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| How serious are appeals of return to Pandits? | | | ET Report
JAMMU, Dec 22: Both the State Government and the Kashmiri separatist leaders have asked the migrant Pandits to return to their homes and hearths in the Valley. Such requests and appeals have also been made in the past by both the so-called moderate and the hardline separatist leaders. It has almost become fashionable for politicians to ask the migrants to return to their roots.
The history of migration is long and complex and yet there is no doubt in the minds of anybody including those who make such cosmetic appeals to the migrants that their return is not only difficult, but perhaps impossible.
Where do the migrant Pandits return to? Where are their homes and properties? In summer capital Srinagar there is perhaps no Pandit property that has not been sold under distress during the last 23 years of turmoil in the Valley. Old houses belonging to migrant Pandits have been replaced by modern houses or shopping malls. In the downtown the migrant properties have all been sold out except one to two where the Pandits did not migrate and continue to live.
Although the State Government has clear laws to protect the migrant properties or even to cancel the sale deeds of such properties if the Government is convinced that the properties in question have been sold under duress. The laws enacted to protect the interests of the migrant Pandits notwithstanding the situation on the ground indicates that the migration of the Pandits from the Valley could unfortunately be an irreversible fact of our contemporary history.
The small Pandit community has suffered heavily because they have been converted from a respectable, educated community of human beings to political commodities in politicians trade irrespective of the fact whether the politicians are mainstream or separatist. The tragedy for the Kashmiri Pandit community is manifold. It is not only the loss of their roots and identity, it also means a cultural, social and economic dilution that is likely to erase the very foundation of this minority community of the Valley.
Sometimes the appeals and requests for their return have been received with anger and sometimes they have been received with scorn and disdain by the member of the migrant community. The fact that such appeals also contain an element of adding insult to injury should not be overlooked. After all, whose return are we talking about? There is a visible disconnect between the migrant Pandits of yester years and today with regard to their return to the ancestral land. The wounds might not all be physical. There is a huge psychological void that has been created between the communities during the last 23 years of turmoil in the Valley. Before anybody asks the Pandits to explore the possibilities of their return, it is pertinent to address the main issue of estrangement and mistrust. Once the psychological void which has been created because of circumstances perhaps beyond the control of none of the members of the two communities is bridged. |
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