Kashmiri Pandits: Some Facts

 

The latest issue of India Today [April 4] carries a detailed feature on the Kashmiri Pandits. It is worth looking at some of the facts presented by the weekly especially because the recent Bollywood movie has struck a raw nerve and evoked diverse reactions.

First of all, why were the Pandits targeted? The attack was not simply because of religious animosity as the film tries to make it out. India Today says that the Kashmiri Pandits accounted for just 4% of J&K’s population, “but their influence over the affairs of the state far exceeded their numbers.” The Pandits were an integral part of the ruling elite during the harsh Dogra rule. After Independence, the Pandits continued to occupy high positions in both the state and central government offices. Though they were only 4% of the population, 30% of the farmland in the state was owned by them. A major share of commerce was under their control.

India Today points out that there was “the famed spirit of Kashmiriyat or the centuries-old tradition of religious syncretism and communal harmony.” But, at the same time, there was resentment over the Pandit dominance in social, economic and political affairs. That resentment reached its peak in the late 1980s. Religion was not the major issue, in other words. It was more about exploitation from one side and the longing for justice on the other.

Secondly, it is not the BJP alone that looked after the interests of the Pandits after the 1990 massacre and exodus took place. The following illustration from India Today is eloquent in itself.

Manmohan Singh did quite a lot for the welfare of the Pandits. He did not advertise it. He did not use it for fomenting communal clashes and hatred in the country.

Thirdly, India Today argues that the Babri Masjid issue had its tremors in J&K. When the Masjid was opened to Hindus in 1986, Ghulam Mohammad Shah constructed prayer rooms for Muslims inside a Hindu temple in the civil secretariat, “provocatively declaring, ‘Islam khatre mein hai’ (Islam is in danger)”. This led to widespread communal riots in Kashmir. It set off the first wave of the exodus of Hindus from that state.

Fourthly, the appointment of Jagmohan as Governor of Kashmir in Jan 1990 did no good. The crackdown ordered by him alienated the Muslims of Kashmir from the Indian government. India Today says that Jagmohan was biased against the Muslims. He had asked the Pandits “to leave the Valley so that he could launch a crackdown on militants uninhibited by the fear that they would wreak revenge on the community.” Many things were done not in good faith, in other words.

Good faith is hard to get in politics especially in hard times. But solutions are impossible without good faith. Why the BJP under Modi’s leadership is least likely to solve the Muslim problem in India is precisely this lack of good faith. Jagmohan was as much responsible for the flight of the Pandits as the militants. Later he joined the BJP, the place where he would fit in neatly.

The killing of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, the Valley’s popular spiritual mentor, and the subsequent killing of 52 Muslims by CRPF made Kashmir a complete chaos. There were still Muslim sheltering Pandits in good spirit. But such sporadic instances of camaraderie would be nothing more than lilies caught in a tempest. By the time Jagmohan was asked to resign as Governor, most Pandits had fled from Kashmir. Jagmohan’s governance caused as much havoc as Muslim militancy.

Kashmir saw more and more deaths in the years that followed. No government could bring peace to that state which once was a Paradise on Earth.

Now this movie, The Kashmir Files, is only adding fuel to the fire. You cannot solve a communal problem by projecting one side as villains and the other as victims. Solutions can never come from hearts that carry hatred in them. “The way forward is to win people’s hearts,” as Farooq Abdullah says in India Today’s interview. “Not a single Kashmiri Muslim will tell you that they don’t want the Hindus to come back,” says Abdullah. “But will this film promote their coming back?” And that’s the vital question whose rider is: Does Modi’s India want Hindus and Muslims to live in harmony together?