K N Pandita
Why despised
State or national leadership and ruling authorities of all hues usually shun discussing the fate and the problems of internally displaced Kashmiri Pandits living in exile for three decades and a half.
The reasons for this chilling apathy, though many, are mostly absurd.
Did the Pandits dissuade or hinder them at any point in time from becoming literate?
Exemplary fortitude
Yes, many educated persons from the minority community managed to find petty government jobs during the Mughal, Pathan and Dogra rule over the State which fills nearly four centuries of J&K history. The reason was not religion; it was the principle of demand and supply. State administration is run by bureaucracy which means the educated class.
Interestingly, even during nearly three hundred years of the rule of Sultans, the administration had to requisition the services of the educated youth belonging to the Hindu minority community despite all the atrocities unleashed against them. The same formula, minus oppression and persecution, worked during the Sikh and Dogra rule. However, under the Dogra rule, especially during the reign of Maharaja Ranbir Singh, the educational system was expanded all over the state.
Baseless allegation
Did the Pandits obstruct the valley-based majority community from pursuing education and obtaining credentials for recruitment in government services? The Muslim parents of those days invariably sent their wards to Islamic seminaries to perfect their knowledge of Islamiyat.
Yet another reason for despising the Pandits is their alleged closeness to Congress meaning Nehru’s leadership. Nehru was the elected Congress leader from Phulpur East (UP) electoral constituency which did not contain even one Pandit voter. And if a couple of members from the Pandit community in the administrative structure rose to essential positions, it was all owing to their merit and unflinching dedication to duty and not because of any special favour by the Congress leadership. Why should it become a cause of annoyance for anybody?
The only real reason for a cold and austere behaviour towards them is firstly owing to their very small number, they stand deprived of the advantage of becoming any political party’s vote bank. Secondly, devoid of compactness their vote becomes immaterial. Democratic India of our times is managed through a vote bank mechanism. The Pandits do not figure in the calculus of national politics. In a society torn by social, political and economic disparities, the Pandits become irrelevant to political parties of clap-trap culture. If someone from among them strays into a national or regional level party, he will have to remain content with a low profile in the party’s hierarchy because of a lack of a solid political constituency. Hence, we find an occasional Pandit sycophant sticking his neck out and circumstantially appeasing the party by subtly denouncing his community for nothing except self-aggrandizement.
LG’s right step
In this perspective, the exiled community was excited to find the Lt Governor, Manoj Sinha, agreeing to attend the Mahanavmi festival and addressing them. We have closely followed his speech on the occasion. He has been polite, and suave, choosing his words considerately. There was nothing offensive or provocative, nor did it have even an iota of sarcasm, which we generally find in the narrative of political upstarts in this country, if and when they find time to address the splinter groups of our community.
However, it is the substance in an address like this in which we are singularly interested. Without going into the long sordid saga of their genocide and ethnic cleansing in Kashmir valley, the displaced community yearns for restoration of normalcy in the valley which would pave the path for their return and restitution in their land of birth.
Pandit’s interpretation of normalcy
In their opinion, restoration of normalcy is not strictly confined to the frame of law and order conditionality, which is the right of every citizen of India as enshrined in the constitution. To the Pandits, normalcy implies reasonably adequate space for political participation, a justifiable role in the organs of a state, conceding social legitimacy, and certainly promotion and safeguards as a religious minority in a State with a massive majority of the people of another faith. Majority-minority content becomes rational and viable when taken up on regional/sub-regional realism and not limited to religious parameters only. This does not preclude voluntary initiative for harmonious inter-societal interface. The government should not try to distort or undermine the Pandit’s demand for restitution in their place of birth. This demand has far deeper and wider ramifications than what the Mughals in New Delhi may pretend to know.
Secondly, while in a state of exile, they need redress of specific problems which have often been brought to the notice of the authorities. Why cannot the government of the UT constitute a Board for redressing IDP day to day-to-day problems on a regular bases instead of him ad of the LG offering the largesse of giving time to their assorted delegations calling on him and talking of piecemeal issues? Why not have a one-window interaction with the Pandits?
Our salute goes to the patriotic military and Para-military forces that are sacrificing their lives while saving the borders from external terrorists and internal subversives.
The missing point
However, looking in retrospect, we find that the question of Pandits is an issue on which neither the central nor the UT administration is prepared to come out with a near-realistic policy statement. The NDA leadership never says that Kashmir is incomplete without the presence of the Kashmiri Pandit minority because to them Kashmir means Bharat. But Dr Farooq repeatedly uses the metaphor that Kashmir is incomplete without the Pandits. Farooq feels the need to whitewash his self-mutilated secular credentials to become acceptable to the vendors of separatism under the rubric of fake secular with global observation posts.
At the same time, the Centre takes shelter behind a variety of questions purportedly to mollify the valley majority community in the expectation of winning their vote. Their vote bank policy is least saddened by the disappearance of the Pandits from the political chessboard of Kashmir. It finds excuse in questions like where should they be located in the valley; in their ancestral places; in their respective villages and towns; in three or four clusters in the valley; in transit camps that could be converted into permanent residences; in a brand-new township across Damodhar Vudar (the present airport plateau area) or along the contemplated bypass that will link the Highway below Khanabal with Panchtarani on way to Amarnath Cave. The most obnoxious idea is that of connecting the Pandit restitution to the mendicancy of temples and shrines in the valley. It is not these temples and shrines that manufactured our personality; no, it is we who gave them the divine significance. We will not go as recluses in Kashmiri idiom); we will go as actors in an environment of material and spiritual karma bhoomi.
Sinful discrimination
All these questions have a strong negative element because the authorities feign to be elusive. Not a single question was raised when 17,000 households displaced in the Dull reclamation project were resettled in Bemina in a short period of two years. No question was raised when 89 thousand Rohingyas were sheltered in the border area of Jammu, and no question was raised when the people living close to 700 miles long LoC were relocated and rehabilitated at safer places. Try to understand the import of Indian secular democracy.
The site and module for rehabilitation of the displaced Pandits are reportedly under hot discussion at the inner circles of all major national and regional political parties. The reason why they are not able to come to any consensual opinion is that the risk of losing the vote bank of the majority community in the valley haunts them relentlessly. Why should they take the risk of being honest to their conscience?
Reading between the lines of the Lt Governor’s recent address to the displaced community, which the Daily Excelsior of 27 October has editorially appreciated, we find that Shri Sinha does want to be somewhat more precise on this controversial issue. But he seems to be restrained by the ambivalence of the central high command. Therefore, he talked of peripheries and corollaries and circumvented the crux of the issue. He spoke, albeit ramblingly, about the transit accommodation for the employees, improving security of the transit camps, some improved civic amenities for the migrant camps etc. He could not touch even one of the crucial issues but made his speech sweet and palatable by telling the audience that his doors were open for the pliant Pandits to get justice when approaching him formally. No Governor’s doors remain closed in a democratic state.
Tail end
At least, the displaced Pandits should be thankful to the Lt Governor for breaking the jinx and addressing them in a body on the occasion of a feast. Maybe, he can convince the Centre that the long wait of 36 years for the Pandits of Kashmir should come to an end and the government must respond to the call for secularizing the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
(The writer is the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University)
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