, especially after the removal of Article 370, which marked their first electoral test in Kashmir. They were likely reluctant to face another moral defeat, as they would have likely received only one percent of the vote once again. Hence, they chose not to field any candidates,” Lone says.

Lone alleges that the BJP has engaged both Omar and Farooq Abdullah to issue such statements in order to project anti-NC votes as BJP votes. “By doing so, the BJP aims to convey that those who opposed the NC were aligned with it, thereby signifying a moral endorsement of Article 370’s abrogation,” Lone says.

Unlike the big rallies of other parties, the PDP opts for road shows. Since the abrogation of Article 370, support for the PDP, once the largest party in J&K in 2014, has dwindled.

Most of the PDP leaders deserted Mehbooba Mufti and formed the Apni Party, led by Altaf Bukhari. The Apni Party, since its formation in 2020, is regarded as the B-team of the BJP in Kashmir. Bukhari, who was the Finance Minister in the PDP-BJP government, is now a fierce critic of Mehbooba. In 2018, after the fall of the PDP-BJP government, Mehbooba wanted Bukhari to become Chief Minister with the NC’s support. She sent her letter of support via fax to the then Governor Satya Pal Malik. However, instead of inviting the PDP-NC alliance to form the government, Malik infamously claimed he didn’t receive the communique because the fax machine was not working and dissolved the Assembly. Malik was J&K’s last governor before it was divided into two Union Territories and Articles 370 and 35 A were revoked.

In Tral, which was once a militant hotbed in South Kashmir, now part of the Srinagar constituency after the 2022 delimitation exercise, Mehbooba, along with the PDP’s Srinagar candidate Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra, spoke to the people on May 7, urging them to vote for the PDP. She said that guns and stones have not brought any good to Kashmiris and only votes can bring about change, not violence.

“Do you remember when you voted for Mufti Sahab (her father and former PDP chief Mufti Mohammad Syeed) in 2002? He brought development to the region and opened the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road,” Mehbooba says during a road show.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad route opened in 2005, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was Chief Minister. It was considered the biggest ‘‘confidence building measure’’ between India and Pakistan. However, it was closed in April 2019 and has remained closed for travel and trade since.

Mehbooba says that the challenges faced by the youth of Tral are well-known to everyone present. She argues that Parra has experienced these challenges firsthand. The PDP leader, after his detention in 2019, was held in a dark underground cell at sub-zero temperature, deprived of sleep, kicked, slapped, beaten with rods, stripped naked, and hung upside down.

Mehbooba stresses that the significance of these polls goes beyond mere infrastructure concerns like electricity and electric poles. She argues that it revolves around the deprivation of rights and dignity suffered by the people of Kashmir since August 19, 2019. Mehbooba believes Parra is the most suitable candidate to represent these grievances, having spent two-and-a-half years in jail and witnessing the plight of numerous youth.

Parra, in his rallies, plays Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s epic poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ to encourage people to vote. He talks about issues like the incarceration of youth and the denial of passports. Parra stresses that today’s vote is crucial for the survival of Kashmir, not just for the PDP, but for the future of the land.

His rival, NC candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, who is also the spiritual leader of the Shias, has been openly speaking against the abrogation of Article 370, calling it a “collective humiliation of Kashmiris.”

His opponents praise his stand, with even the PDP lauding his views. People weep at his rallies as he makes Kashmiri identity the core of his speeches. He calls the BJP “oppressors” and asserts that he is fighting against oppression. “I will not remain silent. You can jail me. You can send the NIA (National Investigation Agency) after me. But I am not the one who will be cowed down,” Ruhullah says in one of his rallies in Srinagar. “I will not back down in my fight against the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),” he adds.

However, in the midst of this electoral melee and brinkmanship, Dr Farooq Abdullah stands out. During his rally in uptown Srinagar on May 5, he described the election period as a “time of martyrdom.” As he recited ‘‘Ae Mard-e-Mujahid Jaag Zara, Ab Waqt-e-Shahadat Hai Aya,’’ the crowd stirred. In the 1990s, the song ‘Ae Mard-e-Mujahid’ from the 1958 Pakistani film Changez Khan gained immense popularity in Kashmir. The term ‘mard-e-mujahid’ translates to ‘crusader,’ one who struggles on behalf of Islam.

Farooq, in his impassioned plea, urged people to vote, asserting, “We were never slaves; they seek to enslave us.” As Kashmiris have long remained silent after the abrogation of Article 370, it is the region’s politicians who are now giving voice to their concerns.But only time will reveal whether the awaam (masses) buys into the rhetoric.

Naseer Ganai in Srinagar

(This appeared in the print as 'Roar Returns To The Valley')