The Muslim United Front (MUF) was a 'polyglot coalition' of

Islamic Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

Kashmiri political parties that contested the 1987 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election in the erstwhile

Indian state India is a federal union comprising 28 states and 8 union territories, for a total of 36 subnational entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into 800 districts and smaller administrative divisions by the respe ...

of Jammu and Kashmir. The

Jamaat-e-Islami Jamaat-e-Islami is an Islamist fundamentalist movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamist author and theorist Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is considered one of the most influential Isla ...

of Jammu and Kashmir was a key constituent party of the coalition. The MUF won four Assembly seats in the 1987 election.Saima Bhat
Battleground Amira Kadal
Kashmir Life, 24 March 2016. However, widespread rigging of the election by the ruling National Conference party was reported. In the absence of such rigging, commentators believe that it could have won fifteen to twenty seats, a contention admitted by the National Conference leader

Farooq Abdullah Farooq Abdullah (born 21 October 1937) is an Indian politician who serves as current president of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference. He has served as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on several occasions since 1982 till 2002, and ...

. The disaffection caused by the election gave rise to the Kashmir insurgency, which continues to this day. The present day Hurriyat Conference is largely inspired by the former MUF coalition.

Background

In 1986 the ruling National Conference, widely accused of corruption, came to an accord with Indian National Congress Party which threatened to erode what remained of Kashmir's autonomy. Moreover, the growing emphasis on secularism led to a backlash with Islamic parties becoming more popular. The key players among these parties were the Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir and its student wing, ''Islami Jamiat-i Tulaba''.

Formation of Muslim United Front

In response to these issues was formed the MUF, which attracted support from separatists, youth and the pro-Pakistan

. MUF's election manifesto stressed the need to solve all outstanding issues according to the

Simla Agreement The Simla Agreement, also spelled Shimla Agreement, was a peace treaty signed between India and Pakistan on 2 July 1972 in Shimla, the capital of Himachal Pradesh. It followed the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which began after India interv ...

, work for Islamic unity and against political interference from the centre. Their slogan in public rallies was wanting the law of the Quran in the Assembly. The Islamic political coalition mobilized support on the basis of Kashmiriyat. The movement's grassroots campaign was said to be 'enthusiastically energetic', attracting youth activists who had been born in the 1960s. A Pandit activist recorded in her memoirs that there had been a 'wave' in favour of the MUF in early 1987 in the Valley.

1987 election and rigging

The 1987 election witnessed the highest record of voters participation, with eighty per cent of the people in the Valley having voted. The election of 1987 were considered to be the most compromised in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. Voting was held in the Valley on 23 March 1987 and a Delhi-based magazine reported that strong arms tactics and rigging were used all over the Valley and gangs took over the polling stations forcibly and ballot boxes were pre-stamped in favour of the National Conference. The MUF won in only 4 of the 43 electoral constituencies it had contested, although it received a vote share of 31.9%. Scholar Victoria Schofield has stated that the MUF might have won four more seats if there was no electoral fraud. On the other hand, an anonymous source in the Intelligence Bureau has advanced the estimate that the MUF may have lost approximately 13 seats due to electoral malpractice. The elections were allegedly rigged in favour of Abdullah, Most commentators state that this led to the rise of an armed insurgency movement composed, in part, of those who unfairly lost the elections In July 1988, a series of demonstrations, strikes, and attacks on the Indian government effectively marked the beginning of the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, which escalated into the most severe security issue in India during the 1990s.

Aftermath

The MUF officially rejected the result of elections saying that the elections are rigged in the favour of

and called for an free and fair investigation but instead of punishing those responsible for the rigging the Indian government arrested and tortured the MUF activists, According to Bose the number of activists arrested and tortured was in the hundreds and possibly thousands. Most of them were kept in custody until late 1987 or early 1988, Among those activists arrested was Yasin Malik and Mohammad Yusuf Shah, Then in 1988 as a retaliation the MUF organised a series of demonstrations, strikes and attacks against government playing a crucial role in transforming spontaneous, decentralized opposition to Indian rule into a full-fledged

insurgency An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare against a larger authority. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric warfare, asymmetric nature: small irregular forces ...

, The MUF used distinctly Islamic themes to mobilise crowds and justify their use of violence sought to establish an Islamic democratic state where the rights of minorities would be protected according to Quran and Sunnah and the economy would be organised on the principles of

Islamic socialism Islamic socialism is a political philosophy that incorporates elements of Islam into a system of socialism. As a term, it was coined by various left-wing Muslim leaders to describe a more spiritual form of socialism. Islamic socialists believe ...

also seek the separation of Jammu and Kashmir from Indian administration. Many younger supporters of MUF started to support and joining the militant organisations which had up till the election seen a wane in their support and numerical strength. According to Maulana Abbas Ansari, a member of the Muslim United Front, the youth would have not picked up the gun nor have known of Nehru's promise of a plebiscite to the people of Kashmir had the election not been rigged. At the same time,

Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...

victory in Soviet-Afghan war added extra confidence and comfort in the armed insurgency against Indian administration also evolved the narrative of the

Kashmir conflict The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict over the Kashmir region, primarily between India and Pakistan, and also between China and India in the northeastern portion of the region. The conflict started after the partition of India in 1 ...

by steering the struggle away from

nationalism Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...

and towards

Jihadism Jihadism is a neologism for modern, armed militant Political aspects of Islam, Islamic movements that seek to Islamic state, establish states based on Islamic principles. In a narrower sense, it refers to the belief that armed confrontation ...

. Scholars see that the rise in the organisation's support caused the Congress-National Conference alliance to rig the 1987 election.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *