Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits also calls for reconciliation with Muslim neighbours

A quarter century after thousands fled their homes, one Kashmiri Pandit family has returned to the Valley. In November 2015, the Jammu and Kashmir government informed the Supreme Court that while it received 6,510 applications from Kashmiri Pandits who fled their homes, only one family opted to be part of the Rs1,600 crore Return and Rehabilitation package offered in 2008. The Supreme Court had demanded an Action Taken Report in response to a public interest petition filed by the All-India Kashmiri Samaj regarding the plight of Kashmiri Pandits forced out of their state. 

2016 will be the 26th year of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Beginning 1990, nearly four lakh fled their homes in the face of rising insurgency. Most survived in camps in Jammu and Delhi, largely reconciled to the loss of their homeland and heritage. A generation has grown up without a state and a community continues to struggle to preserve its fast-eroding identity. 

The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is a traumatic chapter in the already complex and largely polarised narrative of Kashmir. Since the late 1980s, the social terrain of Kashmir changed with the Islamisation of the movement for self-determination and the rise of militancy. Militants began targeting and harassing the minority community of Kashmiri Pandits. The Pandits were largely seen as unsympathetic to and alienated from the self-determination movement. 

Many recount that on the night of January 19, 1990, the ‘Exodus Day’, anti-India and anti-Pandit slogans were heard from local mosques. Some slogans were very disturbing — “Hum kya chaahte - Azadi! Eiy zalimon, eiy kafiron, Kashmir hamara chhod do (What do we want? Freedom. O tyrants, O infidels, leave our Kashmir)”, and “Assi gacchi panu’nuy Pakistan, batav rostuy, batenein saan (Kashmir would turn into Pakistan, without the Pandit men, but with their women)”. 

Author-journalist Rahul Pandita, who was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family when he was 14, writes in his memoir Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, “The incidents had occurred all over the Kashmir Valley at around the same time. It was well orchestrated. It was meant to frighten us into exile.”

The fear stayed for a long time and became permanent memory for many. Kashmir, the land of their ancestors, their home for centuries, had now turned hostile towards them. Those unwilling or hesitant to leave their homes were forced to pay ‘protection money’. Some were attacked, accused of being government informers and many (650-1,000) are reported to have been killed by the militants. Sociologist TN Madan, who has done pioneering research on the Pandits of rural Kashmir, said in an interview to an online journal Pratilipi that the intimidating tactics were “ways in which the thin edge of terrorism, without being immediately violent, reached people in their homes.”

In the first decade of their displacement, nearly 10,000 Kashmiri Pandits died prematurely. Kashmiri Pandits became refugees in their own country, and even today a few thousands continue to live in camps in Jammu and Delhi. While successive governments have offered transitory homes, jobs and relief to the displaced families, what has not been offered in so many years is a healing mechanism — to help the community forget the trauma of being displaced, of having their houses burnt or illegally sold, and of having to give up their pilgrimage to the Khir Bhawani spring and Amarnath cave.   

It is not just a structure, a patch of land that the Pandits want to return to. As Madan wrote in Family and Kinship: A study of the Pandits of Rural Kashmir, “To a Pandit his gara (home) is symbolic of the purpose of his existence and strivings.” The Pandits want to return to their homes, to their socio-cultural associations, and to their Kashmiriyat. And they need their neighbours to build their social-cultural spaces all over again.

No return and rehabilitation scheme can be complete without a reconciliation process having kicked in. A process that not only offers safety but the capacity to rebuild again collectively. In fact, the government’s rehabilitation packages should have had relationship-rebuilding as a core component of the scheme. The absence of a reconciliation mechanism is probably the reason for thousands of Kashmiri Pandits reluctant to return and avail of the rehabilitation package.

Even the Rs80,000 crore Reconstruction for Kashmir package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year does not provide any room for confidence-building opportunities. Although he said while announcing the grant that his government wants an “honourable” return of Kashmir refugees — Kashmiri Pandits and those from West Pakistan — reconciliation processes don’t appear as a crucial part of this honourable return. Is reconciliation impossible? What is likely to happen when Pandits who fled come face-to-face with Kashmiri Muslims? Although neither state politicians nor most NGOs working on the ground have in the past offered any concrete models, reconciliation is what is likely to bring lasting peace to the state. While government schemes may give houses and jobs, they cannot guarantee wonderful neighbours or an integrated community. Both Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims have been victims of violence, they both have to have the courage to agree to co-exist to prevent further suffering. 

Nearly a decade ago, an attempt in this direction was made by a Washington based organisation International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy. ICRD works on peacemaking models, serving as a bridge between religion and politics. It held a series of meetings with Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims. Participants included a former militant. The organisation’s Kashmir Reconciliation Mission Report points to the anger and frustration expressed by both sides during the relationship-building exercises held in various locations — Gulmarg, Jammu and Leh. Such meetings also healed old wounds and had both sides ask for forgiveness from each other. After one meeting Muslim Kashmiris visited the camps in Jammu and discussed how they can welcome the community back to the Valley. From them the Pandits heard what it meant to live in a state run by the army.  

On an individual level, reconciliation efforts have been going on for some years. Sanjay Kumar Tickoo stayed back in Kashmir despite the terror. His organisation, Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, is working to create more opportunities for dialogue between the two communities. Since 2007, he has organised Dusshera celebrations in Srinagar which is attended by nearly 20,000 local people. Celebrations had stopped after 1988. But now, Tickoo says, a majority of the participants at the public celebrations are Muslim Kashmiris, especially the youth have been most enthusiastic about such community interactions. Tickoo agrees both the communities have a lot of bitterness. But every year, seeing the swelling local crowds at the Dusshera festival assures him that there are many who want to reconstruct a composite Kashmir again. Hope with time paradise can be regained.

The author teaches Journalism and Mass Communication at Apeejay Stya University