Author: Sumer Kaul
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: February 20, 2004
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/200204-features.html
In another time and place, three
days before `Herach' or Shivratri, the paramount event in the religio-cultural
calendar of their community, they would have been joyously preparing for
the festivity and feasting associated with the grand day. But here they
were last Sunday, this woman and her teenaged daughter, going from door
to door in the central Delhi locality where I live. Shyly and very self-consciously
they asked if I could spare some money or rations or clothes or perhaps
a blanket. I could see a tinge of humiliation on their faces. They were
neatly but far from adequately dressed and looked anything but chronic
beggars.
They were refugees from Kashmir.
Two of the two lakh and more Kashmiri Pandits who were hounded out or had
to flee their terror-stricken homeland, in great numbers some fourteen
years ago and in trickles continuously ever since, even to date.
The girl was nine years old when
the family left the village near Srinagar with four other families after
the Wandhama massacre six years ago almost to the day. After twenty-four
hours of a fitful and traumatic journey they reached Jammu where they were
put up in a ramshackle tent in a refugee camp. After a few months in horrendous
conditions, they left for Delhi, spending their last rupee. Here also they
`lived' in a tent on a small official dole ( an unofficial charity) until
three years ago when a kindly lady let the family stay in one of the garages
of her bungalow in south Delhi.
In return for the lodging the woman
cooks and does other household chores for the `malkin'. Her husband, who
had a small apple farm in his village which fetched him about Rs. 35,000
a year, is working as a shop assistant on Rs 900 a month. Her father-in-law,
a retired school teacher, had a fatal heart attack four years ago. Her
mother-in-law has acute arthritis and is just about surviving in the garage.
This was not the first time that
refugees from Jammu and Kashmir have come to my locality, seeking alms
and donations. I have given details about this family because it epitomises
the plight of an entire community, the once proud and prosperous Kashmiri
Pandits. I know many of the migrants have managed to rebuild their lives,
but the fact that a large number of them are no better off than this family,
perhaps worse, is no secret. They are trying to cope with their shattered
lives whichever way they can, but thousands of them are just about surviving
as destitutes in alien environs and harsh climes.
No community in modern times has
suffered so much for so long and yet evoked so little concern at their
fate and plight as this minuscule community of Kashmiri Pandits. Hindu
in their faith but with a culture of their own, these people go back in
their origin to before the advent of Buddhism and Christianity, not to
speak of Islam. Over the last couple of millennia they survived the sword
of rabid invaders and proselytizers and were, in the process, reduced to
a minority in their homeland, only to lose it all in the last decade and
a half!
Thanks as much to the bloody mischief
unleashed by Pakistan as to the callousness of successive Indian governments
(and indifference of their billion-strong countrymen), they have been rendered
refugees in their own country; for all purposes, a people forgotten. In
fact, for the authorities at the Centre and in the state (and for the rest
of the country) they don't seem to exist.
The only time they attract some
attention in the media and in the rhetoric of our leaders is when they
are killed, and that too only when they are killed in groups. This has
happened several times since 1989. The last such killing took place some
months ago, after the much tom-tommed `popular government' of Mufti Sayeed
had acquired the saddle in the state. And what was his reaction? This incident,
he declared, won't affect the process of normalisation!
For the rest, one occasionally hears
of plans to build a cluster of apartments in Srinagar for the emigrants,
and a general exhortation to them to return. Return to what? Is there any
move to give them back their houses and lands and jobs? If there is then
the authorities concerned are keeping it a closely guarded secret, even
from the Pandits! What is not secret is the keenness of the Mufti government
to release arrested `militants' and the Centre's powwow with fundamentalist-
secessionist elements, as well as, among other things, the ongoing work
to open transport links with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Whatever else the
much-applauded moves may or may not achieve, these will certainly aid the
post-1989 process of turning the Muslim-majority valley into a Muslim only
Kashmir, thus further ensuring that the Pandits, the original inhabitants
of the land, will never be able to return to their ancient habitat.
But who cares! Not the national
leaders, not the state government. As for the so-called intellectuals and
secularists and human rights crusaders, the less said the better. They
will cry themselves hoarse in defence of a minority of many crores but
will not even bat an eyelid if another minority of just a few lakhs is
dispossessed of their ancestral home and rendered destitute.
Over the last 15 years, tens of
hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits have been murdered by the terrorists and jehadis,
and many more have died prematurely due to the inhuman conditions in which
they have been forced to live. Tens of thousands of their young ones have
missed schooling and now find themselves unemployable, thus reinforcing
the distress of their families.
Today the Pandits are scattered
in many parts of the country, in search of a new life and livelihood and
affordable education for their children. A few years more of this crippling
struggle and these peaceful and meritorious people may well wither away
as a distinct and cohesive community. Should this come to pass, it will
leave India a poorer country - civilisationally, culturally and in many
other ways.
