Celebrating the Article 370 decision is misplaced and vengeful: A Kashmiri Pandit student

On 5 August, the Narendra Modi-led government removed the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution. The government downgraded the state into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. It then enforced a communications blockade in the region, which is still ongoing. The government has since claimed that the situation on the ground is peaceful, and that people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh have all welcomed the move. News reports from the region, however, contradict this claim.

In “State Subjects,” The Caravan is featuring a collection of voices from various parts of the erstwhile state. Apurva Bamezai is a Kashmiri Pandit who is currently pursuing a PhD in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States. She argues that the abrogation of Kashmir’s special status does not change anything for the Kashmiri Pandits in any material, cultural or legal sense, and urges the community to oppose the oppression of the Kashmiri Muslim population by the Indian state.

I felt a great unease as news reports poured in from Kashmir in the week leading up to 5 August 2019. The Amarnath Yatra had not been cancelled even at the height of militancy—yet, on 2 August, the Kashmir Valley was cleared of all pilgrims and tourists. Questions abounded about what was to happen. I was glued to the television when Amit Shah walked in to parliament to finally lay all the rumours and speculation to rest. By then, it had become clear that Article 35A of the Constitution, which granted residents of Jammu and Kashmir special rights in certain matters such as acquisition of immovable property and protection of state jobs, was going down. But with complete shock and horror, I realised that Shah had done the unthinkable—Article 370 had been read down to abrogate the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, and the state had been diminished to a union territory.

Enough has been said and written about the draconian and constitutionally immoral nature of the government of India’s move. I want to bring in a perspective that is shared by a section of the Kashmiri Pandits, or KPs—a minority within the context of Kashmir but a part of India’s religious majority.

I identify as a KP but often with the caveat that I have never lived, nor spent any substantial length of time, in Kashmir. I understand the language but I do not speak it, and I have been fairly distant from the land and its history, having grownup mainly in Delhi. In fact, I do not think I have really thought about my KP identity over the course of my life as much as I have since 5 August. My parents had been living outside of Kashmir at the time of the forced mass exodus of KPs from the Valley in the 1990s, and did not directly suffer the trauma and indignity of having to hide and run away in the middle of the night as many had to.

I do have family members who fled in this manner. My grandparents, who were at the time outside Kashmir visiting my uncle like they did every winter, could never go back. One refrain I often heard when they spoke about the loss they felt was that it was not about the actual property and material belongings, but rather about a sense of home, a way of living—the weather, the culture, the music, the language—and innumerable memories that were forever left behind. My grandfather only wished he had carried old family pictures, photo albums, and the horoscopes of our family members, which were all irretrievably lost.

My parents, on rare occasions, mentioned how they found the circumstances under which KPs had to flee very suspicious. How did the governor, the representative of the government of India, not have the wherewithal to protect such a sizeable community? At the time, the governor Jagmohan had announced that he could not guarantee the protection of the Kashmiri Pandit population should they choose to remain in the Valley. Why was such a strong administration, headed by a governor with a reputation for tough mindedness, unable to prevent the exodus of KPs or guarantee the protection of their lives and property? I now know that there are many competing theories about what happened at the time in Kashmir. Given the rise in militancy since 1989, the common Kashmiri Muslim, or KM, also lived with a sense of unease and uncertainty about their immediate future. While it was not true for all KMs, there is no denying that some neighbours and friends had turned their backs on KPs.

Many in my extended family have found it easy to pin the blame on the KM community in its entirety, without distinguishing between the common KM, the few who engaged in violence and the insurgents from across the border who instigated the troubles. In the interactions among some of my family members, there had always been an undercurrent of a feeling of separation and mistrust between the KPs and the KMs. While I was too young to process anything when the exodus happened, I saw how some in my family would casually remark how Muslims, anywhere in the world, were not to be trusted, especially after the 11 September attack on the Twin Towers in the United States.

As I studied social sciences and came to work in India’s development space, it became impossible to deny that Dalits, tribals and Muslims faced extremely high levels of discrimination in most of India. It also struck me as odd that the trauma faced by my relatives had wiped out the memories of syncretic times shared before the exodus. These people had grown up with Muslim friends and neighbours, eaten with them, gone to school and college with them, and celebrated festivals with them in Sufi times of inter-communal amity. Yet, they now seemed incapable—or disinclined, at least—to see them as fellow human beings who had, perhaps, acted under duress when the radical armed militants came calling. I do not question the fact that there was a section of KMs who wanted to integrate into Pakistan, and a section who supported an independent Kashmir. But as the KPs began to be targeted, it had also become clear that many KMs who did not condone violence of any kind or came to the KPs’ defence also faced threats to their lives.

