Anil Bhat is a Kashmiri Pandit who lives in Chotigam, a leafy village in one far-off corner in the Shopian district, where traditional houses are perched on the clearings amid a pastoral setting along a winding, gravelled pathway. There are no motorable roads here. The village is populated sparsely, with the afternoon silence pierced only by the crowing of the birds.
Bhats have not been going out. Their home is shut to strangers, except if their arrival has already been notified by people the Bhats can trust. But this was not always the case.
On 4 April, Bhat and his older brother Bal Krishnan were managing the affairs at their family pharmacy store just outside their home when two young men pulled up on a bike. “They were wearing ferans,” Bhat recalls, referring to a tweed garment that Kashmiris wear during cold weather. Then, one of them whipped out a pistol and started firing at Krishnan.
The older brother ducked instinctively, but the assailants managed to shoot him in the arms (both), chest, and legs.
“He was shouting, ‘Save me’,’” Bhat says. Bal Krishnan was taken to Shopian District Hospital, where doctors referred him to Srinagar city. “The hospital, as always, was incapable of dealing with an emergency such as this,” he says. “I started worrying if my brother would survive.”
'Can't Go Out After 5 pm'
Following a special intervention by the Army, Krishnan was shifted to 92 Base Hospital at Badami Bagh, a military garrison on the outskirts of Srinagar city, where he is still recovering.
But that was not the end of Bhat’s troubles. Back at home, his mother suffered panic attacks. When Bhat spoke to this reporter, he was returning from a dispensary where he was supposed to get his mother’s electrocardiogram examined. “My entire family is living under stressful conditions over the last two weeks,” he says.
Anil Bhat
(Photo: Shakir Mir)
Although the government did place a picket of police personnel to protect the family, this reporter could not see them. Over 10 days into the attack, the Bhat family is finding itself being pushed over the precipice.
“We have been told not to venture out after 5 pm,” said 80-year-old Janki Nath, Bhat’s father. “My sons have not been able to return to their business. And our gate remains closed all the time. We feel apprehensive when somebody knocks.”
Nath was an employee of the Jammu & Kashmir government and retired as a ‘Forester’ in 2002. At the twilight of his age, Nath’s words are mostly unintelligible. But from a few lucid fragments, one can make out that he has a sharp understanding of history.
Wearing loose cotton garments, Nath squats on the porch and starts into a spiel, laced with historical references. Most of his family members dismiss this as one of his usual ramblings. But he insists his story is important. Indeed it is.
The Bhats did not leave the Valley during the 1990s even as the rest of their community, battered by a wave of selective killings and massacres, was forced to flee to Jammu.
Non-Locals, Hindus and Security Personnel Targeted
As per a report of the ‘Relief Office’ set up in 1990 by the then-government, there are 44,167 Kashmiri families registered as ‘migrants’ who moved out of Kashmir following the armed uprising. Out of these, the count of registered Hindu migrant families is 39,782. Non-official estimates put these numbers in a higher range.
Over the last few weeks, tensions have simmered once again as militant groups have escalated attacks across the Valley, in which armed forces, non-local workers, members of the Hindu community and village heads have been targeted.
On 3 April, militants in Pulwama town shot at two non-locals, Surinder and Dheeraj Dutta, both residents of Pathankot Punjab.
On 4 April, two more non-locals from Bihar, Patleshwar Kumar and Joko Chowdhary, sustained gunshot injuries after being shot at by militants in Lijora village of Pulwama.
On 5 April, militants staged another hit-and-run attack at Srinagar’s crowded Maisuma area, resulting in the killing of one Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) head constable Vishal Kumar. His colleague, Niranjan Singh, an assistant sub-inspector, was fatally injured.
On 7 April, another non-local, Sonu Sharma, a resident of Pathankot, Punjab, who worked as a driver, was shot at by militants in Yader area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.
On 14 April, militants shot dead Satish Kumar, a Kashmiri Hindu in Kakren village of south Kashmir’s Kulgam district.
On 16 April, militants killed Manzoor Ahmad Bangroo, a sarpanch in the Pattan area of the north Kashmir district of Baramulla.
On 18 April, militants fired a stream of bullets at a picket of the Railway Protection Force, killing Surinder Singh, a head constable, and injuring his colleague in the south Kashmir town of Kakapora.
Thus, there have been six killings in the month of April so far in eight hit-and-run attacks.
The Lashkar-e-Islam Threat Letter
Last week, a threat letter purportedly delivered from a militant group called Lashkar-e-Islam, and curiously sent via a postal mail, warned of more attacks on “non-believers” living in Kashmir.
The letter, whose veracity has been called into question by independent fact-checkers, has since worsened the fears of members of a small Pandit community living in Valley.
