Whole my life I had lived in Bhan Mohalla locality in Srinagar, a place mostly inhabited by Kashmiri Pandits. Many of my friends were Kashmiri Pandits, or Batte as we used to call them. Almost all my teachers at school and college wereBatte. Many shops in the locality were owned by Batte. Most of the Kashmiri Pandits in the locality were well-educated and belonged to the more affluent class. On the surface and by and large, the place was peaceful and both Muslims and Kashmiri Pandits coexisted harmoniously together, but there was always this undercurrent of, call it, jealousy, for lack of a better word, among Muslims towards the Batte. At times it was expressed through seemingly harmless jokes and ingrained proverbs attributed to the nature, characteristics and mannerisms of their community.
Many of the Kashmiri Muslims, including me, loved to poke them. Sometimes, Batte, with their wit and eloquence, also used to poke us.
It was a sunny morning on 14 September 1989, when I heard gunshots. As I ran towards the place where the sound of the bullets came from, I saw my neighbour, Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kashmir Chapter and a lawyer by profession, lying in a pool of blood at the blind turn of the lane just 50 meters outside of his home.His chest pierced by numerous bullets.
Barely three weeks after Tika Lal’s murder, another Kashmiri Pandit, retired Judge Nilakanth Ganjoo was shot and killed in broad day light in Maharaj Bazaar, Amira Kadal. Justice Ganjoo, Sessions Judge in Srinagar had given a death sentence to Maqbool Bhat, leader of Jammu & Kashmir National Liberation Front, who was involved in the murder of a CID Police Sub-Inspector of J&K Police.
That evening, I went to the home of my childhood friend, Rahul, who lived just next to our house. We had been friends for as long as I can remember and lived so close to each other that we could smell what they had cooked for dinner, and they could hear my mother sighing continuously, because of the pain in her back. Aunty, Uncle, Rahul and Ashima, Rahul’s elder sister, were all fear-stricken with anguish written large on their face, huddled up on the floor in their bethak. As I sat down next to Rahul while handing Aunty the small bowl of TsokWangun my mother had cooked, Uncle sounded very worried. “Gobreya, what are you hearing outside? What are people saying? Two Batte have been killed in broad daylight within a span of only three weeks”.
I did not know. I had no idea. I was perhaps too stupid to understand what was going on. I just came to meet Rahul and give Aunty the food Mummy had made. I looked at uncle andsaid, “Uncle, Khuda kari sahal”.
Though there was no snowin January that winter, days were cold and nights bitter. On 19 January 1990, at around 9 PM, loud and thunderous Islamic and pro-Pakistan slogans relayed through powerful loudspeakers almost pierced my ear drums. I ran towards Rahul’s home and though these slogans were not new to Kashmir, the very odd hour, the tumultuous bang and the intriguing spontaneity, all spoke threateningly that a storm was brewing.
Rahul and I ran outside of his home into the street, and one had to see the scene on the streets, squares and open spaces in the city to believe it.
Masses of Muslims, young, old, children, and women came out of their homes, crowded the streets, gesticulating vigorously and yelling slogans in favour of Islam, Pakistan and the insurgency. Crowds of people carried rugs, carpets, mats and furnishing and spread it out on the streets and squares. They brought wood and lit bonfires to keep their bodies warm. People sat, squatted, danced, shook fists and made violent gestures as loudspeakers were fixed and microphones blurred a mix of Quranic verses, revolutionary songs, anti-India vitriolic and the supremacy of Islamic faith, all by turn making rounds from one to another speaker, each speaker more rabid fire brand than his predecessor.
I looked at Rahul and saw that he wasdead scaredwhile Islamic slogans, profuse admiration for Pakistan, stories of the heroes of early Islamic conquests, the paradise created by Allah for the Momin and hell fire for the Kuffar were raised in the background.
Speakers praised Islam as the best religion God had sent and Kufr, butparastiand dualism had to be cleaned from daru’lsalam. Spirited stories of the heroes of early Islam like Omar and great commanders like Sa’d bin Waqqas and Tariq and others were recounted conveying that Islam had not lost the strength of destroying non-believers.
I had never seen Rahul running as fast as he did that night. I chased him and was out of breath when I reached his home where he was already sitting with Uncle, Aunty and Ashima. Rahul was weeping with his head in his hands and cried out loud, “Mouji, assimaaran”.
The administration had collapsed,and law and order were thrown to winds. The police deserted their posts and the Batte were left to themselves with their survival hanging in balance. Like frightened pigeons, Rahul, Uncle and I kept vigil all night. I could feel that the night-long tirade against Kashmiri Pandits on the one hand and lionizing of Islamic war lords on the other, had snatched whatever remnant of peace of mind was left with them.
Uncle said, “How can we live here without the goodwill of the majority community with which we have had centuries of good and brotherly relations?”
From the next morning it was the rule of the mosque, the Mullah and the Islamists. Loudspeakers fixed to mosque tops, blurred uninterruptedly cautioning the Pandits to leave the Valley. The refrain of their slogans was that they wanted their Kashmir without Pandit males but with their women folk. The hate campaign, carried forward through barbaric and inhuman means of violence, struck fear among the entire Kashmiri population to the extent that nobody amongst Kashmiri Muslims was prepared to show even the slightest goodwill to the Pandits.
