Kashmir and the Problem of the Pandits

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Goodbye to All That: Kashmir and the Problem of the Pandits "One cannot imagine a Kashmiri culture without Kashmiri Pandits," said Kashmir University History Professor Farooq Fayaz. "Not only are they intelligent and well-educated, but more importantly, they generally have a deep sense of tradition and culture, a clear connection with their roots, their history - which is partially our roots, our history - so their absence has a created a great gap, without question."

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil's announcement this week that the security situation in Kashmir had improved enough to accommodate the return of the Pandits brought to mind all the thorny issues related to that unfortunate rupture as well as how murky the historical record had become. Kashmir Observer reporter David Lepeska will shed some light on these matters, beginning with today's recollection of the events of the past and concluding later this week with an analysis of the Pandit plight as it stands today.

"Kashmiris, and in fact all Indians, have rather a bad habit," R.L. Bhat, a Kashmiri Pandit and a leader of the political forum Jammu Kashmir Vichar Manch, said recently. "They become cognizant of a fact but then proceed to willfully ignore or even disbelieve it, as if that will make it untrue."

In the frenzied, rebellious, and terror-filled early months of 1990 the Pandits reluctantly packed up their belongings and headed south, taking with them the harmonious Kashmir of legend - a now-mythic place where Hindus and Muslims shared neighborhoods, religious celebrations and seasonal traditions, even customs and meals. Yet nearly 17 years later mystery continues to swirl around every aspect of the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, who had called Kashmir home for thousands of years. Had there been a long, creeping rise in communal tensions post-1947 or was it merely a single, three-month explosion of frothy Muslim nationalism? Was it a case of ethnic cleansing or just intelligent Pandit decision-making in a time of vast paranoia and clear danger? How many Pandits left - over three lakhs or around 1 lakh? And who, after all, was to blame - the 'evil' Governor Jagmohan, the gun-toting Muslim militants, devious, foot-dragging National and State politicians, or possibly

the high-minded Pandits themselves?

Kashmir's Hindu community was one of its defining features and the living, breathing link to its origin; their departure is a black spot on the heart of Kashmir, and will remain until all sincere and legitimate efforts have been made to enlist their return.

"One cannot imagine a Kashmiri culture without Kashmiri Pandits," said Kashmir University History Professor Farooq Fayaz. "Not only are they intelligent and well-educated, but more importantly, they generally have a deep sense of tradition and culture, a clear connection with their roots, their history - which is partially our roots, our history - so their absence has a created a great gap, without question."

The Pandit refugees have been biding their time in camps near Jammu, in Delhi, and points beyond. Very few have forgotten their Valley home, and efforts to return have been ratcheted up in recent months as Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has created a working group and the Supreme Court weighs a Public Information Litigation requesting a high-level inquiry into the events that led to the mass exodus.

Like any tale of war the Pandit exodus has many strands, each containing some truth, some fiction, and looking for a straight line in the jagged arc of recent Kashmiri history is like looking for clean water in the Dal. What follows is an attempt to employ a variety of voices and views to paint a lively, relatively accurate rendition of the events leading up to and including that tumultuous season 17 years ago.

"The whispers started in the 60's," said President of Panun Kashmir Movement Ashwani Kumar, who grew up on the banks of the Jhelum in Habba Kadal. "We were made second class citizens."

Srinagar's political record bears out this last statement. The majority Muslim J&K State Legistlative Assembly restructured constituencies in which Ashwani believed Pandits had a decisive vote.With mal intent or not, from three seats in the 1950's and '60's the Pandit presence fell to one in the '70's and beyond.

Dr. S. N. Dahr, a World Health Organization fellow who recently founded an institute to research Kashmiri Heritage, is a well-regarded Pandit physician who remained in Kashmir in 1990 as well as after being kidnapped by militants and held for almost three months two years later. He spoke about the Pandits' changing socio-cultural landscape as the latter half of the 20th century wore on.

"There was some alienation, particularly in the economic and political communities," said Dahr, who is 68. "Sometimes it was difficult for Pandits to get what they deserved."

He listed a litany of hurdles for his community.

It probably started with Sheikh Abdullah's 'Land to the Tiller' because Pandits, who had owned much of the land, were affected,…an increasing squeeze for jobs, opportunities, and resources…because of affirmative action, merit was sacrificed, and so it was a bit of corruption coupled with nepotism," he said. "And all these things together meant heartburn for the Pandit."

But because they had called Kashmir their home for thousands of years, most failed to see the writing on the wall. One, however, did not.

"It is time they realize the stern reality," Prem Nath Bazaz wrote of the Pandits way back in 1954. "The internal conditions of the state can in no way improve; indeed they will deteriorate and some day something might happen which will jeopardize the life of this community. It is therefore wise and sagacious to take the time by the forelock and prepare the community psychologically and otherwise for the inevitable."

