Skip to main content

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?

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. India Today has a right wing bias. Even they aren't happy with The Kashmir Files.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...