The Tao cafe in Srinagar, capital of the disputed Kashmir region in India, is a bustling place. At outdoor tables shaded by majestic trees, Himalayan trout is served with loaves of fresh bread to the young, affluent Kashmiris who frequent it.
But when conversation turns to politics, a hush falls, even though it’s an election season. People describe a loss of direction, a drift into an unsettled future.
They are not sure what place mostly Muslim Kashmir has in an increasingly Hindu-nationalist India. They see themselves as caught between India and Pakistan, the two powers still bitterly at odds over the region. They feel trapped in cycles of oppression by India’s government and violent resistance to that authority.
On Wednesday, people began voting in the first election for Kashmir’s regional legislature in a decade. The vote will restore a degree of self-rule five years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Kashmir of its semiautonomous status and brought it more tightly under Indian control.
But many young Kashmiris say the return of democracy is partial at best. They say the ballot will not fully restore their voices, taken away by what they call India’s criminalization of dissent and freedom of expression in Kashmir.
“Should we accept our fate or just wait for the situation to change? I am confused,” Idrees Ahmad, 33, told friends at the cafe. It was a markedly resigned statement for a young man who, 14 years earlier, had joined a bloody civilian uprising after a Srinagar teenager was struck and killed by a tear-gas canister.
During the decades when India was trying to crush a Pakistan-backed militancy and fully assimilate Kashmir, many young Kashmiris found solace in two things. One was street protests and other forms of public expression; the other, participation in local democratic politics.
Even as tens of thousands died in fighting between separatist insurgents and Indian security forces, a culture of free speech — graffiti, gatherings in public parks, discussions in cafes like Tao — provided many with a sense of nonviolent release for their rage and confusion.
No matter how dynastic and self-serving the political parties were, participating in the process gave Kashmiris some semblance of ownership, even if it all played out in the shadow of an Indian military presence.
The worst of the violence has subsided in recent years. But a chill has fallen over the region. Bringing Kashmir under New Delhi’s direct rule in 2019 ushered in what local leaders called an occupation administered mostly by outsiders.
Even Kashmiri politicians who had fought against the separatists were put under house arrest in large numbers. Rights groups, journalists and civil society have been cowed, with any questioning of the legitimacy of New Delhi’s rule essentially outlawed. Many Kashmiri dissidents still languish in jails in faraway Indian cities.
At a corner table at the Tao, most of a group of eight young Kashmiris said their identity and their dignity were under threat. They spoke of feeling suffocated and uncertain about the future.
Siddiq Wahid, a professor of international relations at Shiv Nadar University near New Delhi, said the Indian government was not solely to blame for that sense of alienation.
The Kashmiri leaders who spearheaded the long struggle for self-rule lacked a clear strategy, he said. While most Kashmiris wanted an independent homeland, separatists were divided over whether to seek independence, integration into Pakistan or more autonomy within India.
“You can fight a state, you can resist a state, but you can’t play a zero-sum game, because you don’t stand a chance,” Mr. Wahid said.
New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, and the region’s police chief did not respond to requests for interviews.
The election — a multistage process whose results will be announced on Oct. 8 — is being held against the backdrop of a slowly changing political landscape.
Mr. Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has been working for years to secure a foothold in Kashmir. In villages and towns, many young Muslim men have joined its ranks, believing that as India’s governing party it can bring more development. But they often wear masks while campaigning for the B.J.P., fearing retribution.
During a speech this week in Jammu, the Hindu-majority part of the state once called Jammu and Kashmir, Mr. Modi said his policies had indeed led to more investment and infrastructure development.
“In the last 10 years, the change witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir is nothing short of a dream come true,” he said. “The stone which used to be thrown at police and the army is now being utilized for building a new Jammu and Kashmir.”
Even as the B.J.P. hopes to gain greater acceptance, high turnout in an election for the national Parliament last spring showed that people would use whatever instrument they were left with to keep Mr. Modi’s party at bay.
On a recent afternoon, about 30 miles south of Srinagar, Abrar Rashid, 26, was being carried on the shoulders of young supporters. In June, his father, widely known as Engineer Rashid, won a seat in India’s Parliament despite being imprisoned. His son led his campaign.
“We are Kashmiris first, and we have to fight to preserve our identity,” said Mr. Rashid, whose father was jailed years ago on charges of funding terrorism.
Just a few years ago, some of these same supporters were using stones and their own bodies to try to stop soldiers from killing militants. Now, they were celebrating the elevation of a Kashmiri leader in the national legislature of India, a country whose elections many people in Kashmir boycotted for decades.
Shahid Reyaz Thoker, a political activist, shouted slogans and danced on a pickup truck as he campaigned for a candidate from the People’s Democratic Party, a regional organization that once governed the state.
When he was a teenager, Mr. Thoker was detained by the police and sent to a juvenile home. Officers told his father he had participated in protests over the killings of militants and was preparing to join the insurgency.
“What does a 20-year-old want?” Mr. Thoker asked, as a loudspeaker blared slogans of self-rule. “A mobile phone, a few friends, a good number of Instagram followers and some pocket money.”
“But I want nothing of that sort,” he added, “just peace, and peace with dignity.”
At the Tao cafe, a group of teenage girls, some wearing Kashmiri-embroidered silk salwar kameez, giggled as they took selfies in front of flower beds. An irritated waiter served them fried vegetable pakora.
One girl said she hoped to become a physician, another a fashion designer. They were holding tight to those aspirations, despite what they described as the childhood trauma of the Indian military presence.
“These children have dreams; they need a stable environment to achieve them,” said Ruhani Syed, an artist at another table.
A police officer arrived at the cafe, apparently to meet some friends. Suddenly, everyone went silent, and the mood grew somber.
Ahmad Parvez, a singer, said he sometimes felt that the world around him was collapsing. Ugly high-rises were replacing old bazaars. India, hoping to present a picture of normalcy, has encouraged tourism in Kashmir, and money has poured into the ecologically fragile region.
As a child, Mr. Parvez said, he performed with a school troupe inside military garrisons. That changed after he took a picture of a camp near his home, which had once been a watch factory. Soldiers beat him.
As he got older, he began reading books, and questions about his identity and nationality seemed to resolve themselves. One day, he borrowed a guitar from a friend and started singing. Within a few months, he was an internet sensation.
Then India revoked the semi-autonomy of Kashmir, and everything seemed tenuous again.
“I used to hate taking pictures,” he said. “Today, I don’t leave anything without capturing. I feel all this will vanish very soon, and there will be nothing left.”
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