Our must read book pick for today is Rahul Pandita’s book ‘Our Moon has blood clots : The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits’ and before getting on to why you should read it, let me tell you how I came across this book.
Way back in 2014, Jammu and Kashmir (especially Kashmir) was badly hit by flash floods, the relief operations were started by Indian Army and soon enough images/videos of people pelting stones on the Army went viral.
It intrigued me, why someone would get hostile towards someone trying to save you, unless one has got suicidal tendencies, which obviously was not the case.Violent protest marches and stone pelting on Army/Police has been a common sight in news about Kashmir in the past too.
What could be the cause of such fury and hatred? Can it be religion alone? I was intrigued by such questions.
Kashmir has always been in turmoil. How old is this turmoil? Why is it so difficult to resolve it?
Pretty soon India will be entering its 70th year of Independence. Was a 70 year span too less to restore peace in Kashmir?
I started digging for more information and history about Kashmir and came across this article in Hindustan Times (a popular Indian National Daily), kashmir-why-do-allegations-against-indian-army-go-unattended? It was really devastating to know about the means through which Army has been torturing people since 1994 till now. No wonder stones are hurled on them, Army’s actions definitely do not justify as revenge neither as suppression to any violent activity.
In all, its just inhuman.
This article was an eye-opener for me and it made me realize that so far I have been reacting (at times over-reacting) towards any incident related to Kashmir with very half-baked (or zero) information and it firmed up my decision to broaden my overall perspective about Kashmir, where has the paradise (as described by Persian poet Amir Khusrau in 13th century) got lost?
It’s not only limited to border issues with Pakistan, the Hindu and Muslim divide or militancy, there is lot more suffering/suppression which has which has been fueling the fire for ages.
This constant intrigue led me to this book – ‘Our Moon has blood clots : The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits‘.
It’s a chronicle/timeline (1947 to 1990’s and to now) summing up painful accounts of brutal murders of Kashmiri Pandits.
The opening note sets the background for what upcoming pages will unravel –
‘….. and an earlier time when the flowers were not stained with blood, the moon with blood clots !’
The author has penned down various narrative accounts about the atrocities with great sensitivity, which would make the reader not only feel the pain but also feel sorry about the cruel inhuman behavior.
The book mainly revolves around the agony of leaving behind the one’s home and belongings, of becoming refugees in one’s own country, of the daily struggle of making ends meets, of uncertain future, ruined childhood without schools, ruined careers, ruined lives, the pain of seeing friends turning into enemies or closing their eyes towards the atrocities, the pain of lost identity and more than that, the pain of losing the loved ones.
‘….It is said that the heaviest load in this universe is that of a father carrying his son’s body. Ask me, I have carried it myself and my shoulders are still bent……’
‘….Ravi is dead. My brother is dead, my hero is dead.’
Rahul was about 14 years old when he, along with his parents and sister had to flee Kashmir and take shelter in a filthy refugee camp in Jammu.
‘At the blue gate, Father stopped and turned back. He looked at the house. Looking back, there was a sense of finality in his gaze. There were tears in his eyes. Ma was calm.’
On numerous occasions author sarcastically recalls how his mother used to tell neighbors – ‘Our home in Kashmir had twenty-two rooms.’ built with every penny of his Father’s PF and last bit of his Mother’s jewelry.
In a span/exile of 20 years, in hope of finding a place they can call a home, they had already changed 20 times.
‘…We also counted the number of times we had shifted house since the day we left home.
It roughly came to around twenty. It may have been even twenty-two times, the same as the number of rooms in our house that Ma talked continually about.’
‘By 1992, the locks of most Pandit houses had been broken. Many houses were burnt down. In Barbarshah in old Srinagar, they say, Nand Lal’s house smoldered for six weeks. It was made entirely of deodar wood.’
The plight of refugee camps – Lack of electricity, drinking water, employment and other basic amenities and a meager compensation amount of 5000/- per month for family of 6 doesn’t help Kashmiri’s in exile to make ends meet. Forget about improving the lifestyle, that amount remains the same till date.
‘They found the old man dead in his torn tent, with a pack of chilled milk pressed against his right cheek. It was our first June in exile, and the heat felt like a blow in the back of the head’.
The impact on generations/survivors, who are constantly battling a series of WHYs in their life –
‘My friend has a young daughter who started going to school recently. He would often tell her stories about Kashmir, and how they had a home there, but it had been burnt down.
A few months into school, the little girl’s teacher called her parents.
“Your daughter seems to have a psychological problem”, she told.’
In a class activity to write few lines about her home, the little girl wrote – ‘she had no home, on pressing further she said it has been burnt.’
Another sole survivor’s tale, every single member of his family (21 in number) was brutally murdered one night. He was 13 year old then….
‘Like the tramp in Naipaul’s In a Free State, I have reduced my life to names and numbers. I have memorized the name of every Pandit killed during those dark days, and the circumstances in which he or she was killed.’
‘when the gun shots were being fired, the people of the village increased the volume of the loudspeaker in the mosque to muffle the sound of the gunfire.’
Some of the excerpts from the book will make you think are we really surrounded by humans!
In 1947-48 coupled with partition riots there was a tribal Pathan attack, funded and motivated by Pakistan army, it was savage and heinous.
‘Before leaving they dragged in six women and raped them in front of Sapru. The captive Pandits spent seventy days like this, watching women being raped and men killed in front of their eyes’.
‘The tribesmen converted Baramulla’s cinema hall into a rape house. Hundreds of women were taken there and raped. Some of them were later abducted and taken to Rawalpindi and Peshawar and sold like cattle. Many women had jumped into the Jhelum to save their honor.’
In the 1941 census, Kashmiri Pandits constitute about 15% of the Kashmir Valley’s population. By 1981, they were reduced to a mere 5%. And its not about the headcounts that we have lost or will loose, its about a culture, a tradition which may get extinct.
Like Rahul, many of us with trace of humanity still alive would seek an answer to the question –How killing innocent people will strengthen the cause of hatemongers?
‘I can’t fathom why all this is happening. If the Kashmiris are demanding Azadi, why do the Pandits have to be killed?…How is the burning of a temple or molesting a Pandit lady on the road going to help in the cause of Azadi?’
The book brings up many heart wrenching moments and acts as an eye-opener to the rest of India, At times news from Kashmir about blasts, insurgency, killings, and rapes enrages us for a while and soon it becomes an everyday issue.
Today in India, we see people get enraged on the most trivial issues. We seem to have lost tolerance towards people expressing their views, and we react without even trying to deep dive and know the exact causes and situations. Reading this book was one step for me to know about Kashmir and its deep rooted problems. One needs to delve more before forming any rigid views.
Read this book and discover Kashmir beyond its picturesque Bollywood songs or its house boats or terrorism. Read this book to know about the life afterwards and more importantly how we can contribute to improve the conditions.