From Home to House: Writings of Kashmiri Pandits in Exile

To the memory of Kalhan Pandit who gave us Rajatarangini

. . . exile’s but another name

For an old habit of non-residence

In all but the recesses of his cloak.

Robert Graves

The house where I was born had seven windows But its door is closed to me . . .

James K. Baxter

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

FICTION

AIR YOU BREATHE

Rattan Lal Shant

FALL

Radhika Koul

THE UNFINISHED STORY

Rashneek Kher

THE KIDNAPPING

Maharaj Krishen Santoshi

THE SURVIVOR

K.L. Chowdhury

A LOST PARADISE—HOME

Parineeta Khar

ADDITION, SUBTRACTION AND DIVISION

Autar Krishen Rahbar

SAMAY KE BAAD (MERI DIARY)

Khema Kaul

UNDER THE SHADOW OF MILITANCY

Tej N. Dhar

THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE

Siddhartha Gigoo

BLOOD ON FOREHEAD

Adarsh Ajit

REFUGEE IN MY OWN COUNTRY

Juhi R. Kuchroo

Manik R. Kuchroo

NON-FICTION

HOME TOURISTS

Sushil Pandit

A MOMENT OF INTROSPECTION

K.N. Pandita

WRITING EXILE IN MY IMAGINATION

Ajay Raina

IMPACT OF EXODUS ON ELDERLY KASHMIRI PANDIT WOMEN

Veena Pandita Koul

19 JANUARY 1990

R.N. Kaul

UPON REVISITING KASHMIR

Indu Kilam

KASHMIR THROUGH CAMEOS

Rajesh Dhar

LIFE IN THE CAMP

Maharaj Krishen Koul Naqaib

HUMOUR IN EXILE

Shyam Kaul

THE TIGER LADIES

Sudha Koul

THE STORY OF A FROZEN RIVER

S.N. Dhar

PANDITS AND DOGRAS

Shaleen Kumar Singh

EXILE OR REJUVENATION

Deepak Tiku

MY FATHER’S HOUSE

Aparna Madan Sopori

PANDITS AND NARENDRA MODI

M.L. Kak

Editors

Contributors

Translators

Editors’ Note

Copyright

Copyright Acknowledgements

PREFACE

Around 3.5 lakh Pandits migrated from Kashmir to Jammu in 1990 because of the political turmoil created by militancy and terrorism. They were made to stay in schools and temples. Others lived in rooms rented out to them by the people of Jammu. Most felt that it was a question of a month or so before they would go back to the land of their birth, Kashmir. But the conditions in Kashmir deteriorated. The killings of the Kashmiris continued unabated. There was total chaos and confusion bordering on anarchy. Hope turned into despair and helplessness.

Jammu and Delhi were alien places for Pandits. They could not adjust to the new environment and circumstances. As time went by, the Pandits shifted from the schools and temples to tents in camps erected for them. There they experienced loss of privacy and physical intimacy and ‘negative epiphany’. Human relationships were shattered. Pandits became nomadic and un-homed subjects in a ‘no-man’s-land’ of waiting, anxiety and suffering. They were traumatized and stuck in limbo, not knowing what to do next. Their loneliness came out in genuine complaints, lamentations and nerve-racking dreams. They suffered the ignominy of fall and anomie.

This was ethnic cleansing or migration of the worst type in independent India. The effect of this migration devastated the mental make-up of Pandits. Migration created health and psychological  problems  of  great  magnitude  for  them.  Not knowing how to cope with the heat, many Pandits died due to heatstrokes. Alzheimer’s, amnesia and dementia affected many. A sense of insecurity, fear, suspicion, mistrust and alienation, apprehensions about the loss of identity, new diseases, adverse effect of climatic conditions, and feuds and acute tensions invaded their lives.

In spite of this displacement, the Pandit writers wrote novels, poems, short stories, essays, memoirs and satirical writings in English, Hindi, Urdu and Kashmiri in which they gave vent to their grief, anger and their longing to return to Kashmir. For them writing became a vehicle for nostalgia and for expressing their unfathomable dark anguish. Like others they had seen the end of humanism, they had seen heaven turned into hell.

