The Aftermath

 

Thursday 26 April 1990 was a long time ago; twenty-four years to be exact. People say time is a great healer, but apparently not enough time has passed yet for the wounds of our panicked flight from our home in Rainawari to heal. Although the security situation in the Valley has improved, the fear of a return to the chaos of the 1990s lurks in people’s minds. The doves of peace have been shooed away many times before by those who profit by perpetuating the conflict. Kashmir has changed beyond recognition, physically and ideologically. People have died, futures have been ruined, and a peaceful way of life has been coarsely altered. The toll has been staggering.

 

This is not the picture I hold in my mind. We Kashmiris were proud of a tolerant culture exemplified by the Hinduism of the Rishis, and the Islam of the Sufis. Although a Muslim majority state, Kashmiri Islam had little in common with Wahhabi Islam, which insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran, attacks customary local interpretation as being inattentive to the letter of Islamic doctrine, and treats all others as Kaffirs. During the Partition of the subcontinent, when thousands were killed in the name of religion, the Valley remained calm. The majority, largely at Sheikh Abdullah’s urging, and conscious of the need for tolerance, did not set upon the minorities.

 

Sadly, the ethos of tolerance proved to be a chimera, and started to erode soon after 1947 when majority rule was ushered in the state. Despite the avowed secular nature of each successive government, the reigning politicians, rather than build on what united the communities, adopted a policy of partisanship that accentuated the differences. The Kashmiri Muslims’ poverty and lack of representation in the Dogra Raj were used as pretexts to create in their educated and politically-aware class an animosity towards the Kashmiri Pandits. The Kashmiri Muslims flaunted their new-found political and economic power, and the Kashmir Pandits developed a psyche of subservience.

 

Although Islamic fundamentalism had existed all along in the Valley, its rise started during Mir Qasim’s tenure when the Jamaat Islami won five seats in the 1972 Assembly Elections. This communal virus, no doubt exogenous, found a fertile ground in the Valley and severely damaged the idea of plurality. Farooq Abdullah’s opportunistic alliance with Maulvi Farooq, followed by G.M. Shah’s ineffective administration, further negated any feelings of brotherhood between the two communities.

 

Holding the Kashmiri political leadership solely responsible for alienation of the Kashmiris is a simplistic view. Other factors were at play too. It is also impossible to absolve the Indian political leadership of blame. The appointment of Jagmohan as governor of the state, in January 1990, was inappropriate. His handling of the situation, purely from an administrative angle, was overly aggressive. The situation was political in nature and needed a broad-minded approach.

 

The advent of television in the Valley in the early 1980s alerted the Kashmiri Muslim youth to events taking place in the Islamic world. The Afghan Mujahideen’s success in forcing the Soviet Union from Afghanistan served as a template for the militants. Pakistan, which had been itching to avenge its Bangladesh humiliation, was only too willing to oblige. It added fuel to the fire by covertly arming and training Kashmiri Muslim youth and exporting the orthodoxy of Wahhabi Islam, via madrassas that spread like a rash across the Valley. Many of the younger generation adopted an aggressive stance towards the non-Muslims. The tradition of restraint urged by their elders fell on deaf ears.

 

The destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad volunteers and the feebleness of India’s institutions to counter such religious bigotry, created a refractory reaction in the Valley. The mullahs from UP took over the mosques and provided moral sanction to target the Kashmiri Pandits or any pro-India entity. For many Kashmir Muslim youth, the heady power of holding a gun, or shooting at the security forces, became a quick way to gain admiration from their cohorts.

 

By 1990, several hundred Kashmiri Pandits were assassinated by the Islamic militants and the JKLF. Their concept of a home, where one is able to worship the God of one’s choosing, to speak one’s mind without fear, and to feel safe, was rapidly reduced to naught. The Valley was emptied of them. The tapestry of Kashmiri society lost a faint, though essential colour – its spirit of tolerance. In its place, came the dark strain of the Indian security forces, determined to match the brutality of the Islamic militants with their own ideas of aggressive Hinduism.

 

The Valley was turned into a militarised zone and Srinagar became like a city under siege. Bunkers, draped in tarpaulins, covered with GI sheeting and enveloped by netting to prevent grenades being lobbed into them, sprung up almost everywhere. The security forces were under great pressure to control the situation. Patrolling Srinagar, especially the areas of Maisuma, Khanyar, Tangbagh, or Kalashpora was not a cakewalk. Every lane, every blind turn, was a potential trap. Often badly led, and unable to handle the stress, some lost their heads. Many militants, even innocents, were tortured, killed, or violated.

