By Meenakshi Raina
We adapt, we change, we move on but somewhere in the corner of our mind we have a special place for our memories and we carry them all our life. They take us back to the past and are hard to part with. The maple leaves and their changing colours, the gentle breeze and the snowfall, remind me of the beauty of Kashmir. My forced abandonment of my homeland is something that has been haunting me for the past twenty-eight years.
I spent my childhood years in Kashmir and I recollect that on one of the cold nights in December 1989, stones were showered at our house in Kashmir. We switched the lights off and gripped with fear, we stayed inside. The noise from the stones hitting the rooftop was so loud that it felt like there was a continuous rainfall of stones. Most of the window-panes were broken and there were pieces of glass scattered everywhere in the house. “Who are these people?” asked my younger sister who was nine-year-old at that time. Accidentally, she stepped on the broken glass piece and injured her foot. The blood was oozing from the wound and she was in pain. She even lost the track of the question that she had asked. My father was shaken; he didn’t understand why someone would do that. No one could sleep that night. Even before this incident, my father had received a threatening letter by post warning us to leave Kashmir.
Meenakshi Raina
Masked men waving their guns were seen in the past. The separatist movement in Kashmir started with the anti-India slogans, hoisting of green flags and the exploitation of the youth by the fundamentalist leaders. There was a well-planned strategy that started with selective killings to create fear and followed by brutal mass killings of the minority (Kashmiri Pandits). Although we lived in fear but for the first time my father realized that the situation had become life threatening for us. He decided that my mother, my aunts and all children in the family should leave Kashmir at least till the time some normalcy was achieved in the valley. We had a house at Jammu that was under construction, only two rooms were liveable. On January 3, 1990, my family left for Jammu. We managed to take two suitcases with us and rest everything was left behind. Leaving home even for couple of days was never easy in the past but we always used to return. This time when I left home; I kept on staring at it, I had some intuition that I was never going to come back. It was painful. A good-bye for a sweet home didn’t come easy it certainly came with tears in my eyes.
On the night of January 19, 1990, in Kashmir, public address system was used from the mosques to exhort people to come on to the streets. The taped slogans were repeatedly played, that created panic. Extermination had begun in the Kashmir Valley. My father, my uncles and my grand-mother had stayed back in Kashmir. It was in the early hours of morning, my grand-mother and other family members boarded the bus for Jammu. They carried nothing except whatever clothes they had on.
When I saw my grand-mother, the look on her face was ghastly, it was obvious that she had faced an ordeal; I will never forget that look of her, as it has been stamped in my mind. My grandmother narrated how the rest of the family had spent the night of January 19, in a fear of loosing life, anxiety and uncertainty. Throughout the night they held knives in their hands in order to resist any attack. They remained confined to one room and stayed silent, and prayed for the night to pass safely. She mentioned to me the slogans that were used to harass the Kashmiri Pandits – “Assi gacchi panunuy Pakistan, Batav rostuy batinen saan.” It meant – “We want our Pakistan, without the Pandit men, but with their women folk.”
A rhythm of existence had broken. Kashmir was torn by terrorism and violence. Every morning I would wake-up with the broken pieces from my past and the past would beat inside me like a second heart. A family of fifteen members had to share a two-room space. Everyday in my new neighbourhood I would witness trucks being unloaded; these were the Kashmir Pandit families who had managed to leave Kashmir and were taking refuge in Jammu. The number of displaced families continued increasing and each night, a homeless family was born. Jammu city became a safe haven for the refugees.
Most memories from childhood fade or vanish altogether, but everything is so fresh in my mind. Sometimes the worst part of holding to memories is the pain they bring with them. What was thought to be a temporary displacement, eventually turned out to be permanent. Weeks turned into months and months turned into years, and we continued living in self-exile. I graduated from a Camp-college in Jammu and later post-graduated from Mumbai University. Even in hard times, my parents invested in my education. Peace of mind was a daily battle for them as they had been waiting to go back to their homeland but life still went on and there was no reverse journey to Kashmir. With the mass exodus came pain, agony and misery. There was a surge of stress and strain as life became surrounded by inhospitable conditions, false promises, and lack of support and assistance. I failed to understand what led to the situation where life became unsafe in our own homeland. Terrorism had openly harboured in the valley; it had grown over a period of time.