In November 1990 Rattan Lal Shant wrote an essay in Hindi, Visthapan Aur Kashmiri Visthapan Sahitya (Literature of Kashmiris in Exile), in which he defined the exile of Pandits and analysed their writings produced till then.  Kashmiri  Pandit exiles founded literary associations and journals in Jammu, Delhi and some other cities. In the literary meetings the writers exchanged ideas on literature, recited poems and read out short stories and research papers. Their writings in various genres appeared in the periodicals. Many books on culture, language, history, script, art, ritual, identity, religion, politics and sociology were published. The Devanagari script for Kashmiri language evolved. Even many non-Kashmiris wrote on the harmful effects of migration on the miniscule minority of Pandits. In this way a new genre, Literature in Exile, took shape in India for the first time.

Muslims living in Kashmir wanted the Pandits to come back. They felt that ‘Kashmir without Kashmiri Pandits is incomplete’. At the time of the mass migration of Pandits, Muslims were helpless, mute spectators. The fear of the gun had silenced all. Militants wanted the Pandits out of the valley. Many Pandits and Muslims had been killed. The situation was out of control.

The administrative machinery was a total failure. Everything had collapsed. The processions and religious slogans created terror in the peace-loving Pandits about whom Iqbal has written:

Those sprightly sons of Brahmans

Have faces that shame the red tulip

Taking their rise from our charming soil

They shine as the stars on Kashmir horizon.

(Translation by Mohammad Amin.)

Still, one wonders why the Muslims allowed this exodus of Pandits to happen. Their silence and defenceless apathy towards a very tragic human situation gave rise to suspicion, mistrust and fear in Pandits.

Thousands of Pandits lived in tents from 1990 to 1995. Then they were shifted to one-room tenements (without bathrooms and kitchens) constructed at various places in Jammu and Udhampur. They lived in them till 2011. The government then constructed one-room flats (with bathrooms and kitchens) for them at different places in the Jammu province. Pandits have been living in them since 2011. These flats have only been allotted to the Pandits; they don’t own them.

There are neither tents nor one-room tenements now. The largest camp (known as Mini Township for Kashmiri Migrants) with one-room flats is at Jagti, 17 kilometres from Jammu city. Three thousand five hundred families live there. Khatris, Rajputs, Sikhs, Kashmiri Punjabis and even some Kashmiri Muslims who migrated from Kashmir, live in the camp. Other camps with one-room flats are at Nagrota, Buta Nagar, Muthi and Purkhoo in the Jammu province. When the mass migration ended only 4,000 Pandits remained in the valley. At present 18,000 Pandits live in Kashmir. One thousand four hundred youths went to Kashmir in 2007-2008 under a scheme launched by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and joined the government services.

When the Pandit exiles lost all hope of return to the valley, they sold their properties and lands in Kashmir and started constructing their own houses at different places in Jammu and other cities of the country. Many Pandits bought flats and apartments in Delhi, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Bangalore, Pune and at other places. The joint family system died its own death and was replaced by the nuclear family system. The Pandit youths working in the private sector are scattered throughout India and the world. The old feel alienated and ignored; many among them are living alone in houses and apartments. Some of the elderly people are living in old-age homes. In the summers, to avoid the heat, many Pandits go to Kashmir, stay there in hotels, rented houses, temples and ashrams, visit tourist places, and interact with their old Muslim friends and neighbours. Now Pandits are visitors to their motherland, Kashmir. They visit those tourist places where they had never gone when they lived in Kashmir. They come back with a sense of satisfaction for having visited their land of birth.

Muslim and Pandit youths born around 1990 are strangers to one another. Young Muslim boys and girls living in Kashmir hear about Pandits and their ways of life from their parents and grandparents. Muslims haven’t forgotten Pandits. Pandits nourish bitterness in their hearts about Muslims. There have been terrible tragedies and sufferings on both sides. Thousands of young Kashmiri Pandit boys and girls have not been to Kashmir, and are in no way rooted to the place. Temporal exile teaches a new attitude towards life and creates positive energy in the young, for whom the mind becomes the homeland.

Pandits say that nobody listened to them and that nobody tried to settle them or solve their issues. The print and electronic media highlighted their problems in the beginning. The leaders of the Pandit organizations met the politicians and made them aware of their predicament. Twenty-five years later, it remains to be seen how things will shape up and what will be done to solve the problems of Pandits. Will Pandits ever go back to Kashmir? The question remains unanswered.