On 15 April, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), an activist group overseeing the welfare of 808 remaining Hindu families in Kashmir, issued a strongly worded letter accusing a section of the local Muslim community of connivance.
Referring to the recent killings, the letter said, “These kinds of heinous and barbaric acts are not possible without logistic support from the local population, though small in number.”
Sanjay Tickoo, who heads the KPSS, said that the “silence” of the Muslim community over the recent wave of attacks has maximised the sense of insecurity for the Pandit residents. “Both the attackers and their over-ground workers who identify the targets and offer logistical support are all locals,” he said. “These killings are not possible without a measure of civilian support.”
Tickoo, who has been confined to his home for the past seven months on account of information that his life, too, was under threat, said that the restrictions on his family’s freedom and mobility were affecting their mental health. “Even my daughter is on the radar of militants,” he claimed. “She used to go out three times a day. She runs all our household errands. Now, she, too, is enduring the confinement … it is emotionally and mentally depleting all of us – my mother, brother, wife, son and daughter.”
Tickoo laments that civil society in Kashmir has so far not been able to take a stand openly against the killings in a manner that could have mobilised public opinion against the perpetrators and served as a deterrent.
Govt's Measures to Rehabilitate Kashmiri Pandits
The attacks against members of Pandits and non-locals living in Kashmir intensified last year in autumn, just weeks after the Jammu & Kashmir government made a raft of announcements pertaining to the cases of encroachment on movable and immovable properties of Pandits.
In September, Jammu & Kashmir’s Lieutenant-Governor launched an online portal for them to submit complaints regarding distress sale and any information pertaining to trespassing. Till now, 5,000 out of a total of 7,659 such complaints have been resolved, with the government scrambling to remove encroachments in around 2,500 cases.
The government told Parliament in February that in the last five years, it has restored land belonging to nearly 610 Pandit migrants. Simultaneously, the government also announced that it has identified 19 locations in the Valley where it intends to build 6,000 flats for the transit accommodation as part of the overall policy to re-settle Pandits back in Kashmir.
Last year, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal announced that a transit camp will be constructed accommodating 336 Kashmiri Pandit families in the Khwaja Bagh area of Baramulla district.
In constructing other similar camps across the state, the government had to take steps that resulted in economic losses to locals. For instance, in Kulangam Bagh in the Kupwara district, where a transit camp is being built on 3 acres, the Jammu & Kashmir government green-lit the axing of 50 fruit-bearing walnut trees, with the promise of “40 per cent compensation to the affected persons.”
The Far-Reaching Effects of the Abrogation of Article 370
But as honourable as the state’s intentions are, a big number of these measures are concomitant to a larger policy that came as a result of the abrogation of Article 370 and Article 35-A of the Constitution.
Repealing these statutes terminates Jammu & Kashmir’s historically significant semi-autonomous status, while also permitting other Indian nationals to acquire land and residency rights in the former state. Last month, the government informed Parliament that 34 non-Jammu & Kashmir residents have bought land in the Valley since August 2019.
These policies, which were not legislated by elected lawmakers but railroaded by a Union government appointee, have generated a lot of resentment on the ground. Ownership of land and preservation of demographic composition is already a very sensitive topic in the Valley.
A political crackdown that led to a gradual sidelining of civil society and a section of political class in the Valley, who previously held good sway over public opinion, has only made the silence more conspicuous, and the fear, confusion, and reticence more entrenched. Asked if these policy actions may have played a role in aggravating the crises for Pandits, Tickoo says, “To some extent, yes.”
'Relatives in Jammu Make Fun of Me'
Nevertheless, the situation for Pandits living in the Valley continues to be fragile. On Monday, the Pandit employees in Baramulla submitted a memorandum to the district authorities appraising them of the threat letter. On Tuesday, militants fired at personnel of a security picket stationed outside houses of the Pandit community in the Herpora area of south Kashmir’s Shopian.
Back at his house in Chotigam, Bhat timidly leaves his home to buy groceries and closes the door behind him. Upon seeing Bhat, his Muslim neighbours walk up to him and inquire about his brother’s condition. He leans his head sideways, as if to convey both a sense of desperation and gratitude to God. “He is still in bed but recovering,” he says.
But Bhat himself is in a troubled state of mind. When this reporter nudged him, Bhat spoke of the regret of not having left Kashmir in the 1990s. “Our relatives in Jammu make fun of us,” he says. “They ask what we gained by deciding to stay. I think my parents made a terrible decision.”
(Shakir Mir is a freelance journalist who has reported for the Times Of India and The Wire, among other publications. He tweets at @shakirmir.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)