Nothing is more
shameful nor agonising than a community being driven out of their homes and
find themselves in refugee camps in their own country. They are not in refugee
camps for a few days but for years together. While the Internally Displaced
Persons (IDPs) is something not acceptable for at least democracies, the case
of the Kashmiri Pandits stand testimony to the abdication of the Indian state.
Perhaps their only crime was they were Hindus. On January 19 1990, posters
sprung up everywhere in the Kashmir valley calling for the Hindus to leave the
valley. There were announcements over the loudspeakers through the night
threatening the lives of the Hindus. The state had completely collapsed.
Jagmohan had taken over as the Governor the previous day, but the
administration had completely turned against India. Left with no options, the
Kashmiri Pandits had to flee from Kashmir and begin lives afresh in the refugee
camps of Jammu and Delhi.
Their tragedy
was turned into an insult when the left liberal ecosystem refused to accept
their exodus. In fact, it was often blamed on them, that they fled Kashmir for
their personal gains. The system in Delhi lived in denial. It was perhaps for
the Muslim vote or for the fact the victims were Hindus, there was very little
the state did to protect the lives of its citizens. The trauma which the
community went through lingers on some thirty years after the incident. There have
been attempts to rehabilitate them back in the valley but none of them have
attained any critical mass.
The demand from
Kashmiri Pandits especially their organization Panun Kashmir is demanding a
creation of a Union Territory exclusively for the Pandits in the eastern part
of the Kashmir valley. They call this demand for their exclusive homeland as
Vitasta, the name for river Jhelum. The Kashmiri Pandits lived north and east
of this river and thus want a protected homeland. They decline to go back to
the Valley in the absence of conceding this demand. While Jammu and Kashmir and
Ladakh have been reorganized into two Union territories, there is little movement
on the homeland front. There have been proposals to create safe zones for the
Pandits, but they are yet to take off.
The Kashmiri
Pandit voices never seem satisfied. Any government proposal for sending them
back into the valley and rehabilitating them is met with severe criticism.
Whatever steps or proposal the government puts forth is met with disapproval
without examination of merits. At times it looks that the Pandit community as
an organization seems to be bent on a corner solution to borrow from economics.
They want an exclusive homeland protected by the central forces north and east
of Vitasta and anything less would be unacceptable. They would prefer to live
in exile than going back on government terms. They want any rehabilitation on
their terms. In the current scenario, it looks difficult to accept their terms.
There is no doubt that Pandits have suffered big and the trauma and
psychological scars are unlikely to go away soon. Yet it is time to look ahead.
It might sound unpopular opinion but demanding a homeland with security
guarantees might not be the best way of achieving their goals. If they have
been thrown out, they need to go back and reclaim. They need to confront those
who were responsible for putting them in this situation in the first place. This
should be independent of the government. The government would step in obviously
but a different will power is needed from the community itself. The scenario where
there exists a fool proof zone might be a mirage. To achieve their reclamation
of the land they were forced to flee from, they need an organic growth from the
bottom. To this they need to look towards Israel.
Israel was not
created in a day. It was not an immediate outcome of the Holocaust but a work
in progress that existed for more than half a century underpinned by centuries
of aspirations. The Holocaust and the recreation of the world map post-World
War I, hastened it. Yet the movement to achieve it began earlier. To understand
this, one needs to look at a man named Theodor Herzl. He lived just for forty
four years, but the mark he created remains inedible through the state of
Israel. He was among the first to advocate the idea of separate homeland for
Jews. He met with several leaders of the pre-War era including the Kaiser in
Germany, leading British political and diplomatic figures and leading
associates of the Ottoman Sultan. He put forth many proposals among them which
was help in retiring Turkish debt in exchange for a charter to a homeland in
the Palestine. In fact he seemed warm to the idea of Jewish homeland in British
East Africa, in what is currently Uganda. It was his ideas that led to the
Aliyahs or migrations to Palestine.
While the first
Aliyah predated Herzl, he brought together the Jews together in creating the
First Zionist Congress. These Zionist Congress meetings were the inspiration
behind the movement of Jews from different parts of the world to the
Palestinian territory. Most of these migrations were due to continued
persecution of Jews in Europe. What Hitler did was nothing unusual but for the
scale and the manner in which it was executed. As Dreyfuss affair showed in
France, there was anti-Semitism which led to the violence against Jews. The Jews
did not have easy time but their determination, courage, resilience, will-power
ensured that they built up a prosperous state in a desert. While the detailed
story needs to be told on some occasion, yet these are the lessons which the
Kashmiri Pandit community must imbibe.
There must exist
an Aliyah of the Pandits into the valley. There would of course be resistance. The
liberals would be more than cheering any assault on the Pandits. But they have
to hold their territory. A territory lost is difficult to be regained. With
passage of time, the Pandit society in all likelihood will regain their hold on
the lands which they have lost. Towards that rather than demanding a kind of a
foolproof enclave, they need to imbibe lessons and follow the model of Theodor
Herzl and the Aliyah to reclaim their lost territory. They miss a Theodor Herzl
among them. Therein lies their tragedy.
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