 

The militants returned the favour with equal ferocity. If a member of the security force fell into their hands, his death was certain. A balance of terror was established which gave rise to brutality on both sides, and increased the spiral of violence. The many graves in the villages and towns of the Valley and the funeral pyres lit in India attest to the human toll of the conflict.

 

The militancy underwent a dramatic change of complexion in the early 1990s. Mercenaries from the Soviet-Afghan War, euphemistically called mehman (guest) militants converged on the Valley. They were deadly in their campaign for jihad. What the JKLF workers and Kashmiri militants were squeamish about the mehman militants did without batting an eyelid. Mast Gul, a mehman militant from Pakistan who had commandeered a building attached to the Chrar-i-Shareif shrine which was revered by all Kashmiris, burnt down the shrine to escape a security force cordon. He cared not a whit about the religious sensitivities of the Kashmiris.

 

Nevertheless, hosting a mehman militant became a status symbol for many Kashmiri Muslims. Ironically the former, true to their predatory instincts, often turned on their hosts and their womenfolk. They dismissively viewed the Kashmiri militants as puffed-up pretty boys. Many Kashmiri Muslim youth who, infatuated by jihad, had crossed over to training camps in POK, realised that they were being used for a different agenda. They sulked back into the Valley, somewhat disillusioned by the mirage of aazadi.

 

The JKLF and the HUM carried out audacious attacks throughout the Valley. Pakistan’s ISI, well aware that the JKLF’s aim of an independent Kashmir ran counter to its objective of forcing Kashmir to merge with Pakistan, nevertheless initially backed the JKLF. It had a calculated interest to enflame the situation in Kashmir, rather than concern for the Kashmiri Muslims. It wanted the JKLF to become its tool to acquire Kashmir, not support its independence. This is what the JKLF overlooked in its Faustian bargain.

 

Over time, ideological differences and personal suspicions caused the JKLF and the HUM to splinter. The JKLF’s call for aazadi was hijacked by the HUM’s call for a Nizam-e-Mustafa in Kashmir. The HUM eliminated thousands of JKLF workers, impelling some JKLF workers to later align with the security forces and hunt the HUM. In an ironic twist, Yasin Malik, a JKLF leader who publicly admitted to killing many Kashmiri Pandits, announced a separate JKLF faction and later a rejection of violence. For the Kashmiri Pandits, this renunciation was a bit too late. Few of them were left in the Valley to experience the JKLF’s claims of secularity or the ideals of Islamic toleration.

 

The flight of the Kashmiri Pandits, especially the poor and semi-literate from the rural areas of the Valley, was one of ruin. Thousands grew up in squalid refugee camps, in human zoos of sorts, only to be trotted out to tug at the heartstrings of sniffling bureaucrats. Children became the almost invisible victims; their childhoods lost and their education on hold. The sweltering heat of summer, the bitterness of their displacement and its implications, fuelled their anger. Deprivation and despair became the staples of their daily schedule. The long-held feeling of responsibility of one family member towards the other broke down. Sons abandoned ageing parents and brothers their sisters, as each battled against the individual challenges of surviving.

 

Petty acts of meanness surfaced, as one tried to outmanoeuvre the other to gain some advantage in securing public assistance. However, not all gave up their humanity. I personally know of several individuals who refused to accept the allocated relief money, but implored that it be given to needier families instead.

 

Tented life also afforded little privacy. Young Kashmiri Pandit women ran the gauntlet of rowdies from Jammu who tried to exploit their vulnerability. Sometimes, young males of the community, desensitised by the despair of the camps, acted no better. There may have been a few hothead fools, but the germ of militancy did not take root among them. None took up the gun to avenge their loss.

 

Most survived on handouts or hawked wares to indifferent customers, while they battled psychological disorders, ulcers or hypertension. Stress took its toll. Women shrivelled and their faces sagged while men battled feelings ranging from aggression to depression. A new moniker, ‘Migrant Medicine’ was coined for Alprazolam, the panic and anxiety disorder medicine. It was consumed like the sheerin of my childhood days. Its sales, from the drug stores of Jammu, rocketed. The initial goodwill of the people in Jammu towards the Kashmiri Pandits, exhausted over time. The age-old irritation about competition for jobs surfaced anew in Jammu.

 

Not all Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley. A handful stayed behind. Each family had their own reasons and compulsions. Some knew no life outside the Valley, or had an aging family member unable to face the move. Others thought that the situation would improve eventually. Some, who were petty agriculturists or orchardists, being tightly intertwined with the soil, calculated that paying protection money to the militants might work. Some compared the very small number of their community remaining in the Valley to what had happened in the past seven exoduses.

