Opinion | Recent killings in the Valley prove that there is still much hatred against Kashmiri Pandits

“There is still so much hatred in my own town,” says the Jewish holocaust survivor, Irene Zisblatt, who features in the 1998 Academy Award-winning documentary film, The Last Days. “I didn’t want the world to see how much hatred is still going on, after all of this suffering,” she says. Like four other Jewish survivors of the holocaust featured in the film, Irene recounts stories about her time in a Nazi concentration camp. Going back and forth in time and revealing a horrifying account of persecution and extermination under the genocidal Nazi regime in Hungary, life in a concentration camp, miraculous survival and escape from the camp, and a strange homecoming to a homeland which once was hers and from where she was deported. Hers is a journey from days of joy and glory to days of darkness and horror. That horror is still encased in her heart as if it were some trophy. It has now given rise to a void, and out of that void springs forth abundant humanity, goodness, goodwill, and a desire to dedicate the rest of her life to the memory of those who perished including her own family. 30 August 2021

Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits assemble in the streets of Srinagar and take out Krishna Jhankis (tableaus) to celebrate Krishna Janmashtami. This coming together of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, for the first time in the last three decades, to celebrate Janmashtami in the traditional way is an act of courage. It signals an intent to reclaim lost time and a lost way of life. ‘This is our land and we will not be fearful anymore’ is the message.

At the heart of their celebration and gaiety shines an ardent desire to return to their long-lost homeland from which they were ousted 31 years ago. This celebration, long overdue, has come after three long decades. People have waited for this day.

The sight of Kashmiri Pandits bringing out jhankis and singing devotional songs in the streets of Srinagar brings tears to my eyes, having been part of such happy festive occasions during my childhood in Kashmir. Everybody greets everybody. It isn’t the usual greeting. Airing of optimism and hope accompanies it. A growing feeling that our 31-year-long exile might end soon! Maybe, this will usher in a new dawn and we will get to go back and do everything we used to do when we lived there until 1990. Everyone praises the government for some reason.

Some see signs of normalcy while others see a lull before the storm. 2021: A year of firsts for Kashmir

15 August 2021: 75th anniversary of India’s Independence: The Ghanta Ghar (Clock Tower) at Lal Chowk is draped in the tricolour. For the first time in history! That clock has been a silent witness to the goriest of events and to bloodshed.

Another unusual sight: Two tall Tirangas are flying high on the Hari Parbat Fort and the Shankaracharya Hill.

Earlier in March, a fashion show was held in Srinagar. Imagine a fashion show in a place where cinemas are still closed. Reliving the horror once again

20 September 2021

It is Anant Chaturdashi. Many displaced Kashmiri Pandits travel from Delhi and Jammu to Kashmir. They perform puja and havan in the temple at Nagbal (the sacred pond), Anantnag. A few days earlier, many prayed on the banks of Jhelum to celebrate Vyeth Truvah, the birthday of river Goddess Vitasta, also known as Jhelum.

The revival of age-old customs in the land of my birth fills my heart with hope. My sister and her husband are in Kashmir too to spend a few days there.

“How is everything there?” I ask them.

“A new beginning,” they say, sending me video clips from their visit to Hari Parbat, Bhadra Kali temple and Nagbal, rekindling hope in my heart.“We shall soon come back to our homeland for good. This is our only prayer…”

Yet, I sense a strange silence, an uneasy calm. An old memory comes alive at the sight of a floundering Downtown by the Jhelum. As though something ominous is about to unfold.

But then, the sight of so many Pandits in Kashmir is reassuring — good old days seem to be back. Muslims wish Pandits on the auspicious occasions. They are all smiles. This bonhomie isn’t unfamiliar.

Is this that light at the end of the tunnel? The light we have been dreaming of day after day, night after night for the past 31 years! 3 October

Mata Bargheshekha Bhagwati temple situated on a mountain ridge in District Anantnag is desecrated by locals. Our hearts sink yet again. 6 October

A well-known Pandit pharmacist, Makhan Lal Bindroo, is shot dead by terrorists outside his shop in Srinagar’s bustling Hari Singh High Street . The news of his killing sends shivers down the spine of the entire community. A killing reminiscent of Lasa Kaul’s and Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo’s killing. We are made to relive those dark days yet again.

The unfolding of familiar horror! Our worst nightmare comes true, once again. Killing the very person who selflessly serves people is akin to dehumanising the entire community to which the person belongs. Such a thing didn’t happen even in the dark ages.

We are still struggling to come to terms with the killings of Pandits that took place in Kashmir in the preceding months. In June, Ajay Pandita, a 40-year-old Kashmiri Pandit sarpanch, met the same fate when he was shot dead by terrorists while he was serving the people there. His house in Jammu wears a sombre look now. Once, it was a house of happiness and laughter.

