Why
the Return of Kashmiri Pandits Is Still a Distant Dream.
MUKESH GUPTA / REUTERS
By RAHUL PANDITA
June 3, 2013
On April 24, Kamal, a 35-year-old
unemployed Kashmiri Hindu, died in the Jagti refugee settlement on the
outskirts of the city of Jammu, the winter capital of the north Indian state of
Jammu and Kashmir. His body was found a few days after his death. More than
three weeks later, the Jammu Tribune reported that the young man, who was
living alone after his parents died some time ago, was mentally disturbed and
had died of starvation after the state government’s relief department stopped
his monthly stipend for unknown reasons.
Kamal’s death is the latest event to
add to the Jagti residents’ sense of abandonment by the state and central
governments. The Jagti settlement is home to about 4,000 Kashmiri Hindu
families, who have been living there since 2011 after the state government
dismantled their old camps scattered around Jammu, which had served as their
homes since 1990. The Kashmiri Hindus, more popularly known as Pandits, were forced
out of their land in 1990 when an Islamist insurgency broke out in Kashmir
Valley. It’s the only Indian state where the Muslims are in a majority.
About 350,000 Pandits, including my
family, were forced into exile after being brutalized on the streets of Kashmir
and inside their homes. Hundreds were killed and many raped and maimed. Since
the Pandits are an educated lot, most of them moved on, securing jobs and
careers in India and abroad. But a small percentage continues to live in
miserable conditions in refugee settlements like Jagti.
I was there in September last year
when a few residents were on a hunger strike, protesting against the state
government’s apathy. Those families who didn’t have a government job survived
on a monthly dole of 1,250 rupees, or $22. The government provides a maximum
monthly stipend of 5,000 rupees for each family, and the Pandits at the Jagti
settlement were demanding more aid and new facilities.
Many such families had taken small
loans from banks, both private and government to start small businesses before
they were shifted to Jagti. The loan installment was deducted from their meager
monthly stipend.
All year round, the camp faced a
power outage of 16 to 18 hours each day. Residents alleged that a substantial
amount from the 3.69 billion rupees allotted for the construction of the camp
had been siphoned off by government officials and their political bosses. “We
belong to nobody,” a resident, Bhushan Lal Bhat, told me. “No government is
interested in us because we are not a vote bank.”
When a team of three delegates
appointed by the Indian government looked into the grievances of the people of
Jammu and Kashmir, the report it issued in October 2011 was dismissed by everyone, including the separatist groups in
Kashmir. The Pandits, in any case, expected nothing from it. The report made
some vague references to the Pandits, asking the government for “sympathetic
consideration” toward their plight. In an even vaguer reference, it said that
the “women can provide a bridge for Kashmiri Pandits to reconcile with their
co-citizens in the Valley.”
Recently, the same
government-appointed team submitted a feedback report to the Home Ministry in
New Delhi, recommending the construction of a new city in the heart of Kashmir
Valley for the rehabilitation of the Pandits. Howver, it doesn’t acknowledge
the circumstances that led to the exodus of the Pandits in the first place, a
trauma that is still fresh in many Pandits’ minds. Without official recognition
of the events of 1990, true reconciliation is not possible.
In April, I was in Bangalore for the
release of my book, “Our Moon Has Blood Clots,” which deals
with the exodus of the Pandits. Among the audience was a lady who sat upright
all time, paying attention to every word I spoke. As I read a passage, she
bowed her head and I could see she was trying hard to control her emotions.
Later, I learned her name, Rudrakshi Warikoo. She spoke about her experiences
of 1990 – she was 19 at that time, she said. “I still have nightmares about
those days,” she said, shuddering.
Most Pandits have gone through
similar experiences and have no hope of returning to their homeland. “We visit
Kashmir Valley in summer to escape the heat,” another Jagti resident, who did
not wish to be identified, told me. “The former militants who killed Pandits in
1990 have turned politicians and keep on saying: ‘Kashmir is incomplete without
the Pandits.’ But they don’t mean it.”
That is what a few hundred young men
and women who returned to their erstwhile home under a central government job
program, which has been operating since 2008, have experienced. In the valley,
they stay in a few ghetto-like camps. But security is the least of their concerns.
They have faced such harsh treatment and harassment from their Muslim
colleagues that many of them have left their jobs and Kashmir Valley.
“I suffer from a permanent
depression because of what I go through daily,” one man told me when he visited
me secretly at my hotel room in September. He worked as a teacher and said he
was thinking of leaving his job.
In all the Pandit killings, there
has been but one conviction so far. Meanwhile, people
like the militant Farooq Ahmad Dar, alias Bitta Karate, freely run around
Kashmir – a man who in 1990 confessed on
national television that he was responsible for the killings of about two dozen
Pandits, including his neighbor, on whose scooter he used to pillion ride at
times. He spent 16 years in jail awaiting a trial, then was granted bail after
a judge, N.D. Wani, said the prosecution had shown no
interest in arguing the case. For some in Kashmir, Mr. Dar is a hero.
In September, I was at one of the
camps in Kashmir Valley where some Pandits live under police protection. I met
an old lady who sat on her haunches outside her quarters, winnowing rice
grains. She would not let my photographer colleague take her picture and
declined to give her name. But she said in the last seven years she had been
out of the camp only thrice. “My heart is about to burst,” she said.
The return of the Pandits to Kashmir
Valley seems like a distant dream unless the wounds of the 1990s exodus are
healed. Under such circumstances, the idea of the new city, as proposed by the
government-appointed delegates, is far fetched.
Rahul Pandita is an author, more
recently of “Our Moon Has Blood Clots.” He works with the newsweekly Open.
Follow him on Twitter @rahulpandita.
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