Neena Gopal: Kashmir's forgotten people

Jammu is my home now," fresh-faced Dimple Kaul says, the vermilion caste mark on her forehead proclaiming her Kashmiri Pandit identity in the state's predominantly Muslim summer capital.

Like some 400,000 other Pandits, the 22-year-old fled Srinagar for an uncertain future in Jammu in 1990 at the height of the militancy. Barely eight, she remembers little beyond a nameless panic as the family left, locking up their home, on a nightmarish trek over the mountains.

Today, the young executive travels back and forth between the two cities. The flight takes less than 40 minutes; but the bustling, colourful hill town, with its scorching summer temperatures and the unmistakable stamp of its Hindu Dogra rulers, is a world away from the pristine beauty of Kashmir.

While Dimple who epitomises the young Pandit has buried yesterday's ghosts and moved on, a 'lost' generation still yearns for their homeland.

These are the people then, that the world simply forgot, the missing piece in Kashmir's ethnic jigsaw. People like Amarnath Vaishnavi, 72, president of the All Kashmir Pandit Group, who says: "I just want to see Srinagar again before I die," believes that facilitating the return of the dispossessed to the valley will be the singular act that will heal the divide, that will make Kashmir whole again.

The fear psychosis that prompted the exodus doesn't need much encouragement from surfacing.

"On 18th January [1990] Jagmohan took over as governor," Vaishnavi recalls.

Plunged into darkness

"On the 19th, power lines were cut, Srinagar was plunged into darkness, and over the loudspeakers came the chants Kashmir banega Pakistan, Batan varanye, batinge sohn, Hamain chahiya azadi, Nizam-e-Mustafa, Hindusthaniyon Kashmir khaali karo. (Roughly translated Kashmir will become a part of Pakistan, the women can stay, you men can go, we want freedom, perfect Islamic governance, Indians leave Kashmir.)

"It struck terror in our hearts, especially after word spread they had raped women and killed the men. They announced a zero hour the next day by which time we had to leave. We did, with nothing but the clothes on our backs and promises to safeguard our property, the government never kept."

He dismisses the charge by Delhi's intellectual class that they left because Jagmohan promised Rs 5,000 per family.

"Would anybody leave homes set in orchards they had lived in for generations, for money?" says Vaishnavi.

Asked what changed the age-old amity between Hindus and Muslims and led to the pogrom, he says: "The Pakistani game-plan to take Kashmir took shape after the creation of Bangladesh.

"It was a very clever plan. All the maulvis who preached Kashmiriyat, love and brotherhood were gradually replaced by preachers educated outside Kashmir who spoke against such unity. Today, they say we are welcome to return, but to what, and at what cost?"

The political overtones to this essentially human drama continue to haunt the Pandits, with political parties doing little to help move the "migrants" home, seeing in them a captive vote bank.

"Even this term migrants is wrong, we are refugees," insists Vaishnavi. Fifteen years after the exodus, those with the wherewithal have clearly moved on. Like hundreds of other Pandit children, Dimple studied in the western city of Pune in Maharashtra.

Young Kashmiri Pandits have moved on to forge new lives in other Indian cities, even marrying out of their community. Here though, they continue to live in parlous conditions.

The sea of tents in the Muthi camp may have given way to more secure one-room tenements. But its residents' quiet sense of desperation dominates all interaction in this vast slum, ringed by the detritus of humanity.

Divorce, unheard of before, is rampant says Anil Raina, 34, a graduate who reluctantly admits he runs a telephone booth. "When the women want to bathe, we leave the room, there is no privacy," adds Pyarelal, also a graduate who runs a tiny grocery.

Major issue

Unemployment is the major issue. Pandits, who in the past were virtually guaranteed government jobs because of their education, now number 20,000 educated unemployed.

"Prime Minister [Manmohan Singh] wants to build new homes. We want jobs," says Pyarelal.

"How can I force my son to study when he knows there's nothing ahead?" he adds.

The nearest school is the ramshackle Muthi camp high school which has not one but two principals! The outgoing principal is reluctant to take over his new assignment in a militant infested area while Ashok Kumar relives his own personal nightmare.

Pulled off a bus by militants along with three of his colleagues while on his way to take up his new job at the Government School, Udhampur, the young teacher survived because he lied and said his name was Ashiq.

Vaishnavi talks of the other problem compensation. Most land and property owned by Pandits is lost.

"We can't look after it, we cannot prove we own it, and because we have no property, no bank will give us any loans to start even a small business."

Pandit enterprise fuelled a boom in Jammu, which thrives despite regular attacks by militants. The city of temples sits on the picturesque Tawi river.

It houses the famed Raghunath temple, attacked twice already, as have a number of camps for security forces.

For the Pandits, this is small comfort. "No-one wants to do anything for us."