The Kashmir Files Opens Wounds That Never Healed — A Next-Gen Kashmiri Pandit Story

Abandoned Kashmiri Pandit houses Kashmir's Naidimarg | File Photo: Getty

New Delhi: Shiva is playing cricket with his buddy Abdul as the commentary of an India Vs Pakistan cricket match runs in the background. He shouts in joy, “Sachin, Sachin". Just then, some people come and start beating him up. The men, their eyes filled with hate, call him an “Indian dog”. But Abdul comes to his rescue, and they both run away from the place.

That's the starting sequence of the film, The Kashmir Files.

The scene took me back to the many stories that I have heard from my family. How, in 1989, when my elder cousins, who at that time were in their teens, would go to play cricket and their "friends" around them would start shouting slogans of “Pakistan zindabad". It was the beginning of a nightmare that never ended for my community.

Yes, I am a Kashmiri Pandit.

And Shiva was just any Kashmiri Pandit boy who used to play cricket in the gullies of Kashmir. His is that long-forgotten face of a Kashmiri Pandit in pheran who wore an “Om” locket around his neck. 

The Kashmir Files is filled with anecdotes and stories that I had heard while growing up as a Kashmiri Pandit in exile. At school, I never used to have a sense of belonging. I knew that I am a Kashmiri Pandit, but what did that mean? I had no idea.

Vivek Agnihotri’s film is a story about a young Kashmiri Pandit youth, Krishna, who visits the Valley for the first time after 32 years of the 1990 exodus. The estrangement highlighted between Krishna and his own culture is true in so many ways.  

A non-Kashmiri family cooks a Kashmiri meal for him, which he has no clue about. Among the dishes served, one is Nadir Yakhini, made with lotus stem and yoghurt. Krishna has been living in exile with a psychologically disturbed grandfather who was suffering from dementia.

Primo Levi states in Moments of Reprieve, one of his great books on the Jewish Holocaust: “Well, it has been observed by psychologists that the survivors of traumatic events are divided into two well-defined groups: those who repress their past en bloc, and those whose memory of the offense persists, as though carved in stone, prevailing over all previous or subsequent experiences. Now, not by choice but by nature, I belong to the second group.”  

Like Levi, Pushkar Nath (Krishna’s Grandfather played by Anupam Kher) also belongs to the second group. For around 32 years, he has been struggling with the traumatic experiences of what happened with him and his family back in Kashmir. Throughout the film, he can be seen roaming with a placard saying “Abrogate Article 370”. A silent protest. His coping mechanism was to let the world know about the horrific events that his community endured in 1990.

Pushkar Nath is one of us. He reminded me of an elderly uncle who still lives in Muthi Camp at Bhuta Nagar in Jammu. Everyone around calls him “Mout (mad)". He speaks to people who are not visible to us, he sees them. They are always there in his mind. 

From the one-BHK quarter in Block F, where my mother lives, I used to watch him from my window and always wondered why he was like like that. But I never mustered the courage to go to him and ask: “Mahara kya osui gomut czhe sitth? (Uncle, what had happened to you?)." Maybe, because I was scared that what he will say will shock me, and haunt me forever.

After watching the film, I remembered my maternal grandfather 'Dadi Maara'. He used to tell me about every moment of those scary days — how they were hunted down one after the other on the roads, and inside their houses; how nobody came to their rescue; how they became refugees in their own country; how they suffered in the early years of exile in the summer heat of Jammu.

Jammu, in my memory, has become a place that embodies the loss Kashmiri Pandits suffered. Living in the camp constantly reminds them of the homes they lost, the honour they lost, and the dignity they lost. 

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