In Jammu, many times I would notice my mother climbing the stairs towards the cemented rooftop and being by herself. Perhaps that was the only place which was quite compared to the rest of the house. Once I followed her, she was sitting quietly on a pile of bricks and there were tears in her eyes. I realized that in order to hide her tears from us, she had chosen to be there. I asked her the reason for being so disturbed and all she said, “I worked all my life and saved to build a home in Kashmir and now everything has vanished.” Someone had told her that there had been a break-in in our house in Kashmir and most of the items were stolen. She would hide many things from us; perhaps she didn’t want her children get tense.
There were many displaced families who lived in tents that were put on barren lands and their tents often collapsed with the wind. Coming from a place with pleasant weather in summer and snowfall in winter, the scorching heat in Jammu was unbearable. Leaving behind their homes in Kashmir the Pandit community had become homeless. Throughout the turmoil, their houses had been set ablaze, vandalised or looted in broad daylight. It may sound strange but the exile has still not ended and it has been close to three decades now.
Though I migrated to Canada but my memories migrated with me. While writing my first fiction – ‘The Divine And The Destiny’, I have relived the tragedy of exodus which is full of noxious memories, terror and trauma. Some of my memories are relentless and their details refuse to leave me. Over the last twenty-eight years, I never went back to my childhood lanes and I only visit them in my dreams. I was hounded out of Kashmir but my endless longing for my homeland is still alive in me. My thirteen-year-old daughter who was born in Canada feels disconnected with my past. Sometimes my solitude brings back the hidden past. I remember my childhood days in Kashmir, my treasure of poems that I wrote as a child and my drawings that captured the scenery of the valley, everything was left behind when I was forced to abandon my home in Kashmir. I wish I had something from my past to share with my daughter. Even there are no black and white photographs that I could show her. When I talk to her about my roots, she can’t understand the wrapped-up emotions in what I say. I wish I could take her to the land where once I spent my childhood. I wish I could point to her my school where I studied and the playground where I practised bicycle ridding. But alas! I only have stories for her and for the generations to come. My endless longing for my homeland will stay with me concealed and I hope someday the political conflicts will resolve and I would be able to revisit my old lanes. Will my endless longing meet its end? Perhaps, my generation would be the last to have this issue; the new generation in my community doesn’t bear any emotional connection with their ancestral land.
Twenty-five years from now we will have a Kashmiri Pandit youth who has not been exposed to Kashmir, does not relate to it and may not necessarily think about it as we maybe thinking now. Kashmir by default will turn into a 100% Muslim state were as historically it is an inheritance of Kashmiri Pandits. Kashmir which happens to be the city of archaeological marvel of Hindu Temples and religious institutions will be a place full of Mosques some potentially converted from temples. The saga of Kashmir which was built upon fundamentals of Brahmanism will be completely lost.
The word Kashmir may have potentially been changed by then to accommodate the Muslim details. Schools will probably have in their history text books a topic on “Kashmiri Pandits – who are they.” A museum may have been opened in Kashmir to commemorate the History of Pandits. It may sound very harsh but the reality of the fact is that it is bound to happen unless government of India decides to wake up from its slumber and think seriously about quick rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley, jobs and security for the new generation, and more importantly removal of the article 370 in the India constitution which is the crux of entire problem.
An Indian soldier who fights at the line of control between India and Pakistan, is ready to sacrifice his life for the Nation, but has no right to buy land in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. I wonder why he doesn’t stop at the borders of Punjab and why should he sacrifice his life for soil that he can’t own? Article 370 in our Indian constitution has always kept the Hindu population in minority in Kashmir. An Indian citizen, but a non-Kashmiri, can’t buy or sell any land or property in Jammu and Kashmir. This needs to be changed as it is against the right to equality for all Indians. India is a democratic secular country and it can’t afford to have Kashmir as a pure Muslim state. If changes are accommodated now, only then we can see glimpses of hope and save this proud community.
Kashmiri Hindus have paid a heavy price for their patriotism and the nation still doesn’t recognise their pain and sufferings, their voices have been unheard over the past twenty-eight years and they still bear the same label ‘migrants’ that was given to them in 1990 during the mass exodus. One thing that was learnt from history is that India will never surrender the borders of Kashmir to Pakistan or make it a separate nation. It is the responsibility of the Indian government to make structural reforms in the judiciary and administration, and safeguard the rights of Kashmiri Pandits and save them from extinction. Desire for justice and fairness in action is what Kashmiri Pandits expect from the new government.
(Meenakshi Raina is a Canada-based author and a Kashmiri Pandit. Her debut historical fiction ‘The Divine And The Destiny’ is based on the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990. She is also a contributing author for the recently published non-fiction ‘A Long Dream of Home’ and is currently working on her collection of short stories and poems.)