The migration of Pandits and its aftermath teach us that it is the moral responsibility of the governments and the society as a whole to render all possible help to exiles or displaced persons at a time when they face acute economic, social, psychological and political problems in an alien atmosphere. Apathy and indifference become unpardonable sins and are a blot on the society and the nation’s rulers.

We have put together this book with a view to introduce the literature of Kashmiri Pandits in exile to readers in India and abroad. In response to our emails and telephonic conversations with writers, we received short stories and articles. We got some of the writings translated into English. We selected extracts from novels written in English and got one extract from a Hindi novel translated into English.

This book is divided into two sections, fiction and non-fiction. In the fiction section there are seven short stories, and an extract from a book written originally in Hindi and translated into English as well as extracts from four novels written in English. In the non-fiction section there are twelve essays, some cameos and extracts from two books written originally in English.

In Rattan Lal Shant’s Air You Breathe, the protagonist Omkarnath goes to Kashmir to attend a government-sponsored meeting for the revival of the old community relationship. His Muslim friends welcome him warmly but discourage him from going to his village. He returns to his refuge in Jammu, learns about a bomb blast at the venue of the meeting and faces sarcasm from the members of his family.

Maharaj Krishen Santoshi’s story, Kidnapping, is full of suspense. The protagonist is kidnapped and taken to an unknown place. A woman offers him kehwa and food. She calls him Bhai Jan. There is tension when the abducted Pandit and the militant talk. It turns out that the militant is a friend of the kidnapped Pandit, and he has got him kidnapped because he wants to talk to him as in the old days. The story is about human relationships.

K.L. Chowdhury’s The Survivor is based on a real gruesome massacre that shook the Pandit community throughout the world. Autar Krishen Rahbar’s Addition, Subtraction and Division is about intercommunity and inter-caste marriages. Khema Kaul, in an excerpt from her book Samay Ke Baad (Meri Diary), narrates her experience of life as an exile out of Kashmir. She is accompanied by her mother and sister. They go to Ajmer and visit the mausoleum of Garibnawaz where money is donated in abundance. The conversation about militancy, India and Pakistan makes Khema angry. Even the tongawalla speaks about aazadi.

The diarist in Tej N. Dhar’s excerpt from his book, Under the Shadow of Militancy, describes a meeting held in the house of a Kashmiri Pandit, Sunil. One Muslim gentleman, Sonahjoo, talks about Pandit-Muslim unity. But then a Pir addresses the gathering and says that Pandits are kafirs. Siddhartha Gigoo, in an excerpt from his novel, The Garden of Solitude, describes the condition of a Pandit family when they leave for Jammu. Suspicion, betrayal and mistrust reign. In Jammu, Pamposh’s soliloquy is the voice of all Kashmiri Pandits who live wretched lives. The description of the rash on the leg of the grandfather is agonizing.

K.N. Padita’s essay, A Moment of Introspection, is revolutionary in spirit. He asks the Pandit youths to learn German and French. Women should stop wearing saris, he says. The youths can and should create a new world order. The whole world is the homeland for Pandits. R.N. Kaul, in the essay 19 January 1990, describes the horrible night that made Pandits flee Kashmir. Rajesh Dhar in Kashmir Through Cameos is highly critical of the politicians and militants who created havoc in Kashmir and destroyed its social fabric. He uses satire and wit to expose the guilty. In Maharaj Krishen Kaul Naqaib’s Life in the Camp, the camp-dwellers talk about their experiences of living in tents and camps. S.N. Dhar in the extract from his book, Eighty-three Days

... The Story of a Frozen River, gives an account of the conversation he had with his abductors. They were fighting for the independence of Kashmir but their knowledge of Islam was inadequate. He told them many things about Islam, and they felt defeated. Deepak Tiku, in his essay Exile or Rejuvenation, presents the point-of-view of the Pandit youths who chase money, don’t tolerate interference from their parents and don’t care for rituals and festivals.

We hope that this book will give the readers a glimpse into the psyche of the Pandits in exile. The writings reflect their helplessness, nostalgia, despair and angst. The uprooted Pandits are searching for their roots, identity and freedom. They are glued to their past and carry the burden of history with them wherever they go. Naked pessimism and delusional optimism are their constant companions and shadows. Pandits are the prisoners and victims of political and historical chicanery. Feelings of uprootedness, homelessness, alienation and ‘not forgetting’ find expression in their writings. Escape into memory becomes their cathartic experience. The readers will find their crises, pain, contradictions and protests in this anthology.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Kanishka Gupta for his initial interest in the book and to Amit Agarwal of HarperCollins India for taking it forward.

