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Business News/ Opinion / The anniversary of a forgotten exodus
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The anniversary of a forgotten exodus

Reverberations of the migration of Kashmiri pandits can be felt even today

Illustration: Shyamal Banerjee/Mint Premium
Illustration: Shyamal Banerjee/Mint

Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the exodus of pandits from the Kashmir valley. The echo of events that began on 19 January 1990 continue to reverberate in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) even today.

The mass migration—the number of people involved; its reasons and how it is described—should be seen from the perspective of events that began in late 1986 when Farooq Abdullah became chief minister for the second time. By 1987, the first signs of militancy were visible in the state. A number of youth crossed over to Pakistan for terrorist training. Two years later, in 1989, as the Soviet Union began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, cross-border terrorism intensified to the point that by early 1990, 19 January to be precise, the Abdullah government had become ineffective and had to be dismissed. Soon thereafter the killing of pandits and looting of their property began. By early March of that year, a huge number had moved out of Kashmir valley—to Jammu and other parts of the country. Of the estimated 531,000 internally displaced persons in India by 2014, Kashmiri pandits account for close to 250,000. It is a testament to how such events are remembered and archived in Indian history that the mass migration of Kashmiri pandits is treated largely as a footnote. In contrast, earlier tragedies—the migration of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan and the reverse migration of Muslims from India and the alleged killing of 500,000 people in Hyderabad in 1948—are classed as such, as tragic events. Perhaps the events of 1990 don’t fall under the rubric of history. There is all round lip service on what happened to the pandits from Kashmir but little systematic effort to get them back to their historic homeland in the Kashmir valley. Only a handful returned.

If the recalling of these events is selective, so is their interpretation. The intellectual precepts of Indian secularism demand symmetry of a certain kind. In this case, the exodus of 1990 is usually juxtaposed with another, far-off, event: the migration of Muslims from Jammu in 1948-49 to the so-called Azad Kashmir. There are events where such pairing is natural, as in the case of the cataclysm in Punjab and Bengal in 1947 but to turn it into a rigid principle does violence to history. This has real, political effects and is not merely restricted to books.

The election to the J&K assembly late last year is the most recent example of the lasting impact of events of 1990. The state, because of its peculiar history, is already subject to regional strains between Ladakh, the Kashmir valley and the Jammu region. The mass migration of pandits and the changed demography of the Jammu region have created a regional political equilibrium in the state for the first time since 1947.

If the Kashmir valley was the centre of gravity for long, these elections have changed that. The historic ruling party of the state—the National Conference—did win a couple of seats in Jammu, but it was a non-J&K party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that swept the seats in the region. This was in no small measure due to the presence of Kashmiri pandits in the region. Most Indians have rued this polarization but few have bothered to examine its historical roots.

The episode should also make us pause and re-examine the notion of minorities and victims in our politics. This is a controversial and contentious domain that should be debated extensively. Can a sub-population of the majority turn into a minority in some part of the country? Can a pan-Indian minority be in a majority in a particular state (the Sikhs are a good example)? Are the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed reversed in such situations? These are vexed political questions that have real political effects, tying with them not only the fortunes of political parties, intellectuals and ideologues but also a large number of the Indian people.

Will the Kashmiri pandits ever return to their homeland? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 18 Jan 2015, 06:24 PM IST
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