Hindustan Times
A stranger friend
Each time Kashmir is on the boil, my mind goes back to the eighties, when the problem had just begun. I don’t remember the year but Jagmohan had just taken over as Jammu and Kashmir Governor and I was assigned to go to Jammu and interview him on his perception on a state where trouble was brewing.
I reached Jammu only to be told that due to an emergency situation Mr Jagmohan had to fly to Srinagar and if I chose I could follow him there. Ofcourse I would, I said to myself and re-boarded the flight which had brought me from Delhi given that it was a hopping flight Delhi-Jammu-Srinagar with a 15 minute halt at Jammu: enough time for me to re-board. With the Governor’s office organizing things for me, I was not stuck with unnecessary formalities.
On board I had a middle aged gentleman sitting beside me. Minutes after we took off, he asked: Do you know how many people are there in this plane? Actually, I didn’t and at that point in time it didn’t matter. What did was the fact that I had a job to do and was on my way to do it. He continued: “Only two: you and I.”
Surprised at what he was saying I turned around to find an empty aircraft. Yes there were just the two of us: “Why” my co passenger continued “ are you travelling to jahanum?” (Hell). Well, I mumbled, it was for a story for my newspaper. He nodded his head in disbelief as if to say that where people were dying and there was blood on the streets all that we journalists could think of was a story.
The flight from Jammu to Srinagar took barely 20 minutes: less than the travelling time from Governor’s House to the Srinagar airport. Consequently when we reached the airport terminal there was no one to fetch me. All that I could see were armed men in khakhis. Outside there was one taxi: only one and that too whose driver was in a hurry to leave. My co-passenger spoke to him in Kashmiri and settled that he drive him to his destination. He then turned to me and said that it was unsafe for me to wait alone because once the taxi left I would have no means to go to the city which in any case was burning. Those not being the days of cell phones, I figured that once he left as did the solo taxi I would be stuck in case no one from the Governor’s house came to fetch me. I was only presuming that someone would but in absence of any communication from Mr Jagmohan I really was unsure. By then the gravity of the situation had begun to dawn on me.
I opted for the stranger, a Kashmiri gentleman who said he was a professor and was returning home because his family had made a panic call to him in Delhi given that the situation in Srinagar was volatile.
In any case he gave me little time to think because he was in a hurry to leave the ghost-like airport as also the taxi driver who understandably put his life above his daily earnings.
We hopped on and drove a few kilometres when we spotted 100-odd people shouting slogans and marching to I don’t know where. Some carried placards. The front-rankers were women, clad in phirens, the Kashmiri knee high gown which is loose and flowing. Fortunately for me I was also wearing a phiren, a dress I find very appropriate and snug for winter.
The driver stopped, ordered us out, threw our respective suitcases on the street, turned and sped away: “Mingle with the crowd” my stranger friend hushed.
“Pretend to be one of them. Don’t speak, just raise your hand when they shout slogans and cover your face.” I did as I was told because I sensed danger, the fear of being found out and lynched. So I quietly followed my friend’s sign language, his first diktat being that I rub off the bindi (vermillion) on my forehead. Understandable given that it distinguished me as a Hindu and a non Muslim among the majority of protesting Muslims. I did just that. The women walking beside me were too busy shouting slogans to notice that a stranger had crept in as part of their group seeking azadi (freedom). My phiren saved me.
I don’t know how many kilometres we walked but at one point my stranger friend swung me away, pushed me to a nearby bush and commanded that I stay still: not even breathe if I could help it. I sat there for I don’t know how long but it was till the sound of slogans receded. Suddenly I was pulled out, made to scale a wall and jump on to the other side, my stranger friend goading me to hurry up.
