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book review
A Moon of Many Shades
Anur adha Bhasin Jamwal
Our Moon has Blood Clots: The Exodus of theKashmiri PanditsbyRahul Pandita(Noida: RandomHouse India), 2013; pp 258, Rs 499.
George Bernard Shaw wrote, All
autobiographies are lies. There
is no denying the truth of this
though t here may be no reason to doubt
the integrity of a person who pens his or
her own story. Memories are tricky
things to write down because they are
not all the same they are good, bad, or
insignifi cant and depend on ones per-
ception. Nor do they uniformly dwell in
the mind. The worst memories stick
w ith us, while the nice ones alwa ys seem
to slip t hrough our fi ngers, w rites
Rachel Vincent in My Soul t o Save. In
striking contrast, Gabriel Garca Mr-
quez says in Love in the Time of Cholera,
He wa s still too young to know that the
hearts memory eliminates the bad and
magnifi es the good, and that tha nks to
this a rtifi ce we ma nage to endure the
burden of the past. Whatever the case,
memory compartments in every mind
fi lter out some part a nd preserve the restfor posterity, often making autobiogra-
phies and memoirs repositories of half
truths. How much of an authors memo-
ry is part of a manuscript or how much
of it is a pa rt of the author himself?
No wonder then that Our Moon has
Blood Clots, a memoir of Kashmir of the
1990s by journalist-turned-author Rahul
Pandita , ha s become a subject of contro-
versy. Kashmir is one of the most com-
plex regions in the world, not just be-
cause of a rmed confl ict and being a nu-
clear fl ashpoint. It is a lso a region t hat
has multiple claima nts a nd multiple his-
torical nar rat ives the of fi cial na rra-
tives of India and Pa kista n, the vary ing
and competing narratives of communi-
ties and ethnic groups from areas other
tha n the Kashmir Valley, and t he contra-
dictory narratives of Kashmiri Muslims
and Kashmiri Pandits, especially in the
last tw o decades.
The majority of Pandits fled the Valleyin the 1990s and ever since everything
about their fl ight ha s been a bone of
academic contention from their num-
bers to the reasons they fl ed. It is not un-
common to hear Kashmiri Muslims con-
cluding that the Pandits suddenly fled
one day when militancy began, often
holding former Jammu and Kashmir
Governor Jagmohan responsible for the
exodus. The Pandits vehemently chal-
lenge this and instead cite an atmos-
phere of xenophobia open threats, se-
lective killings, and fear tha t triggered
the fl ight in ba tches, the fi rst one on 19
Ja nuary 1990. The popular na rrat ives
located within these black and white ex-
tremes do not match nor sound very
reasonable. They, however, are histori-
cally situated aga inst the background ofharmonious relations between the two
communit ies before the 1980s and to
some extent th rough the 1980s as well.
At One Extre me
Rahul Pa nditas book more or less adopts
one of the simplifi ed extremes, offering
hand-picked memories that are bitter
but undenia ble. The other problem w ith
the book is that it tends to locate the in-
cidents of 1989-90 w ithin a history that
is sifted out to contextua lise his sense of
collective victimhood. The history is told
without references and forms a continu-
um of incidents of victimisation as if
there were no intervening period be-
tween 1947 and 19 J anuary 1990, t he
day of the fi rst mass exodus, and March
1990, w hen he left the Valley w ith his
family. Historical events, particularly
the events of 1947 in Bara mulla, a re cru-
cial to understanding the fear psychosis
of the Pandits, though the Pa ndits werenot the only ones killed by the armed
Pathan tribals nuns in Baramulla
church, and Sikhs and Muslims were
also victims. The manner in which this
victimisation is magnifi ed, especially by
citing incidents in Muzaffarabad, where
there were only a minuscule number of
Pandits who were targeted along withmany more other Hindus and Sikhs,
seems to suggest the author is desper-
ately looking for every bit of evidence to
show Kashmiri Pandits have been hard
done by. Though this makes for an emo-
tive narra tive, it does not lend much au-
thenticity to the claims of persecution of
Kashmiri Pa ndits.
Pandita makes a similar mistake
while writing about the painful death of
his cousin Ravi at the hands of militants
in Gool, an area in the Jammu region,
without adding the sub-context of the
selective nature of killings in the hilly
area s of Ja mmu in the 1990s. Ravi and
another person were taken out of a bus
because they were Hindus and not
because of their ethnicity and brutally
done to death. Though this gory death
forms an important part of the narra-
tive, the lack of the sub-context leaves
the memoir open to cha llenge.
