Pushed out?

It seems that common sense is dawning upon some Kashmiri Pandits who had migrated from the strife-torn valley to Jammu and other places early this year. If one is to go by letters appearing in the local Srinagar Urdu press, the migrate Pundits living in refugee camps in Jammu are realising now that their massive fleeing was perhaps unwarranted, and that they had become pawns in the communal games of the BJP-Shiv Sena, liticians. They openly acknowledge their mistakes and are expressing their desire of returning to the Valley.

An interesting exchange between some among the Pundit refugees on the one hand, and Kashmiri Muslims (including representatives of a militant organisation) on the other, in the columns of the Srinagar daily Alsafa News, indicates the changing mood and also reveals the machinations of the former governor Jagmohan who organised the ‘mass emigration’ of the Kashmiri Pundits in February-March this year. One KL Kaul living in the Nagrota Transit Camp in Jammu wrote a letter in the paper (dated September 18) stating that Jagmohan sent a message to the Pundits of the Valley in the first week of February to migrate to safer places since the government had planned to kill about 1,50,000 Kashmiri Muslims in its bid to overcome the uprising. “Pundits were assured”, the letter says, “that once the massacre of the Kashmiri Muslims was completed and the movement was curbed, they would be sent back to the Valley. That is why most of the Pundits left without their belongings”. But things were not all that satisfying for the refugees who came to Jammu. After the initial expressions of sympathy of the local people, now “our community is looked down upon and Kashmiri Pundits are treated as nothing but parasites...Our young men have become vagabonds because they have nothing to do except roaming on the roads. Some of our young men have taken to drugs...” The writer of the letter then appeals to the militants and the Kashmiri Muslims to “forgive my community for the betrayal”, adding: “We are ready to return home and we are just waiting for a call from you...”

The responses from the Kashmiri Muslims to this letter suggest the spirit of communal harmony that still survives in the Valley. Barring one letter--whose author is opposed to the return of the Pundits--almost all the letters that appeared in the newspaper appreciate the desire of the Pundits to make amends and come back. They remind their erstwhile Pundit neighbours that their houses and belongings are still intact and well taken care of, express sympathy for their plight in the Jammu refugee camps, gently rebuke them for having deserted their Muslim brethren at the behest of the BJP and Hindu communal organisations and ask them to condemn the atrocities by the security forces. Of particular significance is a letter signed by several office-bearers of a militant outfit, who remind the Pundits that the militants had earlier given a call declaring Pundits as “brothers and part and parcel of the nation (of Jammu and Kashmir)”. They then add that since the Pundit migrants now realise that the BJP and Shiv Sena are ‘traitors’, they must “first of all stone them to death and then think of returning back to the Valley..”

Meanwhile, 23 Kashmiri Pundit refugees living in Jammu in a letter in the same newspaper (September 22) came out with the disclosure that they were threatened with “dire consequences” by the authorities if they did not obey Jagmohan’s order to leave the Valley early this year. Acknowledging that they “knowingly or unknowingly committed a great blunder by playing our part in communalising the situation and the freedom struggle”, they condemned “the atrocities that are being unleashed on our brothers by the Indian occupation forces” and concluded with the words: “May our dream of living in a free, independent and prosperous country of Jammu and Kashmir be fulfilled very soon”.

It is heartening to find the Kashmiri Pundits and Muslims beginning a heart-to-heart dialogue over the heads of the fundamentalist leaders of their respective communities, who have been trying to keep them apart. Quite predictably, the national press (still playing the game of communalising the Kashmir problem) has blacked out this important dialogue. Since people outside Jammu and Kashmir have no access to alternative sources of information about developments there (like the changing mood of the Pundit refugees described above), the Delhi-based civil liberties group--Committee for Initiative on Kashmir--has decided to bring out a news bulletin called The Kashmir Dossier, collating reports from diverse sources. It is hoped that this effort to provide readers with a comprehensive picture of happenings in Kashmir could initiate a debate among all sections of our people and lead to a consensus towards the solution of the Kashmir imbroglio.