AIR YOU BREATHE

Rattan Lal Shant

The bus stopped at Ramban for the passengers to have lunch. After that the journey to Jammu resumed. A child asked his mother for water. The passengers asked the driver to stop the bus near a water source. The driver parked the bus near a cascade coming down a mountainside.

Omkarnath got down as did many others. A puff of cool air caressed his face as he stood near the falling water. He stretched his arms and took a deep breath. He wished to fill his lungs with the cool air and carry it for his family in Jammu. He thought: ‘The buses from Jammu to Kashmir carry hot air closeted within. Even the walls of the houses there radiate hot air.’ As for his one-room tenement in Jammu, he could not stand the heat inside and preferred staying out most of the day.

Omkar did not know what fate had in store for him. He recalled his journey to Srinagar a few days ago, in search of hope and solace. And now he was returning empty-handed. Back to the pavilion! What was the big deal, after all? . . . He stood up . . . Why did he come to Kashmir in the first place . . .?

His five-day sojourn in Srinagar had passed off speedily. Before embarking on the first journey to their motherland after a decade, Kashmiri ‘migrants’ in Jammu had engaged in a long debate. Some favoured a direct dialogue with the majority community on why the latter had maintained silence and shown apathy towards their compatriots languishing in camps in Jammu and elsewhere. The initiative for a dialogue should have come from the former. But that did not happen. Instead, the displaced people themselves volunteered a journey of reconciliation to Kashmir for ‘a dialogue between cousins’ who should not remain estranged for ever!

Some wanted to make the best of the travel, their first after a long gap. They were given to understand that the travel was paid for and that their stay in Srinagar for three days included visits to some places. ‘He who goes will surely find somebody from his native village waiting to see him in the much-publicized event. So, one may fathom the thinking of his counterpart on the problem.’

Discussions were still going on as scores of ‘migrants’ were swayed by some invisible force to go to Srinagar. In the melee nobody asked ‘whodunit?’ They were taken to Srinagar where they got involved in meetings and public functions. Participants searched for their acquaintances and friends from their villages and neighbourhoods. Who knows who met whom? But long speeches were made. Photographers clicked cameras and took pictures of the meetings and bonhomie. Films were shot.

So it happened that Omkar sighted Asadullah. He shouted: ‘Asadullah, oye!’ His shout died down in the din. He looked around, embarrassed. The people were engrossed in the speeches. He realized the impropriety he had committed. Asadullah could not have evaporated in thin air like he did in his dreams. But now this was no more a dream. Asad was a reality!

A few days back he had noticed and heard enthused people in Jammu talk about going to Kashmir after years of separation from their fatherland. His nights were restless with dream and reality overlapping each other. He dreamt he was getting lost in dreams. He dreamt he was walking on the roads of his dear Srinagar when a sudden evening fell, and he was reminded of the fact that none of his relations or friends lived there any more . . . he had nowhere to go now . . . He dared not turn to paths which eight years back led to a friend’s house . . . Things like that . . . And he thanked God that he woke up soon after and was free from the trauma of the dream. Those to whom he narrated the dreadful experience the next morning, laughed at him. And the following night he ran on the same roads fretting and fuming . . . Familiar roads which he dared not tread . . .

Indecision and confusion prevailed till the day Omkar found himself bundled up with others on a bus to Kashmir . . .

Asadullah heard his name being called out. Without waiting to know who, he elbowed his way through the jostling crowd to the caller. Holding Omkarnath in a tight embrace, Asadullah led him out of the crowd.

‘What are you doing here? Come on.’

Omkar asked nervously: ‘But where?’

Reassuring him, Asadullah said: ‘Home! Where else?’

Asad watched Omkar’s mercurial pupils quiver. He was undecided. Asadullah explained: ‘My home, Om!’

Omkar had never imagined such a situation when he left his hot and humid one-room tenement at Jammu. He had never thought he would get to go to his cool village, his forsaken village . . . home . . . ‘My home . . .’

Some time back Asadullah had come to Jammu to meet him. There the two talked endlessly. Asad was tactful, and Omkar did not forget that his guest from Kashmir was sure to