Indian Defence Review

The fact is that various stakeholders in the ongoing insurgency have their own reasons to oppose Pandits’ return to Kashmir. The armed militants oppose it on ideological grounds; the separatists for political reasons; the general masses oppose it for purely economic reasons. Muslim masses in Kashmir have benefited enormously from the Pandit exodus. They have monopolised all the jobs, appropriated all businesses, occupied abandoned properties, either forcibly or by purchasing these at throwaway prices in distress sale, etc. Thousands of government jobs have gone to the local Muslims as no Pandit has been recruited to fill in the vacancy created by the retirement of their co-religionists. The Muslim educated class has seen the clear advantage that Pandits’ exodus and their continued displacement out of the Valley, gave them. They have naturally developed a stake in preserving the status-quo.

Muslim middle class will, therefore, consider it a threat to their economic interests, if the Pandits were to return. In the face of such stiff opposition to Pandit’s return, mainstream political parties have been cold to the proposal. Besides, Kashmiri Pandits’s return has occupied only the margins of political debate in the country. Except the Bharatiya Janata Party (when out of power) no one has sincerely taken up the cause of this beleaguered community. The plight of Kashmiri Pandits has got masked by the ‘secular versus communal’ debate, often witnessed in the Indian polity. Being too few in number, Pandits themselves do not represent a monolithic vote-bank and therefore, are not taken seriously by any political party.

In the final analysis, a microscopic minority like Kashmiri Pandits can live safely and with dignity only if respondent Muslim majority so desires, and to this end, is able to convince its radical fringe. This will largely depend upon the degree to which majority community is willing to accommodate the political and economic aspirations of this microscopic community. As of today, it does not appear to be in any mood to do so. This is evident from the reaction to the last Assembly elections to the State Legislature held after the Congress-PDP coalition government had to resign, as a consequence of the Amarnath land row. When reminded by a senior journalist about the overwhelming response of Kashmiris to the elections, Syed Ali Shah Geelani said tersely, “Kufr has won and Islam has lost.”

Similarly, even at the common man’s level, some incidents, like the one that took place at Chhatabal, do not inspire confidence. While collecting evidence of the dilapidated state of temples of the Valley, Sanjay Tickoo, President of Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), and his colleagues just about managed to escape with their lives, when local youth attacked them for daring to record the evidence. Describing the incident, Tickoo said, “It was 386th temple which we wanted to document through pictures for restoring it. But five-six members from the majority community came and threatened us,” Tickoo told the Hindustan Times. Tickoo is further reported to have said, “these men used words like “Jis tarah humne tumhare mandiroon ko jalaya hai vaise hi tum logon ko jalayenge, aur kisi ko pata bi nahi chalega (The way we have burnt your temples, in the same way we will burn you and no one will know about you). Yehan sirf Islam Chalega (Only Islam will prevail here). India ko lagta hai ki tum logon ko vapas layega, jo bi aayega mara jayega, hum log phir se gun uthayenge (India thinks they can bring Kashmiri Pandits back to Valley. Whosoever will come, will die. We will again take up arms against you).” Tickoo said the locals manhandled the members of the KPSS. “We had to leave the place. The villagers who had gathered at the spot did not intervene. This shows that the attitude towards the minority community has not changed.”^3&4

Many Pandits think that their return to Kashmir can only be a part of an overall and comprehensive settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir problem, wherein all parties to the dispute will have to guarantee their safety, security and dignity. Today, the situation is such that return is not even talked about by the Pandits because of both internal and external factors, which have firmly sucked the Valley into the vortex of Islamic terrorism. Activities of Pakistan-created and sponsored terror groups is not just confined to the Valley, but have also spread to many other parts of the country. Despite West’s consensus on war on terror and the pooling of resources by many countries to end this scourge, there is no end in sight to this menace. In fact, Pakistan itself has now fallen prey to this endless and senseless violence at the hands of radical elements, which it created in first place. Large parts of Pakistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Waziristan, etc., are today completely under the sway of various Islamic terror groups. Kashmir will, therefore, continue to simmer, despite the fact that India-Pakistan composite dialogue has been on and off and on again, for some years now.