 

For others, the inevitability of death and destiny offered the ultimate logic. Abandoning the Valley was a kind of death in itself so they decided to stay back and face their destiny. Yet others rationalised that a quick death from a militant’s bullet was better than suffering the terrible conditions in the refugee camps of Jammu or Delhi. Although the reason to leave or stay in the Valley was based on the individual circumstances of a family, I admire the fortitude of those who chose to persist in the Valley.

 

Those Kashmiri Pandits who stayed behind suffered indignities and were not spared. They earned the sobriquet, Hangul (Kashmiri Stag). This species of the deer family, now seldom seen in the forests of Kashmir, is on the verge of extinction. In a most ironic coincidence the Hangul is also the state animal of Jammu & Kashmir.

 

Mrs Khem Lata Wakhloo, who was a National Conference worker and Minister of Tourism during G.M. Shah’s tenure as chief minister, and her husband, Dr Omkar Nath Wakhloo, were dragged out from their home in Buchwara, by militants on 4 September 1991. They were rescued by the Indian Army after seven weeks in custody. Dr S.N. Dhar, having served as a physician for decades in the Valley, believed he could count on the Kashmiri Muslims’ goodwill. He was rewarded for his optimism by being hustled out of his office by two militants, bundled into his own car, and kept in captivity in the Shangus area of Anantnag, for three months of 1992.

 

In 1993 came the sad news that many of the Kashmiri Pandit houses in Motiyar had been torched. The Mahaldars’, Ghanhars’, Kouls’, and Dembis’ houses had been set ablaze. We too had lost our ancestral homes – the ones Great Grandfather Kailash Pandit and Grandfather Nath Ram had built – to flames set by the militants.

 

Memories of the kainee, the scent of camphor and sandalwood in the thokur kuth where Father used to pray and of the wuz, where I had reverentially given his body a ritual purification bath as we prepared it for cremation, came flooding back. Bab’s Kuth, with its photographs and its khatumband ceiling, and the dewankhana from where Dedh watched over the fruit-laden trees but oddly now with her trying to beat down the flames, came to my mind. The phrase, “Nazer-e-Aatish Ho Gaya (Fire has reduced it to ashes),” drummed in my head. Rattan’s sobs, “Ooul Zolukh (Our nest has been burnt),” jolted me from my stunned reverie. Our gara, symbolic of the purpose of our lives, had been destroyed. It was like the last twist of the knife.

 

Weeks later, Satish telephoned to say that Jan Mohammed, a neighbour from Panditpora, had sought him out in Jammu with an offer for our burnt house and its land. Satish had argued about the ridiculously low offer.

 

“Ath Roodh Dodhmut Malbai Outh (It is all charred logs),” Jan Mohammed had countered impatiently. He had then, with a strain of sardonic finality emphasised: “Thoi Ma Teriv vapas Wyen! (You won’t be coming back now!)” while producing a copy of the Fire Department’s notice, officially confirming the loss.

 

“Did anything survive the flames?” I asked Satish.

 

He seemed taken aback and his answer was lost in the static of the telephone conversation. What seemed pressing to him was to obtain my concurrence to proceed with the sale. He wanted to move on as there was nothing left in Srinagar for him.

 

For me, the half-burnt timbers and blackened walls were vestiges of our lives in Rainawari. In this jumbled heap, live memories of Arundati, her pheran and the buhir of rice she had sifted, days prior to our exodus. She had mentioned these to Vishambar Nath while trying to convince him of her intention to return once militancy ceased. The pheran and the buhir of rice, articles of faith, were probably reduced to ashes. But the memories remain intact. I remember sitting with Bab and reciting, “Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah...,” fishing with Mohammad Sultan, hanging garlands of red chilli peppers from the kainee to dry in the autumn sun or collecting clusters of the red-tipped jaffer blooming in Tarawati’s yard. There was the time I was switched by a neighbour who used a sheaf of soi (stinging nettle) to reinforce the penalty for stealing walnuts from his trees, but on realising my discomfort quickly dabbed moist mud on my bare legs to soothe the itching welts.

 

These memories, the stories my grandparents told me and my experiences, I must pass on to my grandchildren so they remember their history, know about their forebears and their hard-earned reputations, and understand who they are. They do possess a past in the Valley. In my mind’s eye, I see my grandchildren standing beside the willows by the yaarbal, repeating the Kashmiri words I hope to one day teach them: words that will take them back to the land of their ancestors where the serpentine Vistasta flows, by what was once our home. . .