Quarter century of exile

Pandits have been abandoned by a callous state and society, and cynical supporters

It has been a quarter of a century since the current phase of protests and militancy began in Kashmir and there has been no solution or settlement in sight. These 25 years have seen tens of thousands of people killed by the bullets of the Indian state, separatists and fundamentalists, among them many thousands who have been killed in fake encounters and “disappeared” by the security forces and those buried in unmarked graves, and also the thousands who have been raped and tortured and jailed. The people of Kashmir have long suffered between the Scylla and Charybdis of militants and Muslim fundamentalists hijacking their demands for azaadi and the security forces targeting the civilian Muslim population as enemy hostiles, turning the entire Valley into a military camp.

This chapter, if it can be called thus, in the life of our “socialist, secular, democratic republic” is a blight which distorts everything else in it and is a warning to all those who are its citizens that this state of exception can well become the norm.

Unfortunately, even most accounts of the atrocities and sufferings of the Kashmiri people are divided on communal lines. There has been a long, and inexplicable, silence about the atrocities on the Kashmiri Pandits. The only force which has consistently raised the issue of the killings and exile of KashmiriPandits has been the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliated organisations, and as the political developments of the past few months have made clear once again, they have done this with cynical intentions to use their tragedies in the propaganda war against secularism and for consolidating a Hindu majoritarian polity.

The popular rise of the slogan for azaadi in Kashmir in the late 1990s came riding on a consolidation of the Muslim identity together with the sidelining of voices that framed this demand in ecumenical terms. It is difficult to apportion exact blame for the sudden exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley starting on the night of 19 January 1990, but it falls largely to the account of a Muslim fundamentalism which was left unchallenged and an Indian state which viewed this community merely as pawns in their geostrategic game.

What is known quite well is that the popular mobilisations for azaadi, growing in numbers since the autumn of 1989, had often turned communal and slogans directed at theKashmiri Pandits started being heard with increasingfrequency. It was not just threatening slogans but the targeted killings of KashmiriPandits by militants who called them agents of the Indian state. On the night of 19 January 1990 there seems to have been a planned escalation in this, as many of the first person accounts of Kashmiri Pandits who fledsubsequently attest to. Houses and localities where Kashmiri Pandits lived were targeted with threats and actual violence. The plight of the Pandits seems to have been compounded by the effective silencing of all voices of reason and fraternity within the Kashmiris by the gun of the fundamentalists and militants.

The representatives of the Indian state, particularly the then Governor Jagmohan and the military establishment, did precious little to protect the Pandits. On the contrary, all evidence suggests that the violence directed at the Pandits by the militants was used to deepen the communal cleavage and their exodus from the Valley was encouraged so as to help the security forces “deal” with the militancy. The massacre of Gawakadal stands testimony to this cynical politics of the representatives of the Indian state.

That the Pandits have remained merely a pawn in the political games of the Indian state and Hindutva forces, who have done precious little to help them in real terms, is reciprocated by the leadership of the Kashmiri separatists who mouth platitudes about their return but have done nothing to prevent the despoliation of their property and the threats to them, if not actively participating in this.

Mirroring the capture of Kashmir’s azaadi movement by militants and fundamentalists, much of the leadership of the Kashmiri Pandits has turned communal and reduced the demand for justice to a subset of the politics of Hindurashtra. This appropriation of the tragedy of the Kashmiri Pandits by Hindutva forces has also had the unfortunate effect of turning the Left and progressive forces away from them, an inexcusable lapse which needs urgent redressal.

It has been a quarter century of impossibility of a political path which keeps away from fundamentalisms, extremisms and military solutions of all kinds, which builds solidarity across religious divides. Today, to remember the tragedies on the Pandits or call out the Muslim fundamentalism which drove them out is to be seen to be identifying with the atrocities of the Indian state and the majoritarian politics ofHindutva; to mourn the atrocities on the Kashmiri Muslims and hold the Indian state to account are seen as support for Muslim fundamentalism or even treason. Few have had the courage to stand up to the violation of every fundamental right enshrined in our Constitution on a people it calls its own citizens, irrespective of identity or political affiliations. An entire generation of Kashmiris have been born and brought up on two sides of this communal divide. Is there still space for a politics of solidarity and justice to blossom in Kashmir or will this morbid winter still envelop the land?

Motion on Pandits in UK Parliament

The first-ever motion to commemorate the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits from Jammu and Kashmir 25 years ago has been tabled in the British Parliament on January 22. The Early Day Motion (EDM) was tabled by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) of British Hindus, led by lawmaker Bob Blackman and supported by four other MPs.

The EDM reads: "That this House commemorates with deep sadness the 25th anniversary of the attack in January 1990 by cross-border militants on the population of Jammu and Kashmir; expresses its condolences to the families and friends of all those who were killed, raped and injured in this massacre.”