That is not saying we don’t have amidst us people whose lives migration has turned into one long trauma and who are passing through miserable times. But 15 years is too long a time for any situation to last and even misery and pain can lose their sting in the long run. Time may not heal completely but it does lead towards healing. A stage is reached when the victim tends to become immune to suffering and makes adjustments with the surroundings. Witness how we have now come to asking for ‘larger’ tenements, ‘two rooms instead of one,’ for those living in camps, ignoring that these same people lived in their own, palatial or humble, homes not too long ago with independent means of subsistence and deserve much more than life in a barrack.

That said, it is also a fact of life that sociologists take an overall view to evaluate any given society. When we say Americans or Europeans or any other society is rich, we go by the generality of their people rather than by hundreds and thousands of them who beg on their dirty streets or pass their days on doles and charities. Against that broad perspective, Kashmiri Pandits taken as a whole haven’t done badly considering the immensity of the blow that they received when forced out of Kashmir. With surprising fortitude they came to terms with reality and with commendable promptness started lifting themselves up by their bootstraps. Many displayed rather uncharacteristic boldness and took up vocations that the community looked down upon in earlier times. Who would, for instance, have taken up catering at a street corner, or any similar occupation? Yet KPs are now engaged in so many similar ventures, hawking wares here and there, and doing pretty well. Mainly our youngsters – and making good money.

Despite this rapid march towards total self reliance, there admittedly are people in the community who need support. Some KPs do receive the measly governmental dole, hardly enough to feed even a baby at the existing high cost of living, but their number is miniscule in comparison to the population of migrants. Considering the enormous loss they suffered by being forced out of their hearths and homes, what they now receive from a stingy government is no charity. Incidentally, the havoc that such doles cause to their moral fibre, and what is worse, to their psyche is itself being increasingly viewed as a matter of serious concern by the community.

Detractors of Kashmiri Pandits would wish the community to be down and out. Not only out of the valley but also down for ever. Though they have succeeded in throwing us out, the community’s youngsters have ensured that they fail to keep us down or push us back. In fact their very grit is held against the Kashmiri Pandits.

The proverbial silver lining of the dark cloud of migration is that most of our young people have embarked upon new vistas that they couldn’t even have dreamt of in earlier times and many have flowered into success stories. Instead of remaining confined to the hills of their native land, migration brought them face to face with a new panorama of myriad opportunities and avenues – and they lapped up the chance. Instead of hankering after petty jobs in derelict offices, Kashmiri Pandit youth has ventured into uncharted areas with a courage they rarely displayed back home. Indeed the horizon of each and every member of the community has broadened in one way or the other and barring unfortunate individuals, they have acquired a new self-confidence. Even with some negative impact if you consider how bizarre our wedding ceremonies now appear with rituals from all communities integrated into our simple lagan ceremony.

One major factor that helped our young people to quickly move towards self-reliance is that, after the initial shock subsided, they didn’t waste time in brooding over their fate. That would have been a disaster for the community whose hopes and future lies with only the young. It is they who have to ensure that our future is safe. But brooding wasn’t and can’t be abandoned altogether – it was left in the capable minds of the elderly aided by the more vocal young! Certainly, the situation that the KP community finds itself in calls for a great deal of ‘brooding’ but only along positive and constructive lines. While we don’t have to whine over our fate as migrants, and our young people don’t, the fact that we are fast becoming a totally self reliant community cannot detract us from the basic resolve to fight for justice and fair play.

One does not need a great deal of intelligence to foresee that the overall Kashmir scenario is changing so rapidly and decisively that the life we had lived there in the long past peaceful era will never return. Despite the occasional hurling of Kangris at each other by antagonistic groups, a great deal of tranquillity, with a modicum of harmony, was the hallmark of that era. These, with much else, fell a casualty to militancy and the Kashmir of yore died forever, never to resurrect again.

Pandits were a vital component of that Kashmir and naturally enjoyed a high degree of influence. To the ignorant it might have appeared rather disproportionate to their numbers but it certainly was no more than was commensurate with the historic contribution they had made to the totality of the Kashmir’s economy, progress and overall ethos. The much hyped Kashmiryat, which we took as our normal style of living, was possible only because of the tolerance, broad-mindedness and catholicity of Kashmiri Pandits who, along with the local Muslims, formed the whoop and wharf of that fabric.

Now a new Kashmir is emerging which is all set to shed much of these past values and ideas. In a rather convoluted sense, even their migration in 1989-90 was a contribution of sorts by Kashmri Pandits to the new fangled entity that we see unfolding – because with KPs gone, the new rulers don’t have to spare a thought for those who were the original residents of Kashmir but, through the onslaughts of outsiders, were reduced to a minority to live as second-class citizens. In present day Kashmir, fresh ideas are replacing traditional concepts and policies despite New Delhi’s ritualistic repetition that there will be no progress towards resolving the so-called Kashmir dispute till militancy is uprooted. A measure of how distant are the thought processes of New Delhi and Srinagar is the thinking of the local satraps in the state who now avidly talk of getting back the ‘boys’ who had gone to Pakistan held Kashmir for receiving military training so that they could fight Indian security forces and kill innocent civilians. To put an economic sheen on developing Kashmir’s links with Pakistan, even harebrained ideas like bringing gas from that country to Kashmir are floated. Whether one likes it or not, such adroit moves by Srinagar are not necessarily doomed to failure because New Delhi will hardly ever have the courage to examine them rationally, let alone negate them.

All in all, we have now reached a juncture when Kashmiri Pandits can fall back upon only one reliable support – themselves. Frankly, our collective voice is far too feeble to be heard, much less is it heeded. It is said that the wheel that creaks the most gets the grease – and KPs aren’t that wheel. We have little time and much less inclination to make noisy protests and marches, besides being shrewd enough to realise that governments keep promises only if forced to do so or if it is in its own interest. That makes it all the more imperative that KPs continue to develop their innate strength because the more self-reliant the community is, the more it can withstand future shocks that are bound to come.

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