On Kashmir, listen to all those who suffered

Friends and acquaintances contacted me after watching the movie. Eight years ago, a friend in Delhi had told me in a dismissive tone: “You feel deeply about the Kashmir issue.” She called to say after watching it: “It’s raw, do not show it to your parents.”

My parents, like other displaced Kashmiri Pandits, do not need to watch a movie to know. They lived through it all — the ethnic cleansing for being a religious minority, the fear for their lives, the flight for safety, the struggle to rebuild from scratch, the uncertainty about the next meal, the focus on education despite the dire circumstances. The resilience despite the turmoil.

Others ask if what is shown in the movie is true — the rapes, the targeted killings, the Kashmiri Muslim neighbour signalling that a Kashmiri Pandit engineer was hiding in a rice drum when terrorists came to kill, the woman who was raped and then cut alive by a mechanical saw, the bodies of a poet and his son mutilated and hung from a tree, Kashmiri Pandits, including infants, lined up and shot dead by terrorists in Nadimarg.

It is.

This is the truth which Kashmiri Pandits have written about. In Kashmiri, there’s a saying: Apuz chhu tul katur ti poz chhu aftab (The lie is like frozen water, the truth is like the sun. The lie is short-lived like frozen water, and remains only as long as the truth is hidden).

The truth is not just limited to the slogans and the killings, it extends to the build-up of animosity against the community long before the first prominent Kashmiri Pandit killing in 1989. Accounts have been written of the collapse and complicity of the politicians, bureaucrats, police, armed forces, intelligence agencies and other organs of the state machinery, many of whom are now defensive despite being witnesses of the ethnic cleansing.

Kashmiri Pandits did not disappear into the thin air. As hit-lists were curated and pasted in public, as targeted killings and exodus took place, as they had to shift to shoddy accommodations and tents in inhuman conditions in the 1990s, they were not considered human enough by any of the governments.

Civil society failed to be civil. It stayed silent. In fact, it went a step ahead to deny the truth about Kashmiri Pandits. Many continue to do so till date.

I was one year old in 1990. Growing up, I would often scan news reports about us but not to much avail. I would sit through movies “based” on Kashmir, waiting for a mention of Kashmiri Pandits. An insignificant territory to explore for mainstream filmmakers, they would often be a fleeting reference. In one such movie shot in Kashmir and released in 2014 with a running time of 162 minutes, Kashmiri Pandits had a mention: One line.

In the popular narrative, a Kashmiri Pandit was always erudite. But the moment they asserted their truth, they were labelled “communal”, “victims who flaunt their victimhood” and try to seek “revenge”.

Prominent “liberal columnists” suggested Kashmiri Pandits had not suffered enough, that they were not killed in large enough numbers. In 2019, a columnist wrote the word “camps” will be repeated ad nauseam to claim continuing victimhood. As recently as last week, another wrote: “Memory is not always reliable”.

Kashmiri Pandits would rush to explain. The onus was on victims to produce proof. Meanwhile, the killers of Kashmiri Pandits got glorified as “messiahs”.

The void and denial of these 32 years have brought Kashmiri Pandits to such a point, where their internalised pain has come to the surface in the form of outbursts, as they see a movie as a medium of being seen and heard. One may disagree with the filmmaker’s politics, but it has come closest to depicting the facts.

That even now the maker of the recent film gets Y-grade security, when just five months back several Kashmiri Pandit employees fled for their safety after the targeted minority killings in Kashmir, speaks volumes about our dismal rank in priorities, beyond being used as political capital by the ruling government. That many of these displaced Kashmiri Pandits, who had returned for employment under the PM package, have still not been provided the promised accommodations tells us that the government needs to take more measures, rather than simply canvassing for a movie.

On their own, Kashmiri Pandits have attempted to document and narrate their truth of ethnic cleansing since the 1990s through books, documentaries, websites. Did you care to listen — without denials, comparisons, or ifs and buts? No. Kashmiriyat became a misnomer, without even an acknowledgement of the truth, forget an apology.

An entire generation passed away yearning to return to their homeland, a generation grew up not knowing what home means. Three decades — that’s the timeline. I cannot bring back my nani (maternal grandmother), who could speak only in Kashmiri and who in her late years suffered memory loss, forgetting the count of her own children, but remembering every detail of her time in Kashmir.

To the political leaders in Kashmir, who are still issuing qualifying statements, I say: “Kashmiri Pandits ‘nikal’ nahi gaye, ‘nikaale’ gaye (Kashmiri Pandits did not leave, they were forced to leave)”. State the truth, so that coming generations of Kashmir and this country know this history should never get repeated with any community.

Both sides suffered in Kashmir. Our truth can coexist with all other truths. Listen to understand, to lessen the pain, but not to fan the flames.

And for the man who stood up in a movie hall inciting fellow moviegoers against Muslim women and others issuing similar statements, a few questions. With heightened polarisation, it’s easy to cite the Kashmiri Pandit story to evoke hatred. But what have the Pandits done in these 32 years: Have they incited violence or called for revenge? Our grandparents and parents left behind their homeland, without even thinking of the consequences, to save their lives and to protect the dignity of the “womenfolk”. We picked up pens, not guns. Do not insult our resilience and suffering through such statements. Do not lose your sense of humanity.

Was justice — within the legal, administrative and political systems — accorded to Kashmiri Pandits? Were the killers brought to book in these three decades? Were inquiry commissions set up? No.

Ask the correct questions. Those in power, then and now, have a lot to answer for.

aanchal.magazine@expressindia.com