In the third episode of SearchKashmir video Dastangoi we look at “The Jagmohan Conspiracy” – the conspiracy theories around the Kashmiri Pandit exodus from Kashmir of 1990. And answer why Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave the valley.
More than a decade ago, when I was in college, I knew a guy who was great at abusing chemicals and equally great at using abusive language. As part of first year initiation rite in hostel, the guy would randomly pick any “junior” and start abusing him. He picked me a couple of times and it bothered me to no end. I had no understanding of the words he was using. I just assumed it was some sort of Punjabi slang. I knew these were abuses, I was familiar with some, but I didn’t know what exactly some of these words meant. I knew Dogri abuses, which I found quite similar to punjabi but some of the words the guy was using were too new for me to grasp. So one day, while he is in his abusive rant, I stop him and ask him to explain to me their meaning. I told him I am Kashmiri and barely know any word from my mother tongue that can truly be called an abuse. The guy was shocked and was kind enough to engage me in a great discussion on human-animal anatomy, the breakdown of filiation and kinship and the use of racial prejudice and bigotry. Over the years I picked up more words from other languages like Marathi and Bengali, yet Kashmiri remained out of reach. I now know that some of the Bengali abuses have remained unchanged since 11th century with some of the abuses recorded by Kashmiri poet of Kshemendra from the Bengali students who used to visit Kashmir. Yet, Kashmiri abuses remain a challenge for me. For the longest time, I thought Kashmiri language had no abuses, which of course is not true. So, I started from the basics. The use of anatomy was the easiest to figure. You can use them to get to question filiation of a person. It all comes down to the usual genital stuff common in all other languages and culture, throw in words for sister and mother. However, it is the prejudice and bigotry based abuses in Kashmiri that are the invisible cherry on the profanity cake of Kashmiri language.
Here’s a brief list of abuses meant for Pandits by Muslims in Kashmiri language [by the time you are through reading, probably we will have a bigger list or a list of abuses meant for Muslims by Pandits in Kashmiri language]
“Daal-e-Dadwas” [Bowl of Dal-lentils], a historical prerogative that Kashmiri Muslims use for Kashmiri Pandits….for vegetarian Kashmiri Pandits are perennially cowards who when scared would shit their pants easily, hence the lentils. If “nigger” is a derogatory term for a black in America, in Kashmir, for Kashmiri Pandit you would use “Dal Batta” (Lentil Pandit) or “Dal Gadwa”.
There’s an old saying among Kashmiri Muslims of certain kind:
Kann’e vassi Pouss Batte baneh neh dost
“You might skin a stone, but a Pandit will never be your friend”
[via Sualeh Keen ] The variation of it popular among Kashmiri Pandits of certain kind:
Lishyi vassyi poas Musalman banyi na doas
Lish is a nit, and poas is clothing/skin
You might skin a tiny nit, but a Muslim will never be your friend
Another saying probably a retort:
Batt buddi, ti methaan Musalman buddi, ti tethan
An old age brings sweetness to a Pandit but bitterness to a Muslim.
A popular traditional abusive saying meant for Kashmiri Pandit woman:
Battne dodye Mass
Panditani may you hair burn.
My grandmother suffered it back in 1990, a random taunt from a young kid while she was buying vegetables. Origins of the saying – can’t say – may be related to “Sati”. The complete saying goes like: Battne dodye Mass, ye kya kortham dal gadwas.
The “hair burning” saying is common in some Buddhist culture, in a positive way.
Another one of the sayings.
‘Battah miskeen, nah dunya tah nah din’.
The poor Hindu has neither the world nor religion.
This one seems like a variation of a Persian saying: Cashmiri, bi Piri ; na Lazzet, ne shiri.
The faithless Cashmirian affords neither taste nor flavour. [ref: Rascally Kashmiri ]
Opening lines of
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner
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An archive of anti-Kashmiri Pandit propaganda popular in Kashmir propagated by a certain intellectual class that directly befits from it.
Kashmir based magazine “Kashmir Narrator” has been trying to carry forward a discussion on the question of Kashmiri Pandit rehabilitation. The discussion is build around opinions sought and given by Kashmiris of the two communities and belonging to various cross section of society and ideological divide. The November 2016 issue had opinion from a lot of Pandits. I was among the people who voiced their opinion.
February 2017 issue carries the opinions of the majority community from valley. Among the opinions can be found some interesting dictats with the usual noise about “Kashmir Banega Palestine”, and among those dictats stands out, like a dagger in a bleeding heart, this neurotic piece by a government employee who passes himself off as a Historian.
It starts off innocently calling future Pandit habitation cancer and then without provocation goes on to explain how every single pandit can be a potential cancer for Tahreekis.
