Complex Motivations Behind Voter Turnout in Kashmir

The killing of 26 tourists in Pahalgam on April 23 came as a ‘shock’, because never before had terrorists targeted tourists, says Anuradha Bhasin, an astute observer of events in the Union Territory.

It's not that terrorism had disappeared after the removal of Article 370 in 2019, as the Modi government constantly claimed, Bhasin said in a podcast discussion with Sidharth Bhatia.

The reaction among ordinary Kashmiris was one of grief, she said. “They came out to help, as they have on every occasion earlier – that is Kashmiriyat.”

But, she said, the constant pushing of the “tourism narrative” to show things were normal was creating “alienation” among the locals. It hid the “ugliness of the Kashmiris being economically disempowered—new land laws, allowing outsiders to bid for contracts” were causing resentment, she said. “There was a complete erasure of what is happening in Kashmiris.”