May 18  , 1998

Once a two-lakh strong community, the Pandits have dwindled  to 4,800. As they sell their property and leave, Kashmiriyat takes a severe beating.

By Harinder Baweja

He looks out of the window and all he can see are damaged homes. One of them has signs of life: the curtains are new and some clothes have been put out to dry. The sight of the curtains fluttering gently in the cool Srinagar breeze triggers the same thought process once again. Once there were 22 Pandit homes neighbouring his. Now only two families remain. The rest have not only migrated, but they have also decided to sell their property. The curtains have not been changed by a Pandit family which has decided to return to the Valley after all. The house has a new occupant.

He looks at his own room and breathes in the familiar smells and sights, wondering how long he can hold on till his home too has a new occupant. Property dealers have been visiting him, asking him if he would like to sell it. The kangri -- a small brazier peculiar to Kashmir -- in a corner of the room makes him nostalgic. It is so inextricably linked to his life. There alone are three Pandit festivals associated with the kangri -- the festivities that accompany it when it is formally buried in the soil in spring. He remembers the time -- the first snowfall -- after his son's wedding when the bride's parents came with a silver-ladled kangri, as is the custom in Kashmir. And then he thinks of his sister, who sold her house and left a year ago, never to return to the snowfall and the trips to the temple. Of buying radish and nadru (lotus stem) from local shops and offering them to the deities. And as each Pandit leaves -- so does some of the colour. Of the glass bangles and the sarees.

His son has shifted to Delhi where he has a company house and a car. "This is his motherland. Why should I not ask him to return?'' he asks and then, almost in the same breath, "How can I? He is an unwanted child in Kashmir. I will have to sell my house because if I don't, my son will when I'm gone.''

Gone. Seventy to 80 per cent of the Pandits have sold their shops and homes in the past two years and left. A recent Government survey points to the fact that the community, once two lakh-strong, has dwindled to a mere 4,800. The future is uncertain. At least they are getting 75 per cent of the current value of their property. If one Kaul sells because he needs the money for his daughter's wedding, a Dhar is packing up because the militants won't let him run his shop. Yet another is being hounded by property dealers who narrate stories of how the number of foreign mercenaries is increasing.

That story the Pandits are already familiar with. All the major killings in the past one year have targeted them: in Sangrampora in April last year, in Wandhama on January 26 when 23 Pandits were killed, and again in Prankote in Udhampur and Surankote in Poonch.The sale of migrant property -- earlier banned by the militants -- has picked up in the past two years and Kashmir has suddenly seen the mushrooming of property agents who find themselves in a profitable business. Earlier, explains a senior bureaucrat, "the militants thought azadi was round the corner and the property would be theirs for free". The ban, however, lost its sting after the militants and Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Shabir Shah started investing in property themselves, finding that they were getting homes in prime locations at half the cost. And in the past one year, the brokers have made it their business to not only visit the few Pandits who remain in the Valley but also contact Pandits in migrant camps in Jammu and Delhi. "The Pandits should have been very important for India but slowly the token of Indianness is falling,'' says one of them who migrated in 1990 but returned in two months. Despite living in one of Srinagar's most affected localities all through the past eight years, he is now thinking of letting go forever even though he believes that the locals too are tired of violence. "We have become easy fodder for the mercenaries, and I am more worried about my life than my house.''

Almost as if to a plan, Kashmir is seeing a process of gradual Islamisation in the Valley where the two communities lived as a harmonious unit, traditions and customs binding them inseparably. The capital of Srinagar, which once had one lakh Pandits, is today left with only 800. Lal Chowk, famed for Sheikh Abdullah's speeches -- attended by both communities -- has seen 90 per cent of the shops changing hands. The signboards -- symbols of co-existence -- like Hind Books, Mahinder Nath Janki Nath and Perfection House have given way to Bilal and Bilal, Dubai Fashions, Bahu Rani and Rang Roop. The word "India" is reserved for the heavily-guarded official buildings like that of the State Bank of India.

On the one hand, Kashmir is seeing the return of filmmakers for the first time since they left the scenic spots of Gulmarg and Pahalgam 10 years ago, but quite unlike Amrish Puri -- who plays a Pandit refusing to leave even after being threatened by foreign militants in a film being shot -- the fast fading minority has lost faith in the Government. Says S. L. Bhat, Kashmir's divisional commissioner, a Pandit himself: "The social ethos is severely strained. The older generation is still sentimental about the traditional bond but their lives too are at stake.''

The foreign mercenaries are altering the very ethos of Kashmir while Pakistan is slowly pushing through its agenda of keeping the pot boiling. Amid reports of some leaders of the Hurriyat being in favour of negotiations, it practically ordered the selection of Jamait-e-Islami leader Geelani as the new chief. A pro-Pakistan hardliner, Geelani has had nothing but lip-sympathy for the migrants, the Hurriyat only talks in terms of cleaning up ransacked Pandit homes.

The complete failure of the state Government has only heightened fears as one incident of minority killings gives way to another. Promising to personally supervise the construction of Pandit homes, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has been unable to create conditions for their return. On the contrary, the figure of 7,000 gutted homes stays as just that -- a cold statistic in a dust-laden file. Nine years since the majority of the Pandits migrated, scores of homes are still illegally occupied, and the brokers are achieving what the Government cannot: helped by links with the police, they evict occupants from homes which the Pandits are willing to sell. Lowly government employees have become brokers themselves, and though the Farooq Government passed an Act in the Assembly last year preventing the sale of migrant property, they are changing hands through power of attorneys being registered in Delhi and Jammu. And they are not even apologetic about it. Says one of them: "We are not putting pressure. The Pandits are getting their homes burnt so they can claim insurance as well as sell them." The new owners, mostly Muslim neighbours, are less brazen. "They don't see any hope of returning,'' says Abdul Qayoum of the Baghatis, whose house in Srinagar's Jawahar Nagar he purchased .

Hope is fading fast for the Kauls, the Bhats and the Dhars as they learn to live in new homes. Away from the customs, the snowfall and the kangri.

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