The Kashmir Pandits are refugees in their own nation



Displaced in your own country, willy nilly ignored by different political parties and in many ways expunged from the national discourse. That in many ways sums up the plight of Kashmiri Pandits in India.



One of the greatest human tragedies since partition, a lost community and perhaps at one level a lost generation.



Twenty odd years after the great exodus from the Valley where they left their homes and hearths, many Kashmiri Pandits have picked up the pieces and gone back to living their lives.



'It is ironic that a Kashmiri Pandit is an Indian and yet he is a refugee in his own land.' A minority of Kashmiris are still struggling to come to terms with their displacement

Though, it is not the same thing, at least the majority have thrown themselves back into the hurly burly of a daily regimen. Survival after all is essential and since nature abhors a vacuum, life has to go on.



There is however, a minority, which is still struggling to come to terms with this displacement. These are the economically weaker sections of the community which are making do just to subsist.

Homeless as they have been denied by heartless politicos a place to settle in the Valley of Kashmir.

The community meanwhile, as a whole, deprived of their madre vatan continues to make its presence felt. I must confess that I am not a refugee, though I was born in the land of my ancestors, very much in the Vale of Kashmir.



Against that, I would like to believe that I am an Indian first, having lived and worked in three of the biggest metropolitan cities of this wonderful country - Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and now once again in the rajdhani.

But at another level, I am also a Kashmiri, my roots call out to me constantly.



They ask me searching questions, they probe, they irritate my sub conscious wanting to know what I have done about my heritage, legacy, call it what you will.



This Wednesday, the World Refugee day is to be celebrated, though I wonder how a refugee can celebrate his displacement. Ironical that a Kashmiri Pandit is an Indian and yet he is a refugee in his own land.



The Kashmiri Pandits are a lost community and perhaps at one level a lost generation

He has lost all connectivity with his motherland, he probably fears going back despite protestations from the radicals who 'openly and publicly' welcome us back. To what avail?



We are second rate citizens in our own country, there is no quota for us, there is no freebie given, there is nothing that makes an allowance for our unique predicament. It is said that the Kashmiri Pandits were stampeded from the Valley in those trying years between 1989-90.



The reality is that the fear psychosis triggered by the rule of the gun and several cases of ethnic cleansing propelled them into taking this decision.



It didn't happen overnight, Kashmiri Pandits had lived through other such attempts in the past. What changed? The systematic pogrom to target all those who symbolised India in the Valley worked like clockwork.



The terror network thrives on creating a fear factor. If that meant going after co religionists, then so be it. A case in point was an NC worker and political activist Yusuf Halwai who had illuminated his sweet shop on August 15 to celebrate India's independence.



This perceived 'outrage' saw him being slain and a message being sent to the majority community in the Valley that India was a pariah and anyone who has anything to do with India was to be treated like Yusuf Halwai.



That was phase one, create a fear psychosis amongst the majority community.



With a silenced majority reduced to mute onlookers, the terror network now got to phase two, leading advocate and political activist Tika Lal Taploo was first threatened and then gunned down.



Just as Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo - the man who had delivered the verdict against Maqbool Bhatt - was shot dead. Director General Doordarshan Lassa Kaul was the next victim followed by leading Sanskrit and Persian scholar Sarvanan Kaul Premi.

In Anantnag, another advocate and activist Prem Nath Bhat met the same fate.



But break point came when a nurse Sarla Bhat in the Sher-e-Kashmir Medical Institute in Sohra was abducted, gang raped and then her mutilated and decapitated body was thrown at the Habakadal thoroughfare. In yet another sensational ethnic cleansing killing Bal Kishen Ganjoo was done to death in his own house.



The message for the minority community was loud and clear, in fact it was a neon sign being held in their faces. Get out is what it said. Many of my very close relatives, including my mother's sisters had to flee the Valley in the darkness of the night.



My childhood memories are associated with 2 Exchange Road, Wazir Bagh and Narsingarh; homes which one frequented and stayed in during the school summer recess.

Anyway as if all this killing wasn't enough, the terror network upped the ante by indulging in random gruesome massacres of Kashmiri Hindus, serially in Nadimarg in 2003, Wandhama in 1998 and Sangrampura in 1997. The circle of terror was complete.

Fear had transcended the Vale. Twenty years later all of us in our own small ways grapple with this reality of being taken out of the Valley. I cannot imagine how those who have migrated out of the Valley cope with this harsh reality, how they deal with the demons in their heads, how they adjust to their new locations and environment.

I know that several of my relatives both paternal and maternal have rebuilt their lives, the process has been difficult, but they were economically better off than a whole host of families.



But they too seek a tryst with their homeland, just as I do. Last year, at the India Today conclave, I got an opportunity to meet and talk to Syed Ali Shah Geelani who implored Kashmiri Pandits - our brothers - to come back to the Vale. Is that feasible or possible, would we want to live and work as second class citizens in our own land?

Not knowing when our lives will be extinguished. It is better to live across the Banihal Pass amongst people who are not looking to kill you. Yes, as refugees in our own country.

That is the travesty of being a Kashmiri Pandit, can't live in his own land, and yet living in his own country as a refugee. This would be the greatest human tragedy of modern times.



