Author: Nirmala George, Associated
Press Writer
Publication: Washington Post
Date: September 26, 2002
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4209-2002Sep26.html
As yet another winter closes in
on the northern Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir, Shubhan Bhat says he yearns
to return to his ancestral home in the Himalayan province.
But in the nearly 13 years since
the Hindu apple farmer and his family fled their home in largely Muslim
northern Kashmir, the nostalgia has hardened into bitterness.
A centuries-old culture of Muslims
and Hindus living in harmony ended in 1989, when Islamic militants began
attacking Hindus, forcing thousands to flee in their drive to separate
the mostly Muslim territory from Hindu-majority India.
For Bhat, the elections for the
state legislature now under way only deepen the bitterness, with politicians
promising Hindus they'll have jobs and proper homes, perhaps even get their
land back if the Islamic insurgency ends.
At least 350,000 Hindus fled their
homes in the lush Kashmir Valley in less than a year after the insurgency
started, heading south to the Jammu region of the state, or to other parts
of India.
The hope of return or compensation
usually produces a high voter turnout in the Jammu region, where 59 percent
of registered voters cast ballots in elections Tuesday. But only 10 percent
of the mostly Muslim voters participated, either out of fear of the militants
or rejection of Indian sovereignty.
Bhat has voted in the past, but
this time he refused. "There is no point," he said. "Each time they promise
us land and jobs but nothing comes out of it."
Bhat is a prisoner of the territory's
tortured history.
During British colonial rule, Kashmir
was a semi-autonomous princely realm with a Hindu king. When colonial India
became independent in 1947 and was severed into India and Muslim Pakistan,
the territory's population - nearly all Muslims - almost certainly would
have chosen to tie themselves to Pakistan, but it instead became part of
India.
Decades later, Pakistan controls
part of the territory, captured in 1947-48 fighting, and many Hindus have
fled the largely Muslim areas in the northern part of the state - the section
known officially as Kashmir - to the southern Jammu section, where there
is a Hindu majority.
Long-simmering separatist discontent
in Kashmir took a dramatic turn in October 1989, spurred on by state elections
that separatists say were rigged by India.
Bhat's family had just settled down
for a meal when their Muslim neighbors came to warn them. Separatist militants
had entered the village and were waiting for darkness to attack Bhat's
home, surrounded by apple and walnut orchards.
Within minutes, the family slipped
out with two infant children and Bhat's ailing mother.
Bhat's brother stayed behind. The
next day, neighbors found his bullet-riddled body in the looted and vandalized
house.
"Once the attacks began, almost
overnight, the atmosphere changed," said Bhat, spokesman for the 3,000
migrants at a camp in Purkhu, 12 miles northwest of Jammu city, the state's
winter capital. "Graffiti appeared on the village walls saying Kashmir
was for Muslims only. Threats were made that our wives and daughters were
not safe."
Since then, the refugees have lived
in tents or cramped, one-room shelters. Filthy water stagnates in pools
from open gutters. Some young men have found poorly paid, unskilled jobs,
but most of the middle-aged are unemployed.
"Would you believe I once owned
a 10-room house. Look what I am now, a refugee in my own country," said
Bhat, pointing to the small room he shares with his mother, wife and teenage
children. A kerosene stove and a water tap serve as the kitchen.
Growing resentment against the government
for the conditions has led to demands for the creation of a separate Hindu
state in Jammu, a proposal backed by some right-wing Hindu groups running
in the elections.
The Jammu-Kashmir government has
said it will encourage the migrants to return home. But many are skeptical.
"What guarantees can the government
give these hapless people? Would it restore their properties, their jobs?"
asked Balraj Puri, a political analyst in Jammu.
Bhat says he and others of his generation
will not return to Kashmir even if the government promises security.
"We lost everything we possessed
when we left our home in the valley. Our houses have been looted and burned,
our orchards destroyed," he said. "What will we go back to?"