Which reminds me of this sincere letter that was published a local Kashmiri newspaper back in 1991. “thwart any attempt by Pandits to return to the valley. Pandits have been cancer and once this cancer has been removed it should not be allowed to reappear.”
The irony is that the cover of this Kashmir based magazine carries image of Geelani who wants Kashmir banega Pakistan while the back side of the magazine carries an advertisement for real estate in Gurgaon.
Some more opinions from the same issue of the magazine
When your limited exposure to cinema makes you too honest about your politics and propaganda. Bilal A Jan assisted Vidhu Vinod Chopra in making the first sleek masala thriller on Kashmir conflict, “Mission Kashmir” (2000) and has made documentaries financed by Public Service Broadcasting Trust of India.
According to him, it’s not a matter of where Kashmiri Pandits settle…infact Pandits need to learn to shut up. If you are not ready to be held hostage, stay out. At least learn something from the Sikhs of Kashmir. For your heart shall be judged.
When you are a media veteran… capable enough to put an extra spin to the old yarn.
Kashmiri Pandits of a certain older generation would recall Bashir Arif as someone associated with popular radio drama “Zoon Dub”. Not many would know him as an accused in sexual harassment case.
According to this brethren of pandits…Kashmiri Pandit exodus was manufactured in 1990 so that in 2020 kashmiri Pandits would be resettled in colonies to spite Kashmiri muslims and to create Israel. And yes, ask about custodian property…. Property belonging to Muslims which is still being kept safe even after 65 years of partition while nothing could be done to save the Kashmiri pandit property in last 27 years.
When you are a political expert and have to come up with something beyond Palestine simile…when you are aware of “native” claim of Kashmiri pandits…you come up with African American simile. Yes…go ahead…Imagine an America in which all the African Americans have been sent off to Africa. Or better still imagine all the Native American have been sent off from North America to South America. Imagine Native American asking for native settlements in North America and native right to self determination living in South America. Imagine a society run by KKK deciding all the things for them.
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I am going add some more notable exemplary specimen of conspiracy theorists and professional hatemongers from Kashmir.
Here’s how you review a book on Kashmiri Pandit experience in exile. The book in question: “A Long Dream of Home”. I know most of the contributors to this anthology, including the one who still stays in Kashmir. I was asked to be one of the contributors, somehow I couldn’t get myself to write about it.
So, here’s how you review. You don’t read the book (cause you are saving money), you just vomit all over it. All the accusations are usual that most Pandits are now used to. What stands out it the man who is making the claim, taking his timeout to spit bile on an Amazon review page.
This fellow, Abdul Majid Zargar, is a chartered accountant by profession. He is a regular contributor to Kashmir based dailies sticking to the old school Tahreeki line of thought. So far so good. The fellow however is also given a decent space by left journals like countercurrent.org and the well respected Economic and Political Weekly (EPW.in where I have also written in the past). At EPW he has co-authored letter with Anuradha Bhasin, the editor of Kashmir Times.
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Any ultranationalist movement needs a “parasitic” perennial villain. The fascists are and remain obsessed with parasites and creating a “clean” society in which no one will question their progrom. The language seldom betrays the emotion.
Below is a “sarcastic” response to Rahul Pandita’s book on Pandit exodus “Our Moon has blood clots” where the respected author compares Kashmiri Pandits who talk about their rights to intestinal parasites who just can’t stop scratching the ass.
The writer of the piece is editor of online newsite Kashmir Reader that was blocked temporarily in 2016  for advertising threats from Jihadi groups. This fellow gained acceptability and respect for he worked for Hindustan Times as an assistant editor and continues to write for them frequently.
[Update: 1 April 2017. The website has now taken down the “Worm” piece.
Instead, replaced with a link to a piece that is supposed to critique of Rahul Pandita’s book.
However, the original write up is still up as a Facebook note from Hilal Mir shared with friends . ]
Some more of educated bile from men who are supposed to be men of words:
Here are some comments to the original note.
A man from Kerala contextualized it to his liking…he linked it to the satyrical tradition of O. V. Vijayan, a man whose satire took on the high and mighty and not the invisible minority, not the “other” by the “self”. A Kashmiri Muslim version of Vijyan who writes about his own community’s brute majoritarianism and lampooning it, is yet to arrive and even if he existed, would have be in exile like the Kashmiri Pandit community.