So, as perhaps any minority might when faced with a rising majority, the Pandits begun to shuffle towards the door. In a 1995 essay, former Indian foreign secretary M. Rasgotra found that the Pandit population was near one million at the turn of the last century and that a steady trickle had begun to depart after a Hindu-Muslim riot in July 1931, only to grow stronger in the decades after accession.

"The Kashmiri Pandit was out and out Indian," said Dahr. "Whether he liked India that is another concern, but he believed in the broad outline…he was secular and his secularism began to clash more and more and more with the ideology of separatism and the new Islamisation that was happening."

Along with political divergences, cultural differences started to appear, explained Dahr. The proliferation of the salaam alaikum greeting, for instance.

"You are the same but you are not the same," he said. "Kind of a glass wall, an invisible wall was being built, and as a result our value system and culture are a little bit undermined."

Requesting anonymity for safety reasons, a Kashmiri Muslim political analyst who was in the Chief Minister's security detail throughout the 1980's had a different perspective.

"There wasn't any obvious communal tension at all," he said. "This was not an individual thing; even the Anantnag riots had political motivations."

In February 1986 several temples were burnt and a number of Pandit houses and shops were destroyed by rioters in that southern district.

The analyst was convinced that a leading politician, angling for the Chief Minister's position at the time, was behind the mayhem, and that ultimately it was politics that undid the Pandits in Kashmir.

"The Pandits were ultimately the victims of a big political game," said the analyst.

Jagmohan as fall guy is a common argument among Kashmiri politicians; National Conference patron and former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah stated this as the gospel truth on a national news station earlier this month. Yet that same week hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani admitted that Muslim militants had killed Pandits during this time, calling them "not true Muslims."

"Of course, no single person or group can be blamed; everyone is at fault: Jagmohan, the militants, Kashmiris themselves," the analyst said. "But Jagmohan engineered the departure to a certain degree."

He pointed out that the Union-appointed state Governor bought tickets and rented trucks to help the Pandits get out of the Valley.

"He wanted the Central government to see that it was a communal conflict and bring in more force on the Muslim," the analyst added.

Most agree that the period of dread began with the September 1989 militants' killing of Tika Lal Taploo, an outspoken Hindu leader well-liked in his Habba Kadal community.

"He was very much liked by Muslims," said Dahr. "So that sent a shiver and produced a bit of terror."

Then the hammer fell with the January 1990 reappearance of Jagmohan rule.

"By 1990 there was essentially no government, the militants had taken over and a fear psychosis had begun to grip Kashmir," the Kashmiri political analyst said.

Killings became regular and unpredictable, with Pandits in the crosshairs.

"A lot of killings occurred," said Dahr. "But more important the Pandit killings were all selective, targeting the community, brutal and advertised, and word was spread."

Estimates range from as few as 50 to as many as 1000 Pandits killed from late 1989 to April 1990. Regardless of the true total, the situation created awesome fear.

"It was meticulously well-organized, a campaign of terror that ultimately forced us to flee," Ashwani recalled. "What did the Centre and State Government do? Nothing. One of two things would've happened to us had we stayed: we'd all be killed or all become Muslims."

The analyst echoed these sentiments. "Nobody felt completely safe," he said. "But if I were a Pandit I would have left, too; when there is paranoia from all sides, there is no other option."

Dispute still rages regarding the number of Pandits that left the Valley, with most turning to possibly inaccurate census numbers to gauge the Hindu population at that time.

"There was a trickle happening since the '50's but not this 60 percent." said Dahr, referring to official population figures that put the Pandit community at one third of its 1947 total by the 1980's.

Dahr and Rasgotra argue, as have many Pandits, that Muslim officials had long skewed the Kashmir census numbers and that the total number that ultimately left in 1990 was over 3 lakhs, as opposed to the 1.2 lakhs the records suggest. More importantly, 56,000 Pandit families registered with the government following the 1990 uprising. At an average of 5-6 per clan, the real figure would appear to lean towards the higher estimate.

The tale of one such family, the Bhats, sums up a great casualty of the Kashmir conflict. By June 1990 Dr. Bhat had sent his wife and children to Jammu and was staying alone with his father.

"They came to kill me in the evening," he said of militants. "But a couple Muslim friends who had heard about the attack shifted me to one house, and then to another, and then they got me a taxi and I got out."

Bhat admitted that his Muslim neighbors had probably saved his life.

"It was a mass uprising, but it was not about personal or collective anti-Hindu animosity," he explained. "When we left there was no animosity, and there's no animosity even now. It is not a Hindu-Muslim conflict; we have no trouble with Muslims, we had very cordial relations with our Muslim neighbors...we can still have that kind of brotherhood."

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