The Kashmir Files: A Personal Reflection

From 1998 to 2005, I was a student at Vishwa Bharati Public School in Noida. Vishwa Bharati Women’s Welfare Institution, founded in Srinagar in 1951, had set up the school in 1989. I am not aware of the institution's history, and I am sure most of my classmates were not aware of it either. Most of us did not know what role it played in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. But what we did know was that at least at that point in time, all the core members of the institution and many of our teachers were Kashmiri Pandits. This fact had no bearing on how we were taught, or how we were expected to behave. We did not have any special classes on the history of the Pandits or Kashmir, no mourning day to mark January 19, nothing to distinguish it from any other school not run by Kashmiri Pandits. So we grew up like teenagers do in any other good public school across the country. In our limited world view, Kashmiri Pandits were the administration. We were the young rebels fighting the good fight. As often happens in such scenarios, many of us directed disrespectful words towards the Pandits as a community. Unfortunately, sometimes the nastiness extended to our classmates who were the children of someone in the administration. Little did we, or at least I, know that this was a community struggling just to keep its way of life alive.

It is not as if we were completely unaware of what had happened in 1990. Most of us had heard uncles and aunts talk about it in politically charged conversations at home. But at least in my limited understanding, I had suffered too. I was a young Bihari who had come to Delhi, oblivious to the contempt with which people in the capital viewed people from my part of the country. People were not treating me nicely, and so I had little time from others who were competing with me for the limited amount of sympathy that was going around. I had also come into a hostile environment and made something of myself. Why then should I give any leeway to anyone? They may have been forced to leave their homes, but I came from a desperately poor part of the country. They may have become refugees in their own country and hunted because of their identity. But I also belonged to a community that sends thousands of desperate, nameless and perceived to be worthless daily wage workers to all parts of the country. Neither wise nor empathetic, I am ashamed to admit. But an expression of regret would be meaningless without self-recrimination.

As the years rolled on, the story of Kashmiri Pandits was relevant to me only to the extent of scoring points in debates with colleagues or competitors. No matter how I approached the issue, the objective was merely to show that the other person was wrong. Maybe some others did better on this account, but I was unable to engage with the story of the pandits at an emotional level. In graduate school, the petty debates of the college hostel died out. But for me, as a student of economics, people had either become data points or players in a game-theory model. I neither had the ability nor the inclination to understand what my school teachers had gone through several years ago.

So what changed in the last week? The Kashmir Files. I am not a historian or a scholar of the politics of Kashmir. I am not even a movie enthusiast. On the rare occasion that I watch one, it would be an escapist fantasy movie like the Lord of the Rings. I have no expertise to determine the quality of the film, and I do not know if the movie gets all the facts right. All I know is that I saw people aged 60 and above crying uncontrollably during and after watching the movie. I do not believe that anyone can fake such a strong emotional response. Many movies make people cry. But this experience was different, the intensity was different. It was almost as if many found catharsis in watching it. Maybe, at times there is no greater relief, no better way to finally start healing than having your story told, have your story acknowledged, and have other people join you in your grief, share your sadness.

This got me thinking that many of my former teachers would have likely cried in the last week. I have cried too. I cannot share in their emotion, and I cannot provide any comfort to them. But hopefully, by expressing my thoughts here, I can express my solidarity. Maybe I can convey that I finally understand.

The Kashmir Files has, of course, fuelled a debate across the country. Which is great. People in a democracy should debate, even if it is 30 years too late. Maybe when the dust settles, non-experts like me can better understand the nuances of what happened in 1990. But until then, here is my biggest takeaway: a life lesson 17 years in the making. A lesson that I do not think my teachers planned on, but one that I want to thank them for. All through the 7 years that I studied in Vishwa Bharati, no one, not my pandit teachers, not my pandit classmates or their parents or their grandparents ever spoke to me about what had happened to them. No one ever tried to school me in their history. No one ever asked for an ounce of sympathy for being a Kashmiri Pandit, let alone any pity. In a world in which there is every incentive to proclaim victimhood as loudly as possible, they pretended not to be victims. For me and others like me, who have spent time and energy figuring out our position in the hierarchy of those who have been wronged, this is the final lesson from my teachers at Vishwa Bharati. They went about rebuilding their lives the best they could. No complaining, no moaning about the injustice of having to start from scratch. It is time I took this lesson to heart.

The author is an assistant professor of economics at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own and do not reflect those of DNA.)