I stood with Rahul, but I was also scared.
Uncle read from Al Safa, a popular Urdu daily of Srinagar which minced no words in telling the Pandits to leave the Valley within hours if they wanted to save their lives and honour. More and more anti-India demonstrations were to be seen on the streets in which demonstrators were mad with anger, hate and revenge. In its evening news bulletin, Radio Kashmir took the name of the Kashmiri Pandits gunned down by terrorists. The gruesome stories of murder of hapless Pandits unnerved all Batte.
I went home to get a few hours of sleep, also thinking that my parents would be worried about my whereabouts during this volatile situation.
When I returned in the evening to check upon Rahul, I could not find anybody.
Uncle, Aunty, Ashima and Rahul were nowhere to be seen. The little furniture that they had was still there as I saw some scattered clothes, sheets of paper and blankets lying around. The metal trunks which Aunty kept above the cabinet and under the bed were all gone. All the cabinets had also been emptied.
I walked through the house looking for some trace of life. I shouted Rahul’s name. “Rahul, katti chuck? Heyo Batta, kouth gowk?”
My yelling turned into screeching.
I stood there and looked at the empty home of my friend and fell to the floor. It dawned upon me that my childhood friend had left.
Everyone had left.
Frantically I kept looking for something which would tell me where Rahul had gone to. I started throwing around blankets, cushions, and clothes. Pots and pans clanked as I looked through the kitchen and sheets of paper flew through the bethak as I desperately threw them around.
Suddenly I stopped.
Yearsago, when Diwali and Eid fell in the same month, Rahul and I had together, with the money received from our parents and relatives, bought a chess set. One of those small cheap foldable ones of which the interior of the storage compartment was lined with rich green velvet where the chess pieces were put into.
Rahul used to put that in his room next to the window.
I ran to Rahul’s room and feverishly opened the curtains.
There it was.
Our chess set.
I lifted it and by its weight could feel that the chess pieces were not inside the beautiful rich green lined compartment. I opened it slowly and saw a small, neatly folded piece of paper. With my hands shivering and tears falling down my cheeks I unfolded the piece of paper. It was Rahul’s handwriting.
“Boya, we bought this together. I took the chess pieces and left the chess board for you. We are going to Jammu and from there I don’t know. Khuda kari sahal”.
It was three years later that I saw an obituary of Koul Uncle, Rahul’s father, in one of the newspapers. It said that Uncle’s last rites were to be held at Rajinder Park in Jammu.
That afternoon, I stole money from my father’s drawer and took the bus to Jammu. Throughout my journey, I could not stop crying. The pain and anguish I felt is something I wouldn’t wish for my enemy.
At Rajinder Park, I saw a lot of Kashmiri Pandits. Uncle’s last rites had already taken place and with the obituary of Koul Uncle which I had cut out from the newspaper in my hands, I started inquiring about where Uncle’s family lived. A young boy, perhaps twelve years old asked me whether I was looking for Rahul Bhaiya.
I froze and nodded.
The boy took me to a small house through various tiny alleys and pointed at a door just a few feet away from where we were standing. The boy said, “Here lives Rahul Bhaiya”, and ran away with his cricket bat swinging in his hands.
It felt as if my heart had stopped beating. I could not feel my legs and was unable to move.
I don’t know why, but it felt impossible for me to take the name of my childhood friend. Perhaps it was guilt, shame or just my inability to bargain with all my emotions at once. Somehow, I manage the courage to call out something in a shaken and broken voice; “Ashima Didi”.
It took perhaps twenty seconds, which felt like twenty years, when Rahul came running out of the small door and fell into my arms. He was weeping and wailing and saying something which I could not understand because of his loud howling. I held him as firmly as I could, before I fell to the ground.
When I regained my consciousness, I was inside Rahul’s home with Aunty and Ashima Didi next to me. I looked at them and tried to sit up. I took Aunty’s hands and put them on my face while trying to console her about Uncle’s passing away. She broke down and pressed my face into her bosom. I could feel her tears falling on my head.
We all recounted Uncle’s jokes while our laughing kept turning into sadness the more we talked about him.
In the evening, Rahul and I stayed in the small room next to the kitchen while Aunty and Ashima Didi went to sleep.
I looked at Rahul and asked, “What happened?”
Rahul and I never had to use a lot of words to understand each other, however years of separation had changed that. While I meant to ask him about what had happened to Uncle, his answer made it clear that for the first time he had misunderstood me. He thought I was asking about what happened which forced him and his family to flee Srinagar.
Rahul sighed.
“As disorder and lawlessness gripped the Valley, we shivered with fear. This fear made us become homeless. In those circumstances what else could we have done? It was but natural that all of us Battestood fear-stricken and then followed the impulse of running away. We all had lost the confidence in our Muslim brothers. Everyone stayed silent”.