In September, Police Constable Bantu Sharma was killed.

The killers are still at large. Morning, 7 October

Terrorists sneak into a school’s premises in Downtown Srinagar, separate the Muslims from the non-Muslims, single out Principal Supinder Kour (a Sikh woman) and Deepak Chand (a Hindu), and shoot them dead . Their fault: they don’t belong, nor does their faith. Their only mistake — celebrating their nation’s Independence Day in school. It becomes the cause of their killing.

“Kill one, scare ten, the Muslim mobs chanted, and ten were, indeed, scared…” writes Salman Rushdie in Shalimar the Clown.

The ploy always works. It worked in 1989 in Kashmir.

This pre-meditated and targeted killing of religious minorities in Kashmir is not just any other killing. This is language. The only language Pandit-haters have known since 1989.

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building,” writes Philip Gourevitch about the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi minority ethnic group in Rwanda in We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. Staying home comes at a cost

Living in Delhi, I feel scared for the first time in 30 years. As if the last hope is being snatched, at the very last moment. Imagine the condition of about 4,000 young Kashmiri Pandits who are employed in various parts of Kashmir under the Prime Minister’s Employment Package for Kashmiri Pandit migrants. The very words in the name of this scheme — ‘package’ and ‘migrant’ — are so inapt and cruel. Package employees: That’s what these youngsters are called in their own homeland and in state government circles. We should hang our heads in shame.

These youngsters, living in mortal dread, along with their spouses and children, most of them barely even 30, are children of exile, having been born in camps in Jammu. Those ‘camp-homes’ still exist in Jagati and Buta Nagar in Jammu. The displaced parents and grandparents of these youngsters live there. What then is home? Where is home? Kashmir, where these youngsters are forced to work as ‘package employees’ or Jammu where their parents live in camps, longing for a dignified return to the land of their birth and to their ancestral homes? What will they do now in the wake of these killings of Pandits? And what about those Pandits who, despite all odds, chose to stay behind in 1990. They have paid a huge cost for staying back. With their freedoms snatched, an uncertain future looms large! Fear of extermination once again giving rise to thoughts of leaving everything behind and fleeing their homes in Kashmir.

…

Kashmiri Pandits: The nowhere-no place people

My father recalls spending time at Bindroo’s shop in the ’80s. He knew him quite well. Almost everyone in Srinagar knew him for his selfless service to the underprivileged in the worst of times.

Within hours of Bindroo’s killing, the Mayor of Srinagar proposes to name a portion of the road near Iqbal Park after Bindroo.

It’s a new fad the government seems to have acquired from somewhere. To name roads and institutions after Kashmiri Pandits. The government has now constituted a committee to name places in Kashmir after Kashmiri Pandit poets, scholars, and even martyrs.

Imagine, we will have roads and bridges and parks and even museums named after us. And there will be Muslim kids who will ask their parents, “Who are these people?” We will be nowhere. Neither here, nor there! Twice banished from our homeland! And all that will remain is an odd signboard in a street in Srinagar flashing our names, relegating us to some past, long erased from even history. This will be the government’s doing.

Summing up the strange, yet indescribable plight of Kashmir Pandits, my father, Arvind Gigoo, says: “We weep laughs, we laugh weeps.” ‘It happened, therefore it can happen again’

Almost every Kashmiri Pandit living in Kashmir is at risk now. Anyone could be next.

“It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say,” says Primo Levi about the genocide of the Jews during the holocaust.

The fate of 4,000 young Kashmiri Pandits working in Kashmir as part of the Prime Minister’s Employment Package hangs in the balance now.

Once again, Pandits find themselves on the hit lists of Kashmiri terror outfits. It is our Kristallnacht

Evening, 7 October

I ring a young Pandit friend up. He is posted in a government office in a remote village on the outskirts of Anantnag. His wife is a government school teacher there.

“We are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,” he says, terrified. “The government has left us to fend for ourselves… what happened to all those tall promises made by the current government? we have been forced to live in cramped spaces in transit quarters made of asbestos sheets… in far flung areas with no security… our own government has betrayed us… we are being massacred again one after another… the leaders are clueless… we don’t know what to do… our existence here is under threat once again… it is going to be a long, dreadful night… it is our Kristallnacht! There is only one option now…”

“You mean you will leave? When?” I ask.

“Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn,” he says.

Siddhartha Gigoo is an award-winning author. He’s the author of, among others, ‘The Garden of Solitude’ and ‘The Lion of Kashmir’. He has also co-edited ‘A Long Dream of Home: The Persecution, Exodus and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits’ and ‘Once We Had Everything’.