The Question of Return
So the question of Kashmiri Pandits returning back to Kashmir is again up in the air as some more or less renowned journalist for some online media house just published something about it. I personally don’t care about what exactly is opined in the said article as facts and especially as historical facts about Kashmir in general and about Kashmiri Pandits’ communally forced exodus in particular but the record needs to be set straight.
Even after 30 years, when the facts and the interpretations of those historical facts about the Kashmiri Pandit’s exodus are still either denied, misrepresented and misconstrued and when still the onus of proving the crime against them is on the victim itself. After questioning everything Kashmiri Pandits are and stand for or what they have been through and even the successes have been used as apart a narrative to whitewash the atrocities on them. And then they are asked whether they would go back.
The question “will you return? When will you return? How many will return? is now used as another instrument to deny justice. Even if you say “Yes”, they say you really won’t. In this context some very basic facts need to be cleared. The reason why we as a community are ambivalent on our “question of return”.
To start from the very start itself the question of return to Kashmir that is/was home is an oversimplification. For most of us home has been burned, wrecked and razed to ground. When there exists no practical and pragmatic policy or intent to rebuild it or to make it habitable again for the Hindu minorities, how can anyone expect us to give a sure short answer on if we want to return or not? Can anyone live in a wreck? Will anyone return to the place which still is in the similar situation socially, economically and politically the way it was when Kashmiri Pandit community was forced to get out of their homes. Add to it the constraints of xenophobia, security threats and threat of communal violence which triggered the exodus back in 1990.
In addition, after exodus, most of the individuals of the community started from the very zero, worked and struggled hard against all odds. Now a person who was completely uprooted from a place, but now after years of toiling has made it all work for him/herself is confronted with an existential question of leaving it all again and to relocate and start again from a place which doesn’t offer much, where most of the youth of their age are either unemployed, radicalized or studying/working outside itself.
Can something as realistic as uprooting oneself again or expecting anyone take the whole pain of relocation again based on just some fantasy or hypothesis which is nothing more than castles in air, be expected of Kashmiri Pandit community. And if they are ambiguous, undecided or don’t want to go after struggling for thirty years to get re-established, they are judged, their plight is denied and their right to the place of their origin is discounted.
Plus a one-room quarter which was provided after striving with life in the tents for almost two decades is pronounced as some luxury and a false narrative of “non-existent” refugee camps is created wherein the fact that the tents got replaced by concrete quarters is conveniently misrepresented so as to hint that Kashmiri Pandits have already gotten enough and shouldn’t be demanding a dignified return to their homeland.
This narrative again conveniently goes in denial of what and how much Kashmiri Pandits lost. It overlooks the fact that justice hasn’t been done even after thirty years. This narrative is a replica of the jihadi propaganda that Kashmiri Pandits left because they were given huge sums, lucrative jobs, and property, etc by government of India, which in reality was snake and scorpion bites, scorching heat and half a tomato.
Moreover, the simple fact that escapes the comprehension ability of some people is that Jagati Township is a camp because people there still want to return. The term ‘Camp’ signifies the state of long-term impermanence regardless of the physical structure or the name. The very reason the Jagti township is called a camp is because the history and events of Kashmiri Pandit exodus haven’t reached their logical conclusion and justice still evades us. Unless and until the practical constraint of the return of Pandits is not dealt with in a realistic and pragmatic manner the question of return remains futile and meaningless and thus is nothing but another rhetorical tool in the hands of those who want to deny the decades long sufferings of the community.
