Was the uprising in 1989 a reaction to the 1987 rigging or rejection of the 1975 accord? - Rising Kashmir

7.4.16

Was the uprising in 1989 a reaction to the 1987 rigging or rejection of the 1975 accord? - Rising Kashmir - Many writers, columnists and scribes — mostly from India and a few from Jammu and Kashmir as well — often talk about the 1989 armed revolt in Jammu and Kashmir with the rigged elections of 1987 as reference point.

Many of them articulate that if the infamous 1987 elections were not rigged by India, things could have been different in the restive Himalayan region. They argue that if the elections would have been fair, the Indian version of democracy would have perhaps flourished in Jammu and Kashmir.

Is this assessment right or erroneous?

To find the right answer one needs to dig a litter deeper and address this question by contextualizing and historicizing the K-issue.

Even the staunchest of Indian nationalists agree that Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s unceremonious and forced exit in 1953 would be the first in a series of similar undemocratic interventions from New Delhi, political blunders and maneuvers that would vitiate the disputed region’s future.

It is no secret that Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had openly talked about the possibility of an independent Kashmir by as early as 1949. Senior Abdullah, then Kashmir’s tallest political figure, had visualized the possibility of an “independent Kashmir” in his interviews to two foreign correspondents, Davidson and Ward Price, in Srinagar, in January 1949.