It is still a treacherous road back to Kashmir

I don’t see Pandits returning to Kashmir for years to come,” says Sanjay Tickoo, who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti. For the first time in the last 32 years, Kashmir is witnessing a large-scale protest by Kashmiri Pandits (KP), after Rahul Bhat, a fellow Pandit, was killed in the Valley.

The protests betray the insecurities Pandit families in the Valley suffer in the backdrop of the Centre’s claims that all is well in the state.

Tickoo, who represents Pandit families who decided not to migrate in the 1990s, warns that the situation in Kashmir is returning to one that existed about three decades earlier.

The anger that the latest killing provoked appears unprecedented, with Pandit residents occupying roads and staging sit-in protests. “How long will we be killed like this? The government is treating us like sacrificial animals,” says a KP employee on the condition of anonymity.

Similar killings from the late 1989 onwards forced thousands of KP families to flee to Jammu and other states of the country. The majority of Kashmiri-speaking Hindus fled from Kashmir in 1990, but 800 families chose to stay back.

Last week, Bhat, a government employee, was shot dead by two pistol-borne militants inside the tehsil office in Chadoora in central Kashmir’s Budgam district. In October last year, a KP businessman Makhan Lal Bindroo was also shot dead in Srinagar.

Bhat had returned to Kashmir in 2010 to take up a government job under the Centre’s special employment package for returning migrants. Bindroo had stayed back in 1990 despite terror threats and ran a famous pharmacy in Srinagar.

While they were left unharmed for the most part, terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Taiba massacred Pandits at Sangrampora (1997), Wandhama (1998), and Nandimarg (2003).

With an aim to facilitate the return of migrant KPs, the Union government devised policies under the Prime Minister’s packages in 2008 and 2015 under which special jobs were offered to this community. According to official figures, nearly 4,000 migrant candidates have returned to Kashmir after taking up PM package jobs.

The returning migrant employees were also allotted secure transit accommodations in Budgam, Baramulla and Anantnag. However, killings of members of minority community and non-local labourers by militant outfits started after the Centre abrogated the erstwhile state’s special status under Article 370, in August 2019.

What prompted militants to carry out killings of Bindroo, Bhat and others? After the abrogation of J&K special status, not only separatists and militants, but even former chief ministers of J&K – Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti – have gone on record to say the decision was aimed at changing Kashmir’s religious composition. It is such political statements which give legitimacy to militants to target members of minority communities and non-locals.

And after the recent killing of Bhat, Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party chief Mufti and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah blamed ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie for anger in Kashmir.

The killings of Bindroo and Bhat are setbacks to not just the BJP government’s plans for the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, but also their oft-repeated claim of the improved situation there.

There is no doubt that after the abrogation of Article 370, stone pelting incidents, strike calls by separatists and huge funerals of slain militants have vanished, but the militancy graph has remained more or less same as it was prior to 2019.

What has the government done to ensure that displaced KPs are able to live safe, inclusive lives in the Valley they once had to flee? Some Pandit families, who returned under PM’s package in recent years, are actually living in ghettos in the shape of transit camps. They feel that there is no value to their lives.

Sanjay Tickoo says the government, in the past three years, failed in ensuring the security of minorities living in Kashmir. “It indicates that Kashmiri minorities will again have to leave the Valley due to failure of Kashmiri society as well as administration,” he says .

While the government claims that all is normal in Kashmir, a Pandit-resident asked, “If the graph of terrorism is going down as administration claims, why are killings of Pandits increasing? This has escalated the sense of fear psychosis within the community.”

“Our brother (Bhat) was killed at his office in broad daylight. Imagine the fear it has struck in the hearts of those who work in far-flung areas,” he added.

Before their exodus in 1990, the Pandits, a highly literate community, was disproportionately represented in the Kashmir bureaucracy and in teaching, legal, and medical professions. This prompted resentment among other communities in the Valley, particularly Muslims, who comprised over 95% of the population.

However, respect for the Pandits and a shared Kashmiri identity prevented differences from conflicts erupting until the 1990s.

Javeed Trali, a political analyst, advocates that finding the lost common ground and a shared Kashmiri identity will bridge the trust deficit which has crept in between the two communities for the last three decades or more.

“Both Muslims and Pandits have suffered due to militancy. Our culture, poetry, food, rituals and our history are the same. We have to focus on our shared past,” he says.

Trali, who heads J&K Policy Institute, a Srinagar-based think-tank, says that the two communities have to engage meaningfully for the safe return of displaced Pandits.

“Government can only be a facilitator. If you see recent protests by Pandits over the killing of Rahul Bhat, a lot of Muslims joined in. The reality is that both Muslims and the Pandits have suffered at the hands of militants,” he added.

His assertions were echoed by Professor Sushila Bhan, who says if the KPs are to be rehabilitated, it is paramount that there is no bad blood on both sides.

“When the Pandits go back, there shouldn’t be any feeling of avenging the wrongs done to them in the past and as their large-hearted brethren, Kashmir’s Muslims too must not only welcome but help in their resettlement,” she added.

While apprehensions over their physical security is a main reason for Pandits not returning to their homes in the Valley, there are other problems too. Many Pandits, especially the youth, feel little emotional or cultural connection to their Kashmiri heritage and homeland.

“A majority of Pandit youth are doing well professionally outside Kashmir and there is little incentive for us to return to the Valley,” says Anil Raina.

He says insecurity, lack of economic development and job prospects in Kashmir would discourage the younger generation of Pandits from returning to their motherland. “At best, they (Pandit youth) see Kashmir as a holiday destination during summers,” he added.