Fifth Column by Tavleen Singh: Kashmir needs a balm
There has been only one instance of ethnic cleansing in India. It was of the Pandits from the Kashmir Valley. It shames India that this happened. It should shame our political leaders that two decades on they have been unable to reverse this heartbreaking exodus. I was in Srinagar when the exodus took place and have never forgotten the mobs of menacing jihadists who roamed the streets shouting slogans against India. Jagmohan had just been made Governor of the state so they also believed the rumours about how Hindus were being evacuated en masse so that the Indian Air Force could be used to silence the Kashmir Valley.
The Valley’s Muslim population hated Jagmohan because, in an earlier tenure that he served at Indira Gandhi’s behest, he had proved that he was her hatchet man. He replaced her cousin, B K Nehru, who refused to topple the government of Farooq Abdullah on the grounds that this would cause dangerous disaffection and make the Kashmiris lose faith once more in democracy. It is important at this point to remember that elections were always rigged in the Valley after Sheikh Abdullah was jailed. In 1983, when Farooq Abdullah won, it was essentially the first free election. He won easily because it was just months after the old Sheikh died and the Kashmiri people felt that they owed him this victory. But Mrs Gandhi was misled into believing that she should have won, so she appointed a Governor who she knew would collude with her to bring down Farooq’s government.
Jagmohan was a trusted hatchet man who had proved his loyalty to the Gandhi family during the Emergency by obeying Sanjay Gandhi’s orders to bulldoze slums in Delhi in the name of ‘beautification’. So, in that cold January of 1990 when he returned and the Valley was boiling over, rumours of his perfidious ways were credible. The fact that more than 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits left within days of his appointment served to intensify these fears. Perhaps it was impossible for Jagmohan to prevent the exodus. Perhaps he tried and failed.
On my next visit to the state, I made it a point to go to Jammu. To this day images of the refugee camps remain vivid. Kashmiri Hindus who abandoned fine homes in the Valley were forced to live in flimsy shacks in filthy conditions for months and years because the political leaders in Delhi and Srinagar did no more than make bleating sympathetic noises. Shame on them because it was their weakness that resulted in the Kashmir Valley being taken over by violent Islamists.
The questions I have asked myself ever since is why our political leaders did so little? Why were Kashmiri Pandits not given the full protection of the Indian State to return to their homes, their orchards, and their businesses? Are these questions that are answered in The Kashmir Files? I happen to be abroad and so have not yet been able to see the film, but if these questions are answered, it would indeed become a valuable historical record of a terrible crime.
If all that this film has achieved is to incite Hindu-Muslim hatred by blaming the exodus on all Kashmiri Muslims, then in my view it has failed to achieve a higher purpose. Kashmiri Muslims may not have been forced to flee the Valley, but they have also suffered decades of violence, death and deprivation. According to conservative estimates, more than 40,000 have been killed in what is called crossfire.
Not everyone supported the insurgency but those who opposed it ended up dead. This must be remembered in any truthful telling of the Kashmir story, or The Kashmir Files risks being no more than a BJP propaganda film that will have a few moments in the sun before fading into the shadows. Far too many BJP leaders and spokesmen have taken to social media to endorse the film, and this is an indication that it will manage to create more divisions among Hindus and Muslims at a time when divisions are dangerously deep.
The ethnic cleansing of the Pandits from the Kashmir Valley was an atrocity that should have been rectified much, much earlier. In those camps in Jammu this is what everyone said and believed would happen, so they waited and they waited. It was only when no Indian Prime Minister, not even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was able to give them the security they needed to be able to go home, that they began to build new lives elsewhere. In my opinion this is almost as much of a crime as the ethnic cleansing.
Whenever I have asked political leaders in Srinagar and Delhi about why they were so reluctant to make it their mission to bring the Pandits back to the Valley, they have always blamed Pakistan and the spread of Islamism. It is true that these are factors, but was it not possible for the mighty Indian Army to take on the insurgent groups? Surely, they were not more powerful than our soldiers. Anyone who knows why our Kashmir problem has been allowed to fester for so many decades knows that it is because corrupt political leaders and corrupt jihadist groups profited hugely from the violence.
This story is so murky that it is too dangerous to make films about. Meanwhile, I end with the hope that The Kashmir Files brings healing with it and not hatred.