Asia Times: Hindu minority refuses to bow out of Kashmir


	April 5, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Hindu minority refuses to bow out of Kashmir
By Sonia Jabbar

NEW DELHI - Adding to the complexity of the ''Kashmir Problem'' which has dogged India and Pakistan for more than 50 years has been the fate of the minority Hindu population of Kashmir, otherwise known as the Pandits.

If little is known about the 300,000 Pandits who fled the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1991, at a time of popular support for militancy, to become refugees in India, less is known about the tiny number of 17,860 Pandits who chose not to leave.

Unlike the Kashmiri Sikhs who rallied around in huge numbers after the massacre of the 36 Sikhs of Chittisinghpora earlier in March, the Pandits were unable to organize themselves effectively in the face of selective killings of their community, choosing the safety of tented refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi instead.

The mass exodus of the Pandits is still shrouded in mystery. Why they left is a question still levelled at them by the Muslims of the valley.

''Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have died either at the hands of security forces or militants, but we are still here,'' says Shafi, an artist in Anantnag whose group of friends was almost entirely Pandit before the exodus. That there was a real, palpable fear among the Pandits of being exterminated is a fact dismissed by Shafi. He feels, like most Muslims, betrayed by them. They left without saying goodbye.

In Delhi, an old man's sense of betrayal is of equal intensity. He was a government servant in Kashmir who trusted his Muslim neighbors. He feels they gave him no choice once the killings of the Pandits started in 1989, that they did nothing to allay his fears, that they drove him out of his homeland. ''I asked my Muslim friend why did you throw us out, why? Did we murder you? Did we rob you? Did we rape your women?'' he shouted, ''we taught you to read and write, we taught you . . . '' His friend, he said, had no answer.

The Pandits of Kashmir are all Brahmins, and pride themselves on being the only caste to have resisted conversion when Islam was introduced peacefully to the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century by the Sufis of Central Asia. They held considerable power, as they were the only people who had a tradition of being highly educated. But this also meant that they bore the brunt of the tyranny unleashed by certain ruthless invaders, particularly during the Afghan occupation of Kashmir in the mid-eighteenth century.

Even though the Kashmiri Pandits have had greater sympathies and links with the Indian Union than their Muslim counterparts, they bore severe economic losses after the Maharaja of Kashmir acceded to India when, in 1949, Kashmir's leader Sheikh Abdullah introduced land reform measures, redistributing land largely held by the Pandits to the Muslim tiller.

''We have suffered at the hands of tyrants through history,'' says Yuvraj Raina, a Panun Kashmir activist in New Delhi. ''There have been four migrations of Pandits. This is the fifth, and the last.'' Panun Kashmir is an organization of Kashmiri Pandits formed in 1991 which believes that the only solution to the problems faced by Kashmiri Pandits is a separate homeland carved non-violently out of the Kashmir Valley.

This portion of the Valley, called Panun Kashmir, would be a secular state autonomous of Srinagar, and would abide by the Indian Constitution. They feel this is the only way to safeguard the interests, values and culture of the Kashmiri Pandit.

''Look, we told those who remained behind, it's just a matter of time before they get you,'' says Raina. ''The Muslim fundamentalists want to ensure a pan-Islamic State from the Middle East and Central Asia to Kashmir and the world keeps quiet.'' He recounts the recent killings of the Pandits in the Valley - five last month, one more a couple of weeks later. ''We told them it is either homeland or perish.''

But this is not a sentiment shared by the Pandits who choose to remain in the Valley. In Mattan, south Kashmir, a young school teacher, Jyoti, continues to live with her family and extended family amongst her Muslim neighbors. ''This is the only home I've known. These are the only friends and neighbors I have ever had and they've been very good to us - so why should we leave?'' she asks.

''Yes, we do feel scared sometimes,'' she concedes. ''You see, no one knows anymore who the killers are. It's not like the old days where everyone knew who belonged to which militant outfit. Now they are nameless, faceless.''

About the Pandit exodus she says, ''We never knew they were leaving. No one told us anything. In the evening they'd be chatting with us quite normally, perhaps a little afraid, and then the next morning we'd find a big lock on their front doors.''

The exodus of the Pandits has also meant that it becomes increasingly difficult for someone like Jyoti to find a suitable husband. In Srinagar there is a sizeable concentration of Pandits, but in rural areas there are barely a few families among the larger Muslim population. ''I really don't know what I will do. My parents don't want me to marry into a family who lives in some isolated hamlet. They'd worry for my safety. I suppose they'll marry me off to someone in Jammu and I'd be forced to leave the Valley,'' she says quietly.

In Srinagar, the Hindu Welfare Forum, founded in 1991 to protect the interests of the Pandits who chose to remain behind, are an angry lot. They are visibly upset by the recent killings of the Pandits and fear another migration. ''Neither the state government nor the government of India has done anything to protect us. Nobody even knows we even exist. Neither the Indian media nor the international media has bothered to see how we live, highlighted our problems. Even our own community in India and abroad calls us traitors because we refused to leave,'' said a Forum member.

Apart from the myriad problems faced by this tiny community, they are a determined lot. Says Wanchoo, a businessman and a member of the Forum: ''We will never leave Kashmir, and we don't believe in a separate homeland.

''This is our homeland and we wish to live in peace here. As for the killings, well it's a problem faced by all Kashmiris, not just the Hindus. Everyday you read that 8-10 people have been killed and they're usually Muslims. But the militants must realize that they only get discredited when they kill the minorities.''

His wife, who has lived through these terrible 12 years, witnessing much of the violence, experiencing much of the pain, relates a recent experience which makes her smile with delight and hope. ''At a wedding recently a whole lot of us had gathered after a long, long time - Muslim women as well as Sikh and Pandit women - and we really had fun, singing and dancing late into the night just as we used to before the militancy started.

''As I was turning in to sleep I heard the Muslim women whispering among themselves in the kitchen. 'After so long,' they said, 'after so many years all of us have come together'.

''It's true, isn't it, that a garden is most beautiful when there is a profusion of many kinds of flowers.''

(Inter Press Service)

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