I think it is imperative that I voice not only a complete rejection of the government of India’s move in Jammu and Kashmir, but also my disappointment and anger at those fellow Indians who have extended such a warm welcome to this cruel use of state power by the present dispensation. It had been easy, so far, to dismiss some bigoted voices in my extended family and the wider KP community. But this is now not only about Kashmir. It strikes at the very heart of what it means to be Indian, an identity that I take immense pride in. In particular, I am deeply troubled by all the KPs celebrating the developments. I initially wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the more I have thought about this, the surer I have become about the primary reason for their celebrations.

It is not because anything changed for the KPs in a legal sense with the abrogation of Kashmir’s Article 370. In fact, it is well-documented that the demands for constitutional provisions conferring a special status to Jammu and Kashmir had full support from both the KMs and the KPs. In fact, the Kashmiri Pandits were ironically the first to raise a demand of “Kashmir for Kashmiris,” which led to the State Subject law of 1927 that was later codified as Article 35A in 1954.

It is not because anything changed for the KPs in a material sense with the scrapping of Article 35A.The immovable property ownership was possible if you were a state domicile, so KMs and KPs could both buy land and property in Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of other documents such as the birth certificates, school certificates, revenue records of parents, and the state subject certificate, which identified you as a permanent resident of the state. Moreover, local leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party sought restrictions on “outsiders” from acquiring land in Jammu and Kashmir within a week of the nullification of Article 35A.

It is not because anything changed for the KPs in a cultural sense, given that the strongest binding force between KMs and KPs has remained their language and ethnicity. Article 370 had been hollowed out by successive Indian governments by extending provisions of the Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir. The special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir had not made it any more inaccessible for the KPs. Several from the community who wanted to go back did, in fact, return to the Valley. Some who had grown roots in other parts of India and the world even now returned to visit Hindu religious shrines and festivals where they continued to receive warm hospitality from KMs at large.

My conversations with my extended family and others from the community indicate that those KPs who have not gone back so far are very unlikely to ever go back and live in Kashmir. Many KPs were absorbed easily in other parts of the country where they began their lives anew. Their children are studying or have jobs outside. Most in my generation and beyond do not see a life of opportunity in the region, no matter how much pretense or chest-thumping there is on part of the government of India about bringing in development and investment in the region.

Even assuming that there is a substantial number of KPs who want to return—do they really want to live in gated enclosures where they avoid all interaction with other fellow Kashmiris? Traditionally, Kashmiri Muslims, Pandits and Sikhs used to live together in common neighbourhoods and not in the kind of ghettoes we see in many places in India. Thus, the long-standing demand of some KP organisations to carve out a separate homeland for the community never made sense either from a cultural or security perspective—it would only promote ghettoisation, contrary to the Kashmiri way of living. It would also make them soft targets if the terrorists ever chose to attack the community at any point.

The only perceivable reason the KPs are celebrating is that they consider this their revenge. I urge all fellow KPs to think long and hard about what that says about us. Deprived of justice, the KP community has condoned the collective punishment of the entire KM population. We have let ourselves down by not coming to the defence of our Kashmiri brothers and sisters. By doing so, we adopt the same radical ethnonationalist propaganda that justified violent means and led to our exodus. If that was inexcusable, how can we ever forgive ourselves when the government of India has trapped seven million children, women and men in Kashmir at the behest of the heavily militarised establishment in their homeland?

We must stand up for Kashmir and express solidarity with the people whose rights as Indian citizens are being crushed in our name. We must not be blind to how our experience is being used to justify the oppression being committed on the Kashmiri people. Our pain is being used by the government of the day to achieve its agenda of establishing a Hindu Rashtra. We must remember that the idea of India is based on pluralism and secular ideals, and that it is these ideals that allow the KP community to observe its cultural practices as non-mainland Hindus, such as being predominantly non-vegetarian Shaivites and speaking our own language.

While we must seek free and fair trials against those who raped and killed many innocent KPs in 1989‑1990, we must also support demands for the same against those who raped and killed innocent KMs as part of India’s counter-insurgency efforts. As democrats anywhere in the world, we have to support all citizens’ human rights, including their rights to speech, assembly and political representation, even if we do not always agree with the outcomes.

Once we are no longer relevant to the Hindu Rashtra project, we could just as well be cast aside. Perhaps the older Kashmiris need to process their past through a process similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was set up in post-apartheid South Africa. Meanwhile, young Kashmiris—Sikhs, Muslims and Pandits alike—should join hands in reconstructing a sub-national Kashmiri identity.