Kashmir Diary: Time to build on commonalities across the state

One of the most sacred shrines for Kashmir's Hindus is the temple of Khir Bhawani in the heart of the Valley. Another is Shankaracharya, which dominates Srinagar.

Over the past few years, temples of Khir Bhawani and Shankaracharya have come up in Jammu, too.

Most of the tens of thousands of Pandit (or Kashmiri Hindu) migrants who have taken refuge there over the past decade prefer their own places of worship - even in a place that calls itself a city of temples. On the other hand, very few local Hindus of the Jammu region worship at these Pandit shrines.

This is just one of several indicators I came across during a visit to Jammu last week that confirmed my knowledge of the deep chasm that separates the people of Jammu from those of Kashmir.

The Dogras, who dominate the Jammu region, once ruled the entire state of what is called Jammu and Kashmir, and the mutual animosities, even derision, that were then engendered have clearly not diminished.

Sitting with a group of young Kashmiri Pandits, sipping tea in a tiny room in the Muthi resettlement area one morning, I was struck by the extent to which their venom against Muslims was matched by their resentment against Jammu's people.

They even castigated the Jammu unit of the pro-Hindu Shiv Sena, which has agitated against admissions to Pandits in educational institutions in Jammu.

There was even a demand that separate schools, or separate afternoon classes, be held for the migrants. One could see why. These Pandit men nonchalantly observed that Jammu students would stand little chance of competing with the migrants in examinations or in the job market. So matter-of-fact were these statements that the implied derision almost did not seem to be meant.

In fact, there has been a longstanding sense of deprivation among students from Jammu and Kashmir respectively. Successive governments have, therefore, been forced to ensure that a balance was struck in admissions to educational institutions and to jobs. A similar balance has had to be maintained between Hindu and Muslim candidates.

The result has been that, over the years, selection committees have had to bypass meritorious applicants in search of names from other communities farther down a list of candidates.

So deep is the consequent resentment among Pandits that these young men at the Muthi camp said they are not sure whether they are not worse off in Jammu than they would have been in the valley.

They would never have moved here, they aver, if it had not been for immediate fear for their lives amid the passions of early 1990. Those Pandits who moved to Delhi or other parts of India were much better off, they say, adding that some among them try to move to places like Dehradun now.

Jammu-based writer and activist Balraj Puri acknowledges that people from Jammu generally stay away from these Pandit camps while Muslims from the Valley occasionally come to visit.

"The bond of language is special," he says. It is not surprising then that D.R. Sharma, the representative of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference in Jammu, says "the Kashmiri people" owe him a debt they can never repay - for having lent his name to their cause.

He says quite frankly that he is not a votary of Pakistan, or of independence. The Jammu unit of the Hurriyat simply stands in sympathy with the Kashmiri people and their human rights. Perhaps unconsciously, he always speaks of "the Kashmiri people" as separate.

No wonder the Jammu unit that he heads is nearly defunct. It started as a 27 member committee, including representatives of various parties and groups, five years ago, but that committee has been wound up now.

Sharma alone now issues occasional press statements - although he has been called a traitor by many in Jammu and the hotel he ran in the heart of the city was attacked with sticks and stones when Hurriyat leader Ali Shah Geelani stayed there three years ago.

Sharma has evidently decided that publicity of whatever sort will stand him in good stead for a political career. There would be no other reason for him to involve himself in what he clearly sees as someone else's concern.

The Hurriyat's Jammu unit was started in 1997, when Mirwais Omar Farooq was the Hurriyat chairman, so that the secessionist grouping could claim across the world that it represented Jammu and Kashmir and not just the Valley.

Omar is a diplomatically and politically savvy young man, keenly aware that the United Nations resolutions that have dealt with Kashmir since 1948 focus on the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir that the Dogras once ruled.

On the other hand, the current chairman, Abdul Ghani Bhat, has largely ignored the Jammu unit, sending no funds for it. He obviously recognises the futility of trying to build on commonalities across the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Every indicator in this city points to the pragmatism of the latter approach.