In the meanwhile, Pakistani society too has got extremely radicalised. This is evident from people eulogising the assassin of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab and a top politician of Pakistan People’s Party, who had supported the amending of the draconian anti-blasphemy law. Sometime later, killing of the only Christian Minister in the Federal Cabinet, Shahzad Bhatti, for the same reason, further confirmed this trend. At the popular level in Pakistan, there is extensive support for waging of Jehad in Kashmir, if not in the whole of India. According to a poll conducted by a Pakistan News Magazine, Herald, in January 2002, 64 per cent supported it. Besides, most of the people do not consider Kashmir to be a territorial dispute, but a Hindu-Muslim issue, in which their sympathies are with Muslims of Kashmir in ‘their struggle for separation from India and accession to Pakistan’. Kashmiri Pandits’ return is, therefore, also linked to the end of Islamist violence.

India’s challenge lies in its need to maintain and defend democratic pluralism, the bedrock of its much acclaimed liberal and secular constitution. Kashmir is central to this concept. India feels that armed insurgency in Kashmir is sponsored from Pakistan and it has helped the separatist movement primarily because of the Muslim- majority character of the state. The present government at the Centre in India feels Kashmiri Muslims have themselves fallen victims to this violence and if somehow this sponsorship of violence and terror were to stop, Kashmir could once again return to the peaceful ways of the old, wherein the problem could then be resolved with a heavy dose of autonomy/self-rule. This view, though simplistic, does have some merit. Composite dialogue between India and Pakistan seems to be revolving around this thinking (presently suspended due to terror strike on Mumbai by Pakistan based LeT on November 26, 2008).

According to the Pandits, they fled the Valley because of an overwhelming sense of insecurity that engulfed the community in 1989–90, as a result of the Pakistan sponsored insurgency in Kashmir. Therefore, they can return only if in their opinion, the place becomes safe enough for them to return. This will be possible only when threat of Pakistan’s intervention disappears completely and peace returns. There appears to be no possibility of that happening any time soon. Pakistan is unlikely to back off its chosen path to grab Kashmir by infiltrating its well-armed and well-trained Jehadis into Kashmir.

“Since 1990, Indian army has recovered over 80,000 AK series rifles; over 1,300 machine guns; over 2,000 rocket launchers; some 63,000 hand grenades and seven million rounds of ammunition. The Indian Army has also eliminated over 20,000 terrorists, a large proportion of whom were foreign terrorists.” Despite paying such huge costs, the entire Pakistani terror infrastructure is intact and thriving. There are some 2,000 to 2,500 terrorists in training camps. Some 700–850 are on the launching pads and holding camps near the LoC. Around 230 terrorists made 35 attempts to infiltrate this year (2011). Nearly 50 terrorists have been killed in 2011 so far, 19 in the last two months alone.”⁵ Under the circumstances, generally peaceful situation prevailing in Kashmir in 2011 cannot be termed as return of normalcy on permanent basis. As long as Pakistan uses terrorism in Kashmir as a state policy and retains the ability to exercise that option; Kashmir will remain unsafe for Pandits to return.

One of the biggest confidence building measures among the Pandits would be if the majority community in the Valley assures them of their security and dignity. This can happen only if there is a change of heart on the part of majority community in Kashmir, which will enable them to overlook their own economic costs that Pandits’ return will impose on them. For a microscopic minority to build enough confidence in the overwhelming Muslim majority of Kashmir, the willingness of the latter to welcome them back is a necessary prerequisite. At the moment, this possibility does not seem to exist. Under the circumstances, no amount of coercion, use of force, offering of incentives, etc., will persuade the Pandits to return to the Valley, only to be thrown out again. That would be catastrophic. On the other hand, if the government insists on a partial return without giving much thought to the underlying problem, it is likely to prove disastrous and counter-productive. Intricacies of similar situation have been aptly summed up by Erind D Mooney, special advisor to the United Nations Secretary General on Internally Displaced, who also has a long experience of working in the office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. He states, “Simply providing aid to persons whose physical security is under threat not only neglects their protection needs but can actually exacerbate and perpetuate their plight, for instance by providing a false sense of security, shoring up repressive regimes, fostering long time dependency and even resulting in well- fed dead.”⁶

Some years back one could safely assume that return of peace to the Valley depended largely on the improvement in Indo-Pak relations. But now, the situation in Afghanistan after the contemplated US withdrawal from there is also likely to impact the events in Kashmir. The whole region is geographically interlinked and historically interwoven. The seamless movement and operations carried out by Jehadis in the Af–pak areas are likely to increase, if the International Security Assistance Forces operating in Afghanistan were to leave lock stock and barrel. With the epicentre and command structure of these forces operating from Pakistan under the latter’s overall supervision; the Jehadi activities are unlikely to leave Kashmir untouched. It is, therefore, unlikely that peace will return to Kashmir any time soon. Under the circumstances, hoping for the return of conditions conducive enough for Pandits to return, do not look bright.

