The release of the director Vivek Agnihotri’s much-discussed film ‘The Kashmir Files’ brings back several memories of my having reported the harrowing plight of the Kashmiri Pandits in the early 1990s from Anantnag, Srinagar, Jammu and New Delhi. I was among the first journalists to extensively report on the crisis in my capacity as the South Asia chief correspondent of the New York-based weekly India Abroad and its offshoot, the wire service India Abroad News Service.
On one of my many visits to Kashmir in the early 1990s, it was probably 1991, I began a report with this lead; “I flew over the mountains of ifs and landed into the valley of buts.” Three decades hence not much seems to have changed. It is still ifs and buts and a whole lot of tensions in between.
When I first landed in Srinagar and came out of the airport looking for a cab, a young man, Ghulam came to me and said, “Aap to Hindustan se aaye hain na?” (You have come from India?”) That one question summed up the detachment, disengagement and alienation that Kashmiri Muslims in the valley have displayed for decades. I was about to correct him and say “Which country are you in?" but I did not in order to dwell into that mindset. Quite fortuitously, Ghulam himself offered the explanation about why he was treating India as a separate country. “Hum Kashmiri azad hain. Yeh hamara mulk hai,” (We Kahsmiris are independent and this is our land)” he said. I found that absurd and pointed out to him the irony of calling himself “azad” even while retaining the name “Ghulam”, which literally means a slave or, more broadly, a subject.
My introduction to the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits did not take much time. Just as I was driving to my hotel, we went past several homes that seemed strangely abandoned. I asked Ghulam about them. “Yeh Panditon ke ghar hain. Woh chhod ke gaye hain” (Those belong to the Pandits. They have left them.),” he said in a tone remarkably bereft of any emotion.
I probed him a bit more, “Kyun chale gaye?” (Why did they leave?)”
He looked at him in his mirror and said, “Bhagaa diya hai unko jihadiyon ne.” (The Jihadis have driven them away.)
That set me on to what turned out to be a detailed cover story about the Kashmir Pandits’ exodus from the Valley in the face of often unspeakable cruelty and killings. During my subsequent visits to the state I went to Anantnag as part of my story. When I told my taxi driver, whose name escapes me now, that I wanted to go to Anantnag, he corrected me to say “Islamabad.” Intrigued by that I asked him why he was calling it Islamabad, he said, “Hamare liye to wahi naam hai. (That’s the name for us.)”
These little nuggets, first from Ghulam and then from the second taxi driver, began to tell me a story about some deep-rooted animus between the Pandits and Hindus that was clearly fraught with the problems that exploded soon afterward. Sustained campaigns against their lives and property forced the Pandits to flee the land they had called home with great cultural pride for centuries and more.
In a sense, Anantnag was a hotbed of Pakistan-sponsored jihadi insurgency. The young men of the town were not subtle in their hatred. But for my profession, they would not have indulged me. In me they saw a chance to tell their stories which were often thinly disguised talking points handed to them from across the border. Occasionally though one would come across a glimpse into why the whole area was so thick with anti-India sentiments. I was taken to what looked like a bombed-out shelter by about half a dozen young men. One of them asked me to guess what the building was before it was destroyed. I said I couldn’t. He said it was once a school, the only school in the area.
I asked him who bombed it. He claimed it was the Indian army. As it turned out some heavily armed insurgents had been hiding there. A fierce gun battle between them and the army led to the structure being bombed. Later, an Indian army official in the area told me that it was the insurgents themselves who had destroyed it.
I asked those young men about the Pandits and why they had to flee from their own homes. Four of them did not say anything. One of them said quite plainly, “Yeh Kashmiri Muslamanon ka hai. (This belongs to Kashmiri Muslims).” Only one of them had a nuanced response. “Unko chhod ke nahi jana chahiye tha. Woh hamare bhai hain. (They should not have left. They were like family to us.)” The other five were particularly displeased with the response but chose not reprimand him in my presence.
I have many stories to tell from my visits to Kashmir but I am saving them from my possible memoir. Let me recall just one experience when I visited a makeshift refugee camp for the dislodged Pandits in Jammu. Despite the obvious challenges of refugee life, I discovered many Pandit families engaging their children in regular studies. An elderly gentleman who introduced himself by his last name Kaul and who was reading a book about Kashmir’s history sitting inside his tent, told me, “Learning has historically been the most important part of Kashmiri Pandits’ lives. There is a reason why we are call Pandits. Our young Muslim compatriots don’t believe in learning. They prefer coercion and violence.”
More about my Kashmir files some other day. After all, you don’t pay me to read my blog.
