‘Kashmir is an Industry Everyone Profits From’
In our series on the 30th anniversary of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus from Kashmir, The Dispatch’s Madhur Sharma interviews senior journalist Sanjay Kaw who talks at length about the exodus, life in exile, and the story of Kashmir.
Driven out of their homes in 1990, Kashmiri Pandits began their lives from scratch in exile. They left their homes, jobs, and the way of life that they had built over for centuries.
Sanjay Kaw tells The Dispatch, “We used to live in Shalla Kadal in the heart of Srinagar. In February 1990, a month after the exodus began, we had to leave our four storeyed house with all our possessions and shift to Jammu from where we came to Delhi. We started from scratch here.”
Kaw was with Samachar Post at the time in Srinagar, and had worked with Greater Kashmir before that, but he had to begin his career afresh in Delhi as a trainee where he joined The Statesman.
About the exodus, Kaw says it was triggered by the announcements that blared from loudspeakers on mosques across the Valley through the night of 18 January 1990, asking Pandits to leave Kashmir or face consequences. This, he says, instilled fear that made lakhs of Pandits leave the Valley in the morning.
While it had always been tense in Kashmir, Kaw mentions 1987 as the year that changed everything.
He says, “The biggest turning point was the rigged election of 1987 that pitted Kashmiris against the Indian state. The Centre rigged the election in favour of Farooq Abdullah who eventually became the chief minister.
“There was one party, Muslim United Front, which received a lot of votes but it did not get seats as a result of rigging against it. This fueled the insurgency like nothing else and it became the biggest catalyst.”
This made a large number of people lose faith in Indian democracy. The Muslim United Front’s leader, Muhammad Yusuf Shah, would go on to take up the name of Sayeed Salahuddin and become the leader of terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen.
Shah’s aide in the party, Yasin Malik, would go on to head Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and become one of the most notorious terrorists of his times. He is accused of murdering four Indian Air Force personnel and injuring many more but he has eluded justice for decades.
Syed Salahuddin today heads Pakistan-based United Jihad Council, the umbrella organisation of some of the most lethal terrorist organisations fighting the Indian state to merge Kashmir with Pakistan.
Kaw says, “Had Syed Salahuddin won even a token number of seats, let’s say 20–25, then there would have been no genesis of the insurgency as we know to be there today. The rigging was seen as a betrayal of Kashmir by the Indian state.”
Kaw says that while most of the elders among Kashmiri Muslims were for communal harmony, the younger lot was highly radicalised. The Pakistani state pitched in to fund and train the disgruntled young population that began to go across the border to train and to join the jihad against the Indian state. The rest, as they say, is now history.
When asked if pro-Pakistan sentiment did not exist in the Valley before 1987, Kaw says it was not the case. He says it had always been there. The Pakistani cricket team had always been a favourite in the Valley.
He recalls, “Imran Khan and Javed Miandad were favourites in Kashmir. Pakistan’s victories would be celebrated and it would be Diwali all night long. When Miandad hit his famous sixer against India, the situation was so fiery that I did not go to school for three days.”
Now after all these years of terrorism in Kashmir and exile of Pandits from there, a lot of things have been lost. Above all is the way of life.
Kaw says, “Pandits’ children born in exile know nothing about Kashmir. Our traditions are being diluted. We cannot find Kashmiri priests for rituals at our homes. Those who are there charge large sums. It gets worse when someone in the community dies and there is no one to conduct the last rites as per the traditions of their ancestors.”
About the post-Pandits Kashmir, Kaw says it has only seen violence.
He says, “The generation born after 1990 has not seen Pandits at all. Pandits are alien to them. They have only seen violence and their minds have been conditioned to it. You cannot watch Indian television channels there. There are no cinema halls or liquor stores there. What do you expect from them?”
Cinema halls were burnt by the Islamist fundamentalists in the Valley and liquor shops were also forced to shut shop. Three decades later, not many have cared either for Kashmir or for those driven out of there.
Among politicians, only Balasaheb Thackeray came out to help Pandits in terms of resettlement and rehabilitation, says Kaw, who helped the community to seek education and jobs.
Why is it that politicians, people, and media have turned the other way for exiled Pandits?
That’s because their story lacks glamour, Kaw says.
“Between a young man with a gun and a family in a refugee camp, which one do you think is more glamorous? Everyone picked up the former for their coverage,” says Kaw.
While their story still remains on the margins, several myths have taken over the popular psyche, the most popular of which revolves around their exodus itself. It is known as the Jagmohan Theory that Kaw discredits.
Talking about the former governor, Kaw says, “Contrary to what is peddled about him, Jagmohan was quite a good administrator who worked to clamp down on corruption in Kashmir. Earlier, the rate of admissions used to be fixed in the state. A medical seat would go for Rs 80,000 and an engineering seat for Rs 40,000, but Jagmohan introduced merit-based admissions when he was there. He was an honest and upright man.”
Now that Article 370 has been abrogated and the erstwhile state has been bifurcated, where is it headed to? It’s hard to say. Kaw says that there has been nothing but violence for decades and no one knows how to address that.
“A lot of innocent people have been killed in the fight between the security forces and terrorists,” he says.
Can you convince an innocent child’s family that their dead child is just collateral damage?
Kaw adds, “A family who has lost their child in such cases turn against the state for life. How do you address that?”
At the end of the day, people have suffered both in and out of Kashmir in their own ways, and the Indian state and people have found redressal to none. With such a past, one cannot say what the future will be.
About the present, Kaw tells The Dispatch that Kashmir is an industry.
“First, it was about religion and politics but now it’s an industry and one everyone profits from,” he says.
Madhur Sharma is a student of journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, and a graduate in history from the Delhi University. He tweets at @madhur_mrt.
This is The Dispatch’s second story in the series on the 30th anniversary of the Pandits’ exodus from the Valley. Click here to read the first story.