He continued, “Boya, we found that overnight our neighbours had changed colour. Their idiom changed as if they had thrown off the mask they wore for such a long time. Pandit and Muslim neighbours known to one another for generations began to behave as strangers. Suspicions loomed large and in a few days the entire atmosphere changed and we Batte came to be called the other”.
“Didn’t you hear what happened after we left?”
“I will tell you!” he said in a loud voice before I could answer him.
“Girija Tickoo, a teacher was coming out of the school building after collecting her salary when she was accosted by gunmen who kidnapped her to some unknown place where she was gang raped. The assailants, fearing she might disclose their identity, forcibly put her under a machine saw and cut her body into pieces. Avtar Krishan Koulwas gunned down by masked terrorists in his office. He had enquired into the disappearance of some truckloads of food grain supplies taken away by JKLF terrorists at gun point. Lassa Kaul was gunned down outside his house in Bhan Mohalla. He was accused of relaying anti-militancy news. Masked Jihadis barged into Pandit Premnath Bhat’s house in Anantnag, dragged him out and emptied on him their magazines of their guns. Professor Nilakanth Raina, an eminent historian and researcher was called by masked and armed gunmen at about dusk at his home in Fateh Kadal locality in Srinagar and gunned down at point blank range. Sheela Tikoo was gunned down near Habba Kadal. On 4 March, 1990, M.N Paul, the wife of an Inspector of BSF was kidnapped, raped and then murdered. Also in March 1990, B.K. Ganjoo, was brutally gunned down while he tried to hide himself in an empty drum used for storing rice. The assailants climbed the third floor of his house to catch hold of him. His wife begged the murderers to kill her too but only to receive the sadist remark, “there should be someone left to cry over his dead body”. In April 1990, a nurse named Sarla Bhat was kidnapped and continuously raped by JKLF terrorists for several days before her dead body was thrown on the roadside. In May 1990, Prana Ganjoo and her husband Prof. K.L. Ganjoo were kidnapped in Sopore where the woman was raped and then both of them were murdered. In June 1990, J.L. Ganjoo, her husband and her sister-in-law were killed in their home in Bhan Mohalla, Srinagar. In July 1990, Teja Dhar was shot dead on the roadside in Ali Kadal, Srinagar. In July 1990, a lady named Nanaji was gunned down on the roadside in Batamaloo, Srinagar. In July 1990, Dr. Shani was locked up in her house in Karan Nagar and then the house was set on fire. Flames consumed her alive. In August 1990, Babli Raina was raped in front of her family members in her house and then shot dead”.
Rahul’s voice became softer. “In April 1990 literally everything in Kashmir was butchered, when four armed persons forced entry into the house of Sarwanand Koul Premi. They dragged him out of his house along with Virender Koul, his 27-year old son, and in the nearby jungle, the father and son both were gunned down. Sarwanand Koul, a poet and scholar, was 64 years of age and had translated the Bhagwat Gita into Kashmiri. A copy of the Quran was preserved in his house which he used to read occasionally”.
I was quiet. I had nothing to say. My whole body was shivering while I kept fighting back my tears after hearing the ordeal of my Kashmiri brothers and sisters from Rahul.
Rahul looked at me. His voice was again softer than before. This time not because he wanted to whisper but because he was worn.
Torn.
Shattered and devastated.
“After our exodus, our household goods, furniture, kitchenware, accessories, electronic gadgets, libraries, papers, files and documents were looted. Electricity and sanitary fittings were pulled out, taken away and sold. Even the doors and windows were removed and stolen. Bare structures were set on fire if these did not happen to be in densely populated areas. Large number of houses and properties went on distress sale. Shops were grabbed by the locals. In villages, the ruins of torched Pandit’s houses were grabbed and showed as Awqaf property in revenue records. If any of us was able to sell his property somehow, he had to remain content with its throw-away price. Today, our shrines, temples and crematoriums stand largely vandalized and usurped”.
I could not utter a word. Rahul’s words had made me numb.
Suddenly his voice became louder again, “Boya, we Pandits of Kashmir, who braved numerous spells of forced conversions and destruction of our civilizational symbols during six centuries in the past, were extirpated from our five-thousand-year-old homeland”.
“The ethnic cleansing of the Valley of Kashmir stands completed”.
For the first time since Rahul had started to tell me about what happened while I had meant to ask him what happened to Uncle, I realized that Uncle had passed away long ago.
And with him Rahul as well. And Aunty. And Ashima Didi.
All of them.
We had killed all the Kashmiri Pandits when we forced them to leave Kashmir.
Some were murdered with guns and bombs, but most of them had perished due to the silence of their Muslim brothers. Silence because of silent complicity or as in my case, sheer fear.
I folded my hands and touched Rahul’s feet which he hastily pulled away. I looked at him and whispered, “Boya, assidiziyemeafi”.
Rahul took my hands in his hands. His hands were shaking. He looked deep into my eyes. Visibly trembling and gasping for air. He put a finger on his lips, came closer to me, kissing me on my forehead and whispered.
“Boya, GarhWandhaiGarh Sasah, GarriNearhai Ne Zanh”.
Author is the director of European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) and can be reached at: [email protected]