It is also debatable whether the youth of the diaspora will be willing to return to the Valley on permanent basis for reasons which are varied and complicated. For one, Kashmir does not provide any employment opportunities in either industry or service sector, as no industries exist there and there is negligible growth in the service sector, because of two decades of militancy. The inability of these two crucial sectors to absorb a substantial number of youth in new jobs has even forced the local youth to seek jobs outside the State. As government continues to be the main employer, beyond a point, it cannot provide jobs to everyone. The traditional employment generating industries like horticulture and handicraft suffered enormously due to militancy and has, therefore, not kept pace with the requirements of the liberalised economy or the requirements of the burgeoning number of job seekers. Similarly, schooling of young children too, poses serious problems. Having grown up in a free environment outside Kashmir, where religion has practically no place in their school curriculum, it will be almost unthinkable for these children to study in Valley schools, where every child is required to wear religion on his or her sleeve and where their soaring spirits get easily stifled.

Under the circumstances, the only ones who might think of returning, on experimental basis, would be small-time shopkeepers and those entirely dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. These displaced Pandits would be the only ones willing to return to Kashmir with even a lesser degree of security and political empowerment. Being poor and from rural background, getting back their land would provide them with their only source of livelihood. Though even in their case, a relatively small incident of violence against them can trigger panic and have devastating consequences.

For Kashmir and Kashmiri Pandits, a lot has changed during the last two decades. On the one hand, with fatigue setting-in among the people of Kashmir due to the two decade-old turmoil, some people in Kashmir do yearn for the olden days, when peace prevailed and Kashmiri Pandits’ presence among them was taken for granted. Recently (end of 2011) 25 Sarpanchs (the elected heads of the local village councils) met to discuss the return of Kashmiri Pandits to Kashmir. It was for the first time after the exodus that the elected representatives of the people in Kashmir discussed the issue. By any reckoning, it represents a positive change among the local population. However, at the same time, the exodus has brought about some critical changes among the Kashmiri Pandits, both at the individual as also at the community level. These changes militate against their desire to return to Kashmir.

Some years ago, an elderly Kashmiri Pandit refugee’s last wish, made from his death-bed in Udhampur, was to go back to Kashmir. His family took him to Kud, not far from Udhampur, which looked like Kashmir. That was the kind of burning desire of that generation, which strongly connected to Kashmir. However, this is not true of Kashmiri Pandit youth who grew up outside Kashmir. They neither connect nor identify themselves with Kashmir in the same way as their elders did. Besides, Pandits of the older generation were predominantly state government employees and their world revolved around Kashmir. The new generation largely works in private enterprises within and outside India, turning them into global citizens. The Valley’s economy provides no avenues for gainful employment of such youth, equipped as they are with the skills that are not in demand in Kashmir. Additionally, Kashmiri Pandit youth aspires for better career opportunities, which Kashmir cannot provide.

Widespread and rampant inter-community marriages amongst Kashmiri Pandits, have also ensured that the community is losing its distinct identity rapidly. High mortality and low birth rate has further accentuated the process of extinction of the Kashmiri Pandit community. Under such circumstances, even if ideal conditions were created for the return of Kashmiri Pandits to Kashmir, there may not be anyone willing or even left to go back there.

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Nevertheless, acceptance by India, of the forced displacement of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley as a fait accompli, will amount to granting official recognition to the Islamists’ success in turning Kashmir into an entirely Islamic state. In its own estimation, and in the eyes of the world, such recognition by India will make its credentials, as a democratic and secular country, ring extremely hollow: its much hyped cooperative federalism will lie in tatters. Despite pushing the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits under the carpet; history will be unrelenting in judging India’s claim to being a liberal democracy. Can India accept this kind of situation without paying a heavy price in terms of its standing in the world, particularly at a time when it is emerging as a big economic power house and a regional power?