Iqbal Krishen Pandit, a 50-year old Kashmiri Pandit had to leave his homeland 25 years ago. He is currently working with a manufacturing company in Hyderabad. He left Kashmir in 1990 and never looked back. This is his story:
I am a Kashmiri Pandit, 50 years old. There are two faces of my life. The first 25 years, I have spent in Kashmir and the later 25 years out of Kashmir in different parts of India. I belong to a village called Krangsoo which is just 6 kms from Anantnag connecting the famous Martand Temple via Goutamnag. Since 1986 when in south Kashmir, most of the temples were burnt, Kashmiri society by and large got divided on communal grounds. It became very difficult for Kashmiri Pandits to live there. There was a sharp rise of militancy with bomb blasts, kidnappings and processions on a day to day basis. The government then was completely out of action and could not nab the militants as they enjoyed local support. True Kashmiris who raised voice against it were killed brutally. This included largely Hindus and some Muslims as well.
I used to work for Union Carbide in Srinagar then. Post Jan 19, 1990, there were brutal killings and kidnappings including some industry veterans daily. On one instance, I was locked up in the factory for about three days as the curfew was imposed throughout Srinagar and its outskirts. My father, was posted in CID wing of J & K Police had to go for site inspections post bomb blasts and such incidents meant his name would appear on the militants’ hit list and the entire family was very worried and concerned about it. Many of his colleagues had been kidnapped, tortured and brutally killed. For two months, he hid in a room at the back of the house. If any stranger knocked on the door, he would exit from the back door.
This situation finally made us realise that we had to leave our home. It took us a while to convince my father but in the end, even he agreed.
On April 22, 1990, when my father and I left our home on an early morning wearing a pheran ( A traditional winter dress) and a towel on the shoulders. We never looked back, and reached Khanabal from where we boarded a bus and reached Jammu in the evening. We took along with us our pregnant Bhabhi and small niece, leaving back our mother, elder brother and his family and other brother there at Kashmir. Once we reached Jammu, we did not know what to do and where to go.
I found one of my friends and a cousin, who offered us to stay with them in a recently allotted tent at a Kashmiri Migrant Camp called ‘Jadhi’ which was about 12 kms from Jammu. From home in Kashmir where everyone of our family members had their own room, we went to a place where nine of us had to stay in one tent. There was one common toilet for the entire camp and we had to queue for hours to shit in it. Electricity was on and off throughout the night. We had to queue for drinking water as well. Lizards, snakes, scorpions and centipedes were very common and quite a few people died from insect bites as well. Suddenly one would see a truck reaching the tent and people lining up to get some eateries or blankets. To get kerosene, one had to travel about 10 kms to the city and queue up in the scorching heat of Jammu. Many Kashmiri Hindus died of sunstroke as we were never exposed to such a hot summer.
It was in those conditions that we spent about five years trying to adapt, reconcile and thinking that the world would support us, and would do everything to get us back our homeland.
I am still wondering whether this will ever happen. No one returned their awards for us and the media didn’t make a noise either. My father developed cancer and left for hisheavenly abode about 15 years back, but we are still hopeful. Let us hope that one day we go back and proudly live there as a Kashmiri Pandits without any fear, violence and with mutual respect.
After moving out of Kashmir, Pandit moved to Ankleshwar and joined Asian Paints. In 2008 he visited Kashmir with his wife and children to show them what Kashmir was all about. Not as a resident, but a tourist in his own homeland. He saw a total change in the landscape of Kashmir. One is the development of infrastructure like new markets, roads, colonies etc have come up but what astonished him most is that both Muslims and Hindus live together in the same colony, village or mohalla.
When asked if he could change one thing about Kashmir, he replied ‘Remove article 370’.
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