Arshia Malik - A blessing or forever cursed? (February 9, 2019)

By Dilip -
NB: In the heat of the moment - nowadays all moments are on fire, especially on TV - we forget that India was, and continues to be torn apart by communalism and that communalism comes in many colours. The Kashmir problem is rooted in the communal partition of 1947. Partition can never be a solution to the breakdown of human speech - Pakistan was also partitioned in 1971. It's a long story, but communal theatrics have become the preferred mode of ideological governance in South Asia. 

After all that has happened in the region over decades, we owe ourselves an honest discussion about political violence. Militarism is leading us to eternal war. The younger generation must learn to cross all barriers to overcome this fatal disease, or you will face the same dismal situation for the rest of your lives. This is a beautiful and sensitive essay. Thank you Arshia. DS

There has been a Twitter storm around the Kathua case lawyer Deepika Singh Rajawat’s tweet expressing her opinion that the forced exodus or the ethnic cleansing of Pandits from the Vale of Kashmir in the 90s was a blessing in disguise. Avoiding commenting on the obvious insensitivity attached to the said tweet from a very high-profile lawyer, I was forced to mull over it this weekend when I happened, by chance, to arrive at a dear friend’s home, a home I had instantly liked when I saw it the first time after coming back from the Jaipur Literary Festival a few years ago. 

The house had so fascinated me that I had promised to get my late husband for a visit too, which unfortunately never materialised. Our friend, a voracious reader, a collector of books like me, with Kashmiri origins, exudes warmth every time we reconnect, either physically or on the phone or social media. There is a level of comfort which only compatriots can have when they find themselves in strange cities, with a common language, understanding the colloquial humour and the references to our common local culture. For a self-exile like me, that can be a few hours of rootedness otherwise missing.
But why I particularly liked that home and hearth was the evident attempt to rebuild the essence of Kashmir far away from the roots. The black and white photographs, the books handed down from grandfather to son and now the grandson displayed a bygone era – a way of life- that can never be wished back, however much one tries. This time, having seen death up close and suffered its aftermath and still living with the trauma of a beloved gone, I tried to dispel the despondency that comes over me every time this “way of life” is before me. 

Keeping the sadness at bay, which inevitably arises when I see what communal forces have done to Kashmir, driving irreconcilable wedges between ancient neighbours, creating a deepening mistrust and the circus of politics, I tried to focus on the rebuilt life, all the time thinking this can’t have “been a blessing in disguise.” There is no blessing to the fate of people lying six feet under the ground, be it Pandits or Muslims. Both communities suffered tremendously and the generations which suffered the cleansing and the clampdown by the state of the armed rebellion, were left with the burden of being a witness and giving testimony – but only those who chose to speak the truth.

Today, the third generation of Pandits have no roots and no desire to come back and settle down, which means a way of life permanently altered, no matter how much the politics of rehabilitation is used to fool people in the state. The second and third generation of Muslims is being fed a completely different history of their region with the pet “Jagmohan theory” regarding the forced exodus of Pandits on the top of the list to the lies that terror outfits are secular forces fighting the infidel and repressive “Endian” occupation. This cannot be a blessing in any way. Being permanently rootless, and being fed a paranoid, delusional and hate-filled history can’t be a blessing... read more:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/stepping-out/a-blessing-or-forever-cursed/

see also
Comrade Satyapal Dang: Lessons of Punjab have Relevance for Kashmir
What is to be Undone
Kashmir Oral History
We Fear For the 400 Kashmiri Pandit Families in South Kashmir: Sanjay Tickoo
Posts from Sanjay Tickoo
Mansoor Anwar on Comrade Abdul Sattar Ranjoor (1917-1990)
A message and an appeal
Peace as a punctuation mark in eternal war
Kashmiris As ‘Cannon Fodder’
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals: Written by Benedetto Croce (1925)

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