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| Festival reunites Kashmiri Pandits with Muslims after 20 years | | | Early Times Report
Srinagar, Aug 2 : Three-day Shrawan Bah festival, being celebrated for the first time since late 80s in south Kashmir, reunited the Kashmiri pandits with their Muslim brethren after a gap of more than 20 years.They met in the temple complex where the three-day mela started yesterday in Shopian district of south Kashmir.
Wanting to leave behind what had happened in the past as a bad dream, the pandits, who had migrated to different parts of the country in the wake of eruption of militancy and Muslims who had to bear atrocities from all sides during all these years, wanted to start afresh.
''We are incomplete without each other,'' the members from both the communities said in one voice when they saw each other.
Even though the district administration had made elaborate security and other arrangements, but our security is our Muslim brethren,'' said Sham Lal, who had come from Jammu to attend the festival.
He said nobody wanted to recall the time when the entire community migrated and all these years spent in self exile along with aged parents and small children.
Although majority of Kashmiri pandits had now settled in Jammu and other parts of the country, the moment they talked about their birthplace, the Kashmir valley and its culture in general, they got emotional, he said, adding several elderly people died without getting their last wish fulfilled to visit Kashmir again.
''The Shrawan Bagh Devi provided us this chance to visit the Asthapan again in our lifetime, said Omkar Nath, who now lives in Delhi,'' he added.
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