Losses Galore

In some of the well-documented articles in the recent issues of Koshur Samachar, mention has been made of the huge and well-nigh incalculable losses of the personal and collective properties and painfully-built assets of the Kashmiri Pandit community following just a little short of a complete mass exodus of our biradari from the Valley of Kashmir, starting from early 1990. It is not my intention now to analyse and specify in detail the basic facts leading to this tragedy. So far as I can say, this is an event of unparalleled dimensions even in the tortuous historical career of this small Brahmin community. Obviously, the chief factor leading to this sad denouement was the utter panic of insecurity that gripped this small minority group when they watched from March to December 1989 the rapid speed at which the normal administrative authority was steadily crumbling unchecked and the corresponding accelerating supremacy of the widespread cult of the gun that was gaining ascendency in the towns and the countryside of the Valley.

Forced Exodus

With the memories of the politically engineered onslaught on the properties and places of worship of the community around February-March of 1986 still fresh in their psyche, it was natural for this unarmed, traditionally most non-violent, numerically insignificant and woefully forsaken minority to take fright and try to escape beyond the turmoil-ridden Valley into regions beyond, without calculating the consequences of this exodus into unwholesome regions not always ready to receive them with adequate love and compassion. I need not mention here the tally of the innocent Kashmiri Pandits gunned down, tortured and kidnapped from time to time right from September, 1989. To those who maintain that a sizeable number of innocent peace-loving or politically committed Kashmiri Muslims too have fallen victims to this reign of terror let loose by the armed militants or the resultant inevitable cross-firings between the terrorists and the security forces, it could be pointed out that the total number up to date of casualties inflicted on Kashmiri Pandits are obviously alarmingly out of proportion to their very meagre population strength in the Valley..

Loss of Collective Assets

However, the point I should like to elaborate now is the potential loss of the collective assets of the community involved in their permanent exodus from Kashmir. It has been my view over the past several decades of changes and the processes of destabilisation at work in the country that the distinctive identity of our community could not be long sustained if, through an unrelenting economic squeeze or the sort of present upheaval in the Valley that no one could envisage even six or seven years back, our people are compelled to move out en masse out of their centuries old historical and mountain-girt homeland. For one, though following a few centuries of vicissitudes earlier and the pressures generated since 1947, quite a large number of our talented people had settled in various urban centres of India and even in distant foreign lands during recent decades, right till January, 1990, the overwhelmingly largest chunk of our biradari continued to hold on tenaciously to their native soil in utter faith and love. Obviously, if they are now scattered to all the winds without any plans, this will amount to almost complete destruction of our identity at its very roots.

Moreover, our community in the Valley had at their disposal large immovable and very valuable properties attached since time immemorial to their sacred shrines in the towns and the countryside. It is true that the migrant members of our community have tried with some success to build fairly valuable collective properties in recent decades in various important centres where they have settled in the country, but all these in their totality could hardly bare even minor comparison with the collective assets available to us in the Valley. In peaceful conditions these could have been converted into a powerful economic and political base for our community on the lines of the Muslim Auqaf Trust or the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee as now functioning and operating in Kashmir.

Lost Opportunities

Following about a four-decade career in the teaching profession at Jammu, in Srinagar, and in the service of the Punjab University at Jalandhar, when I retired from active service, I tried for some years to participate in Srinagar in what is called public life. During this period I strove to work for two objectives. First, I felt the need to organise the community under the auspices of one sole organisation, like the traditional political-cum-social representative body known as All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference based at Shital Nath, Srinagar. Next, I tried to induce the various groups and coteries in control of properties and the substantial accumulated funds of our shrines to come together under one apex body through legislation. As regards the first objective, the last attempt in this regard was initiated by Brigadier R.N. Madan, then President of the All India Kashmiri Samaj, in a combined get- together of various rival bodies and splinter groups in Srinagar during the fate-laden summer of 1989. It so chanced that I too participated in this gathering. Unfortunately, following several days' deliberations, the attempt ended in an unresolved stalemate. Nor did any efforts since 1984 for realising the other basic objective lead to any positive results.

I believe there is no point now in blaming the so- called leadership of the community over these past lapses and lost opportunities. I am penning these lines to point out how our people failed to build their social and economic standing in the Valley and allowed the comparatively peaceful years following the historic watershed of 1947 to be eaten by the locusts. Now, alas, all these dreams appear to have been shattered beyond remedy in the tornado of history blowing over our much-loved and ancient native region, a storm any clear signs of the abatement of which are not yet in sight.

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Courtesy: 1991 December Koshur Samachar