I don’t know where I was being led: to safety or to death. I dared not ask questions so I just did as I was told. Again I don’t know how long it took but it was sometime before we saw a row of houses and were pushed inside one: three women, who looked like Death let us in, all eyes on me. They hugged my stranger friend and sobbed inconsolably. They were his family and had, they told him in their native language, spent a long, torturous night to the sound of gun shots. Once again I did not know what was happening, a bit puzzled about whether I was on enemy turf. I was offered kahwa (kashmiri tea) which I sipped nervously. I didn’t know the plans my stranger friend had for me or how he intended to get me out of there, if at all he did. The women, however, were very comforting and told me how they had braved the gunshots, some being as close as in their garden, right outside the room where I sipped kahwa.
Theirs was a house with a telephone which was not working, like most phone lines in the area. There was, thus, no means to contact the Governor’s house and inform them of my whereabouts.
“Maybe they will find you because I left my address with the khakhi man” said my stranger friend, much to my relief. Sure enough they did though after several hours because entry into that area was not possible and they chose to be discreet lest they jeopardise my friend’s security.
It was late in the afternoon that I was bundled up in a car and whisked away. It was not an official vehicle lest it attracted attention. Enroute we were stopped by mobs and stone pelters who demanded the car be searched. At this point, my escort said: “Dactar, dactar” (Doctor,doctor). They peeped in and asked: “Dactar?”. I nodded and they allowed us to drive off. Relieved to reach Raj Bhawan, where I was staying as Mr Jagmohan’s guest, I sensed how bad the situation was. Srinagar then, where I spent a week, was a ghost town, very different from the time when the family spent the summer there.
There were no people, only security forces. Either there was curfew or firing. I managed to meet some young people, a handful who parroted rehearsed lines. Jagmohan was in those days a troubled man. Also one who was determined to crack the whip. Ofcourse there were political problems and issues which advocated a wait and watch policy against the shoot and kill one.
This, Jagmohan then forewarned, is just the beginning. Those in the thick of things goaded the government to nip the problem in the bud. But the Government opted for a policy of restraint. Politicians we spoke to often gave the Punjab example: “Punjab was burning” a minister once told me.
“Now it is all quiet and back to normal. The same will be the case in Kashmir”. When I drew his attention to the fact that they were two different situations he merely scoffed. He saw no logic in my argument that Punjab was ignited because of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s mistake of letting the army lay siege on the Golden Temple and thus irreparably alienate the Sikhs: our very own people. Unlike Kashmir where the natives were driven out and those across the border were infiltrating it and laying siege: neither our own people, neither native Kashmiris but those who are trained and paid by Pakistan to unleash terror.
Today the situation is undeniably out of control. It is pointless to blame one single source: the politicians, the state or the Centre. None can be absolved because they did not take hard decisions when time was ripe. It was a policy of procrastination which did them in. I am not, even for a moment, suggesting that people should have been gunned down indiscriminately but I am surely saying that timely decisions however hard would have been in order. Now it is a bit late to suggest solutions because the way things are we can only combat a divisive game-plan being masterminded in Pakistan. This brings me to my basic point: Deal firmly with a no holds barred situation with Pakistan and Kashmir will fall in place.
(14 votes, average: 4.21 out of 5)
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Naveen Kumar Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 2:26 am
Thats the pity that you had to remove your bindi to save yourself. Imagine how Kashmiri Pandits and other hindus in J & K are going to live with these Islamic fanatics.
[Reply]
Rajeev Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 2:51 am
Still these seculars call concerned hindus COMMUNAL.
[Reply]
Sam Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 4:50 am
Why is there no Facebook group to protest the atrocities committed by izlamic thugs drunk on islamism.
those thugs hate hindus and secularism and everything India stands for..
Rajeev Reply:
August 11th, 2010 at 6:10 am
Sam,
Even Gandhi said ‘Muslims are bullys and hindus are coward’.
We will be s*cr*ewed by muslims and muslim fearing hindus for centuries to come.
Just look at the map of south asia and south east asia and look at past 1000 years of religous history..Hinduism has shrunk continuously from west and east. Now it is on verge of shrinking in India.
I want hindus to suffer because they deserve to suffer..No one respects weakness that we hindus are master at.