Abir Bazaz, the filmmaker and professor at an American University, eggs him on. And in between likes a comment in which a random guy used the term “Daal-e-Dadwas” [Bowl of Dal-lentils], a historical prerogative that Kashmiri Muslims use for Kashmiri Pandits….for vegetarian Kashmiri Pandits are perennially cowards who when scared would shit their pants easily, hence the lentits. If “nigger” is a derogatory term for a black in America, in Kashmir, for Kashmiri Pandit you would use “Dal Batta” (Lentil Pandit) or “Dal Gadwa”.
Abir is referring to the kings “turd” of Vijayan but at the same time liking a comment in which Pandits are called turds.
A cartoon by Mir Suhail Ahmad Qadri for a local newspaper published on January 21, 2016. January 21 is date that most Kashmiri Pandits have fixed to remember their flight from Kashmir.
We see: The crying hoarse Pandit who exaggerates his suffering.
May be some more years and in Kashmir too we will have Holocaust Cartoon completion. Something that they already have in Iran.
When you are Muslim rights activist but pretend to be general all purpose human right activists, running an organisation in Srinagar with “Asian” or “Jammu” in it…the general bigotry just seeps though…
This is plain talking from Khurram Parvez and the cheering crowd joins in.
Essentially if any Kashmiri Pandit calls Hizul Mujahideen fanatics, in Kashmir, Pandits will be branded stupid fanatical agents.
Jehangir Ali is a reporter for Information Dept. of the J&K state and a general garden variety bigot who sometime also writes for Indian liberals online portals Quint etc.
Journalist Jahanamgir Jangur (verified twit) reporting if you haven’t been tested for “goodness” in last six months, please report to the nearest Lashkar center for the “Good Pandit” certificate. Failure to do so would mean you deserve what is coming.
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One of the oft repeated charge that Pandits were RAW agents.
This is Human rights activist (with mainland KP lineage), Nandita Haskar:
She was promoting her book  The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism (2015). While on one hand she likes to sell the idea that Islamic terrorism is an aberration in the Majority community, on the other hand, she claims Kashmiri Pandits were working for intelligence agencies. She does not even say that Majority community assumed that Kashmiri pandits were working for intelligence agencies hence there is a distrust between two, no, she claims “As there were a lot of Kashmiri pandits working for intelligence agencies”.
This a blatant approval of the excuse that is made of killing of KPs – they were agents.
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This is Peerzada Abdal Mahjoor, progeny of famous Kashmiri poet Mahjoor
It’s like progeny of Rabindranath Tagore runs a whatsapp group in which he shares fake news from 1947 and then blames muslims for all the troubles in India. See what is wrong with Kashmir.
So, like always it was Kashmiri Pandit conspiracy to have Sheikh arrested. Sheikh, of course, was blameless. And to think Communist Party of India also bought the Pandit propaganda back in 1953 and officially congratulated Nehru for thwarting Sheikh’s American plan (probably 1953 Iranian coup orchestrated by America-UK was still fresh in their minds). Cunning Pandits.
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This is Nyla Ali Khan, from lineage of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and author of “Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan” (2010)
If you are a KM woman and wear saree, someone may call you “daal battin”…which is a slur for KP woman. This expected in kashmir.. But, what is your response if you are also a Kashmiri academician on Kashmir conflict. You say, “Haha!”
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This is Irfan Wani, who one time was making news for hugging Kashmiri Pandits [Outlook], the media spinning usually story about bonhomie between the two communities.
Kashmiri ultra-nationalism thrives in a different way. In this whole debate about 35a, Kashmiris who would like to debate it have been cast as anti-national out to sell the greater nation of greatest Kashmir. Here’s a brain excerise: If America, a nation of immigrants, had a law like 35A that was discriminatory towards immigrants and immigrating women particularly, and if some American opposed the law…only ultra-nationalists would make it a case for test of nationalism. And not surprisingly it would have been these ultra nationalists who would be running and supporting armed militia.
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This one ironically from a book on Refugees
The Fleeing People of South Asia: Selections from Refugee Watch edited by Sibaji Pratim Basu (2008)
1. Legitimises the narrative that exodus was engineered by Jagmohan. No KP refugee is quoted on it. KM narrative is peddled.
2. The money grabbing pandit is remembered.
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[Image: An extract from a photobook prologued by Neerja Mattoo/Suraiya Abdullah Ali (of famous Abdullah clan). Kashmir, Jammu & Ladakh: The Trefoil Land (1989)]
Template for defending Sikandars of the world
1. Take the name of Harsha, not in vain
Begin with reminding people about “similar” violence from Hindu past. Doesn’t matter that the events are separated by a gap of 3-4 centuries. Doesn’t matter that the account for these destructions comes from Hindu sources. In which, more often than not, the actions of the temple destroying kings is regretted. Doesn’t matter that for his actions, Kalhana called Harsha a “Turk”. He had mercenary turks working in his army. His turk legacy, and his influence on art fashion of the era can be seen in Buddhist Alchi Frescos of Ladakh. But, ignore all that.
