Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
This is a piece that almost wasn’t. That it is, needs some explanation. First and foremost came the realization that it needs to be said. However unpleasant it may turn out to be. Some of those whose life (lives) it touches upon may feel hurt. And causing hurt is farthest from my mind.
But then after a certain age you don’t really care if what you say hurts someone. That’s if you do believe in the merit of what you are saying. If what I am about to say doesn’t make sense to you or is unpalatable for other reasons rest assured I won’t take it a miss if you attribute it to my senility or insensitivity. Not that I will accept your reading.
I must express my thanks to the Pakistani foreign office spokeswoman for having provoked me into giving my take on the Pandit migration from the Kashmir valley and the prospect of its eventual return home.
At the outset I must say, it is preposterous of the Pak spokeswoman to describe the return home of the Pandits to the valley as a covert attempt at altering the demographic picture in the State. More precisely, as the Pakistani official alleged, doing so in the valley. The Kashmiri Pandits, in the first place, never left the valley voluntarily. A set of circumstances, man-made, for the most part, so conspired that the Pandits were forced/encouraged to move out of what has been home to the community from the beginning of time, as it were.
The Pandit exodus marked the culmination of a series of administrative failures, most notably the rigging of an election, just prior to the migration. A needless exercise in the event, causing a resurgence of Hizbul Mujahideen who gave a violent turn to their insurrectionary activities. Then, Governor Jagmohan’s role too left much to be desired then.
This was the time when some of the anti-India ire turned into intimidtion, including several violent incidents, against the Pandits. That things did in a few cases go beyond the level of tolerance, was brought home to me when my own elder brother, a die-hard Kashmiri, who had totally identified himself with the quit Kashmir movement led by Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference, had to be evicted under protection and brought to Delhi.
That much for background, and back to the Pak spokeswoman’s assertion the other day. I repeat for her benefit that a Pandit return to Kashmir will be no more than a homecoming, which, however unrealistic it may seem, is their birth right. I say this with utmost responsibility and fully aware of the fact that 25 years on, the KP migration seems as if it had occurred so very very long ago, and, yet it’s true the pull of the land, motherland, even today is hard to resist.
Speaking for myself, as someone who has spent all his working life, some six decades in all, working all over India and elsewhere, I have rarely missed my two annual visits to the valley.
Kashmir as one my nieces, a senior all-India services official, tells me, is in my genes, my DNA. She, too, makes it a point to visit the valley at least the once, often, like in April this year, she, along with her non-Kashmiri husband to two kids, went to Gulmarg, her visit sadly cut short to just three days, thanks to the persisting rain. She has since flooded the social media with her photographs of Gulmarg and a quick peek at Badamwari in Srinagar. My other niece settled in Houston regularly shocks me via the facebook with unique pictures from Kashmir, ones I have rarely seen before. My two nephews, both Senior Executives in German and Korean behemoths simply keep inquiring what’s the best time to visit, unable to make it, thanks to their work.
Frankly, I am not sure how many of the plus three lakhs Kashmiri Pandit migrants would really like to go back to stay on in the valley permanently. Yes, the older lot certainly would, if only to keep a place called home warm enough to receive their wards in the valley – at least for a holiday.
That said, I wonder why this clamour for a separate homeland by some Jammu-based Pandit organizations. Some of them are politically aligned with national parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party which shares power in Jammu and Kashmir with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s People’s Democratic Party.
Those sharing the BJP’s ultimate of the State which would like to see exclusive Kashmiri Pandit enclaves to be carved out, virtually cut off from the population centers come to stay as exclusive Pandit (Hindu) in the heart of the valley.
Unlike the 7000 Pandits who have continued to live on in the valley these past two decades most others, particularly from urban hubs like Srinagar, have made distress sales of their properties which will no longer be available. Alternative locations will have to be found for them where new neighbourhoods will be allowed to grow, not exclusively Pandits but with Muslims and Sikhs thrown in.
That will eliminate the possibility of ghettoisation of Pandits, the kind the Muslims of Gujarat, Ahmedabad particularly, are confronted with. The Gujarati must travel many miles even for routine daily chores. The Pandit, in the getto would a la Ahemdabad to walk drive miles to locate his grocer barber baker carpenter – all in the name of exclusivity.
The Kashmiri Muslim, thanks to the Pandits’ vaunted past skills, as teachers, babus, professionals ,munshis et al over the past few centuries Muslims have taken charge of businesses ranging from retail shops to malls. Returning Pandits may find it hard to adjust to the demands of the so-called exclusivity which is implied in the separate homeland of some day-dreamers.
I do believe the very concept is unviable. It is important at this juncture, when the State government is committed to their resettlement, the Pandits, rising above the bitterness of the past, come together not to live in ghettos but to revive their own destiny and to rebuild their place under the Kashmiri sun.
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