Remembering the stampede of Kashmiri Pandits

Jacked in and booted up, resilient Kashmiri migrants still long to return to their homeland. It is 25 years to the day when they were stampeded out of their home and hearth in the Valley. The patina of a bygone era continues to haunt their brutalised psyches, as they remember the infamous date - January 19, 1990. Several crucial instances of targeted ethnic cleansing were used to create a fear psychosis, the brute majority swelled on to the streets shouting slogans. The sloganeering was deafening, yet focused, for there was a strategic imperative behind it. The clear and present danger was to the Pandits, and the motive was to chase them out. Fierce cries reverberated - 'Hum kya chahte - Azadi. Azadi ka matlab kya - La ilaha illlala' (What do we want - freedom. What does freedom mean - No one but Allah); 'Yahan kya chalega - Nizam-e-Mustafa' (What will rule here - Islamic law); 'Asyi gasyi Kasheer, batav warai, batnyav saan' (We want Kashmir, without Kashmiri Hindu men, but with Kashmiri Hindu women); and many more! Who would tolerate this and that too in a place where the minority community had, till then had, the best of relations with majoritarian rule?

A fellow Pandit likened us to "aborigines" the other day and I thought that description was apt, for we are migrants and nomads in our own country. This can only be described as a monumental travesty. Over time, Kashmiri Pandits have vacated their space in the Valley and left for the plains, but this was the seventh and final exodus. It started on September 14, 1989, leaving only a few thousand of them behind in the Valley and about seven and a half lakh Kashmiri Pandits were left to live the life of refugees in their own country.

The act of losing something can ensure that you elicit great wisdom. For the hapless Pandit, this wisdom translates into pain. For how do you think it feels if you are displaced in your own country, ignored by different political parties and in many ways expunged from national discourse? The departure from Kashmir and lack of rehabilitation constitutes one of the greatest human tragedies since Partition. The Pandits today are a lost community, and perhaps at one level, a lost generation. It is a tribute to their workmanlike nature they have picked up the pieces and gone back to leading their lives normally.

Twenty five years later many such Kashmiris are still struggling to come to terms with their displacement, trying to subsist in alien conditions. Though, it is not the same thing, at least the majority have thrown themselves back into the hurly burly of a daily regimen. Survival after all is at the kernel of life, and since nature abhors a vacuum, life has to go on. The community meanwhile, deprived of their madre vatan still makes its presence felt.

I must confess I am not a refugee, though I was born in the land of my ancestors, very much in the Vale of Kashmir. Against that, I would like to believe that I am an Indian first, having lived and worked in three of the biggest metropolitan cities of this wonderful country - Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai - and now once again in the nation's capital. But at another level, I am also a Kashmiri; my roots call out to me constantly. They ask me searching questions, they probe, they irritate my subconscious wanting to know what I have done about my heritage, legacy, call it what you will. But let's go back to the stampede of the Pandits. It didn't happen overnight. The Pandits had lived through other such attempts in the past. What changed? The systematic pogrom to target all those who symbolised 'India' in the Valley worked like clockwork. The terror network thrives on creating a fear factor. If that meant going after co-religionists, then so be it.

A case in point was a National Conference (NC) worker and political activist Yusuf Halwai who had illuminated his sweet shop on August 15 to celebrate India's Independence. This perceived 'outrage' saw him being slain and a message sent to the majority community in the Valley that India was a pariah and anyone who had anything to do with India, would be treated like Yusuf Halwai. That was phase one - create a fear psychosis amongst the majority community.

With a silenced majority reduced to mute onlookers, the terror network got to phase two, leading advocate and political activist Tika Lal Taploo was first threatened and then gunned down. Just as Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo - the man who had delivered the verdict against Maqbool Bhatt - was shot dead. Director General Doordarshan Lassa Kaul was the next victim followed by leading Sanskrit and Persian scholar Sarvanan Kaul Premi.

In Anantnag, another advocate and activist Prem Nath Bhat met the same fate. But the breaking point came when a nurse Sarla Bhat in the Sher-e-Kashmir Medical Institute in Sohra was abducted, gang raped and then her mutilated body was thrown into the Habbakadal thoroughfare. In yet another killing, Bal Kishen Ganjoo was done to death in his own house. The message for the minority community was loud and clear, in fact, it was a neon sign being held in their faces. "Get out" is what it said. Many of my relatives, including my mother's sisters, had to flee the Valley in the darkness of the night. Now let me inject a hard dose of reality.

Between December 1989 and May 15, 1990, the J&K government records show that 134 innocent persons were killed by the rampaging militants. Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Jagmohan in his book My Frozen Turbulence stated, "The killings of 71 Hindus during this period created fear among the minority community and accelerated the pace of migration of Pandits."

Amar Kapur additional DGP Kashmir of the time, said: "There is no truth that the state government extended help to the Pandits to leave the Valley." The stampede was reportedly hastened by the state administration. Jagmohan refutes the charge levelled by People's Union of Civil Liberties - "With regard to migration of non Muslims (KPs) from the Valley, I had stoutly challenged the assertion that the state government had provoked or sponsored it. When they (PUCL) suggested that they have come across use of government vehicles for the purpose, I told them that individual misconduct by a government servant in the use of a government vehicle in his custody cannot be ruled out in such a situation."

These were tumultuous times in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union, there was unrest and rebellion, nations were being mowed down, their complexion and character undergoing metamorphosis. Those orchestrating these moves and their handlers in Pakistan probably had this misconceived notion that perestroika would be unleashed in the Valley also. The radio and TV stations would be captured and the umbilical cord with Hindustan would be cut forever. But they had not reckoned with the resolve of the Indian state, which while accepting the stampede of the Kashmiri Pandit, did not allow anything untoward to happen. It resisted the glasnost and retained the Valley, but the Pandits became collateral damage.

Kashmir remains a festering sore, much blood has flown over, and while it is relatively stable now, the Kashmiri Pandit has been erased from the state. Over these years, the terror network has upped the ante by indulging in random gruesome massacres of Kashmiri Hindus, serially in Nadimarg in 2003, Wandhama in 1998 and Sangrampura in 1997. The circle of terror was complete. Fear had transcended the Vale.

Twenty five years later all of us in our own small ways grapple with this reality of being taken out of the Valley. I cannot imagine how those who have migrated out of the Valley coped with this harsh reality, how they dealt with the demons in their heads, how they adjusted to their new locations and environment. I know several of my relatives, both paternal and maternal, have rebuilt their lives. The process has been difficult, but they were economically better off than a whole host of families. But they too seek a tryst with their homeland, just as I do.