Brahmin Kalhana mentions that just like a bad poet steals material from other poets, a bad King, plunders other cities. Take this truth and apply it no where else.
Foul mouthed S’amkaravarman plundered the nearby Buddhist site of Parihaspora to build his new town. But, the same king conquered and subdued areas which are now part of the imaginary map of the greater Kashmir.
In the defense of these Hindu kings, you can’t say that temples were getting raided for material and political gain. Just mentions that Brahmins. Rest of the history, will fall in place automatically.
[A similar template can be applied to Mahmud of Ghazni too, and has been. Sadly, the nationalist Kashmiri writer has accepted that Ghazni was a motivated zealot. ]
2. Nice guy named Sikander (who, mind you, came much later).
Remind the reader how nice the fellow was. Scholar and patron of Sufis. Ignore what the historgraphic scholars of these Sufis wrote about him, or how they almost fought each other to claim as being the “influencers” of the king’s actions. Ignore the sources in which his actions are lauded. Don’t even wonder if there are works of any Sufi back then who criticised the action of the King. Was there a Musilm Kalhana in any of the Sufi orders?
Instead, remind them that since nice is not so often used with Sikander’s name, it is possible that it is true, that he was nice guy, or at least as nice as others, and there’s an ancient conspiracy at work to sully the name of Muslims, since forever, and ever, and ever. Only in extreme case mention that, it is possible that Sikander was possibly only 6 when he took over the throne. Temples are obviously destroyed. So, who did it?
3. The fanatic Brahmin
Remind the readers of the fanatic Brahmin convert Suha Bhatt. A neo-convert, a new convert, a bhatta on narcos, a fanatic. Forget that at that time there must have been hundreds of new converts. Where they fanatics likes new converts are supposed to be? Don’t ask why Suha was fanatic? What empowered him? Don’t ask if the missionaries asked him to think of himself as a Muslim Brahmin. It will all automatically somehow tie back to Harsha the fanatic. And, never, never ever, tell the reader that when Suha Bhatt went on his temple destroying spree, the name he chose was “Saif-Udeen”, the “Sword of Faith”. It was Saifudeen who was doing the destruction. However, during these acts only use the name Suha Bhatt.
4 . The Son
The glorious son. Could the son have been glorious, if the father was a fanatic? Tie it up to dad. Fruit has a bearing on a tree. Or, vice versa? You may mention his mother was afterall a Hindu, still buried among the stones. That’s Kashmiriyat. Don’t mention that the orthodoxy that supported the actions of Sikander and Saifudeen where always dragging Budshah down. That he was labeled kafir. That he too in his moment of violent query broke down a stone or two, what to do there was too much stone in Kashmir, and wood, he broke the wood of Sharda when the goddess won’t talk to him. But, no one blames him. It’s understandable. The historians and Kashmiris were always nice to him. That’s Kashmiriyat. And, that’s how you write history.
Honour to Kama, God of Desire, whose breath shipwrecks the flowers; by the immaterial, airy arrows which vanquish the three words, of Heaven and Earth and Hell! And honour also to Kali, Goddess of Terror! For all things come to the ineluctable chasm of her mouth, to be overwhelmed in nothing. This Triple world of ours seems only an imperceptible reflection on that stormy sea, or like a little vagabond carp within it. Already that mouth has swallowed so dreadful a duration of time that even the Ancients have no count of it; for the bold and careless lust of Kali cloaks itself in fraud against the unnumbered armies of those afflicted with a body!
~ ‘Samayamatrika’ of Kshemendra written during the reign of King Ananta, around A.D. 1050. [translation by E. Powys Mathers done in 1927]
Kabir’s 15th century sayings are a living phenomena in India languages. Everyone in North knows a Doha or tow. Did any of these sayings pass on to Kashmiri? Nothing much is know and linguistics seldom studied with a sense of wonder.
I recently came across these lines from Kabir in a song sung by Meghval community of Rajasthan.
“Pehle toh guruji main janmyaPeechhe bada bhai Dhoom dhaam sa pita re janmya Sabse peechhe maai Ber chalya mera bhai…“
O wise one, I was the first to be born
Then my elder brother
With great fanfare my father was born
In the end my mother
Time is slipping away…
[trans. via sayskabir]
As a kid I remember sitting down to pretend study for exams, daydreaming. My grandmother would say “Pad Pad gaya Pather, Likh likh gaya Chor”….Just realized it’s sufi kalam of Samad Mir ( (c.1893 – 1959)
