Shamshad Kralawari
Sanjay Pandita’s Beyond Return: The Dispersed Identity of the Kashmiri Pandits is a poignant and necessary reckoning with the emotional, cultural, and political consequences of displacement. It captures with precision the fragmentation of a community once bound by shared trauma, now scattered across cities and continents, struggling to preserve a sense of self. But as someone who has lived through the same decades of siege, suspicion, and systemic neglect—though from the other side of the valley—I believe the narrative of displacement must be expanded. It must include those who stayed behind: the 10,000 Kashmiri Pandits who endured the Valley’s darkest winters, and the Kashmiri Muslims who bore the brunt of militarization, erasure, and abandonment.
Pandita’s essay rightly critiques the internal fragmentation of the Pandit community—the rival factions, the ego-driven organizations, the performative activism. He speaks of a community that has lost its cohesion, its clarity, and its cultural compass. The younger generation, raised in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, and abroad, no longer sees Kashmir as home but as a framed photograph, a mythic tale, a scenic backdrop. The emotional umbilical cord has frayed—not out of apathy, but from the compulsions of survival. Pandita’s diagnosis is sharp: the community is melting into the Indian mainstream—economically thriving, socially adaptive, but culturally adrift.
But this disunity is mirrored in the broader Kashmiri landscape. Those who remained—both Pandit and Muslim—were not spared. They faced the psychosis of conflict, the choking of opportunity, and the slow erosion of dignity. The government, from Delhi to Srinagar, failed not just in preventing displacement, but in imagining its consequences. The PM package under Manmohan Singh may have offered a lifeline to some, but it also deepened the divide between those compensated and those forgotten. Those who followed the script of displacement were handed peanuts. Those who kept the flag fluttering—loyal to the soil, even after the rebellion was crushed—were sliced by suspicion and silence.
Kashmir and Kashmiris became a currency for political trading. The displaced were blamed, the dispossessed ignored, and the real custodians—those with no say in 1990 and none today—were left voiceless. The pressure cooker, as I often say, is in the kitchen of elites who know when to blow the lid and when to cool it. The rest of us are left to inhale the steam.
I speak as one of them. A displaced soul who chose not to register as a migrant—not out of denial, but out of conviction. My properties were vandalized, grabbed. But the snow-covered view of my homeland is a wealth more valuable than anything I lost while serving my country. When my colleague B.N. Betab once asked why I hadn’t registered to secure my children’s future, I replied: “The values they would lose cannot be compensated. The trust lost cannot be regained easily.”
That trust is now a casualty. Recently, I gave a lift to a young KP couple in Srinagar. They told me their elders were promised a three-month exile—only to be abandoned in the desert. Today, social media blames and marginalizes them. Mental torture replaces empathy. Gen X Pandits see Kashmiris as grabbers. Gen X Muslims see Pandits as intruders. The emotional bond is severed. Kashmir has become a postcard, a picnic spot, a political slogan.
Pandita’s essay mourns the absence of a cohesive cultural council, a shared platform, or a roadmap for reconciliation. He calls for a digital archive, a mentorship platform, and a redefinition of return—not as physical relocation, but as cultural revival. I echo that call, but I believe it must go further. It must include the stories of those who stayed, who suffered, who resisted erasure without compensation or recognition. It must honor the Kashmiri Muslims who lived through the same decades of siege, suspicion, and systemic neglect—who watched their homeland become a theatre of fear, their identity reduced to a stereotype, their loyalty punished.
The 1990s were not a moment of selective trauma. They were a battlefield where survival itself became resistance. While many Pandits left—some nudged by policy, others by fear or foresight—those who remained faced no lesser agony. The field was choked, opportunities shrunk, and the psychosis of conflict consumed the innocent. The government’s failure was not just in its inability to prevent displacement—it was in its refusal to imagine the consequences.
What is needed now is not nostalgia or blame, but a common platform. A space where those who stayed and those who left can co-author a sustainable future. Where the past is acknowledged but not weaponized. Where return is not a picnic, but a possibility rooted in dignity and trust.
We must stop digging into the past and start building a sustainable future. We must show our children that we belong to this paradise—not as tourists, not as tokens, but as co-authors of its continuity. The younger generations of both communities are emotionally estranged. Gen X Pandits see Kashmiris as grabbers. Gen X Muslims see Pandits as intruders. The emotional bond is severed. The rupture is not just political—it is emotional, cultural, and civilizational.
Pandita’s call for cultural preservation must be expanded. A digital archive must house not just the pain of exile, but the resilience of rootedness. A mentorship platform must connect not just Pandits across generations, but Kashmiris across communities. A central, apolitical cultural body must be established—not to serve political interests, but to preserve literature, art, language, and collective memory.
Epilogue: From Archival Memory to Living Soil
We must admit, with sorrow and clarity, that traditional wealth—the sacred hymns, the oral rituals, the quiet wisdom of elders—is losing its shine before the glare of worldly pleasures. Today, even the most revered verses are confined to audio and video recordings, summoned only during sorrowful farewells or celebratory unions. The rest has become history—not lived, but archived.
And with the gradual exit of this elder class, these memories too will slip into the realm of documentation, no longer central to the life of Kashmiri Pandits. What was once breath and rhythm will become file and footage.
Yet there remains a way to reconnect with the soil—not through political partnerships or state-sponsored packages, but through human bridges. Let us reconcile with our erstwhile neighbors, leaving behind grudges that have calcified over decades. Let those who are well-settled—whether abroad or within the country—support this effort without uprooting their lives. And let those who have been displaced for no fault of their own be encouraged to return, not as guests or tourists, but as sons and daughters of Kashmir.
This return must be rooted in divine faith, not political calculation. For we have all lived under the point-blank range of multiple guns. Our dwellings must not become vacation hangings, but homes of continuity. People-to-people contact, not policy-to-policy negotiation, will tie us together again. Because we are both sufferers of uncommitted sins—victims of a history we did not write.
If there can be no Budshah to unify us, let there be Kashap Bandhus—those who carry the spirit of stewardship, healing, and cultural reclamation. Let them play their role.
Because if we do not tell our story—together—someone else will. And they will not tell it with our voice.
Shamshad Kralawari is a poet, literary critic, and public broadcaster ,educator whose work bridges Kashmiri memory, ethical verse, and civic reform. Through editorial activism and dialogic teaching, he challenges symbolic appropriation and advocates for cultural stewardship.