The most powerful part of the narra-tive concerns the days of fear Pandita
spends as a 14-year old in the winter of
1990, a long w ith some incidents preced-
ing it, which contextualise his sense of
fear, shock, and horror. But why does
this sense of fear and the exodus that it
triggered remain a t odds w ith the popu-
lar narrative of Kashmiri Muslims? The
writer cannot be faulted for the isolated
memories of the two communities of
those very chaotic times when access to
real information was limited because of
the sudden turn of events and the impo-
sition of a curfew, which leaves only
sketchy deta ils in newspaper archives to
grapple w ith.
The Jagm ohan Fac t o r
To understa nd t he exodus, the days pre-
ceding and follow ing 19 Ja nuary 1990
are crucial markers. A right-wing Kash-
miri Pandit organisation, Panun Kash-
mir, observes the day as Holocaust Day.For Kashmiri Muslims too 19 January
was a turning point, not particularly
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because of the fl ight of the Pandits and
other minorities that eventually robbed
the Valley of its secular character, but
more for the curfews and shocking mas-
sacres by the security forces that fol-
lowed. Thus, for both the day is an im-
portant part of collective memory for
entirely different reasons. The day alsomarked Jagmohan taking over as gover-
nor of the state, which had suddenly
been placed under presidents rule. The
move had probably been in the making as
heightened militancy between September
and December 1989 saw New Delhi send-
ing in reinforcements of armed troops.
The state government collapsed by the
end of December and t he Valley had been
under a strict and unprecedented cur-
few for days when Ja gmohan a rrived.
A large chunk of Pandits left the Val-
ley on the night of 19 Ja nuary amid
strict curfew many of them on buses of
the government-controlled state road
transport corporation. On 20 January,
house-to-house searches, raids, cordons,
and random arrests began in many
areas of Srinagar, particularly in Muslim-
majority ones, with allegations of harass-
ment and other atrocities. Caught bet-
ween the devil and the deep sea, people
began pouring into the streets in protest,violating prohibitory orders. Street pro-
tests with slogans of azadiand religious
symbols became a regular feature. And
so did massacres on the streets, be-
ginning w ith Gaw Kadal on the morning
of 21 Ja nuary, which left at least 35 dead
and hundreds injured, many of whom
succumbed to their injuries later.1 The
Alamgari Bazaar massacre followed on
22 Ja nuary and Handw ara on 25 Ja nuary.
Did Ja gmoha n engineer t he fl ight of
the Pa ndits? Whether he did or not, Ja g-
mohan did see the Kashmir problem as a
Muslim versus Hindu one, where Mus-
lims were the perpetrators and Hindus
the victims. In an interview to Currentin
May 1990, Ja gmoha n stated,
Every Muslim in Kashmir is a militant to-
day. All of them are for secession from In-
dia. I am scuttling Srinagar Doordarshans
programmes because everyone there is a
militant ... The bullet is the only solution
for Kashmir. Unless the militants are fully
wiped out, normalcy cant return to the Valley.Jagmohan fi rst landed in Jammu to
take over as the governor before he left
for Srinaga r on 19 Ja nuary. In Jammu,
he shared his idea of evacuating Kash-
miri Pandits with a cross-section of in-
tellectuals a nd senior journa lists he met
in closed-door meetings. The idea was
that this would make it easier to deal
with the militants, even though he was
warned against the wisdom of sucha move.2
That t housands of Pand its fled at the
same time was odd, especially because
there had been no known Pandit killing
close to tha t dat e. However, this is not to
say that t he Pand its foolishly picked up a
suitcase each and suddenly left to suit
the designs of a short-sighted ruler. Fear,
panic and distress among the Pandits
had been on the rise since militancy
began. Already a minority in the Valley,
they had reasons to look at every call
for a zad i with suspicion. Much of their
sense of security ca me from Indian a rmy
and their identity as Indian citizens.
That was cha llenged by gun-toting Mus-
lim youth, who returned after training
from across the border and opposed any-
thing Indian. Fear also arose because a
number of Pandits had been killed and
the aza di movement began to w ear a re-
ligious cloak through the use of mosques
and Islamic slogans.
Slogan s an d Beyond
It is diffi cult to assume tha t there w as a
uniformity to the slogans that rend the
air across the Valley. Islamic sloga ns had
been an undeniable part of Kashmirs
history even before 1989. But when the
armed insurgency began Ham kya
chahte hain Azadi very conveniently
blended with Azadi ka matlab kya La
elaha el-allah as also with Naara-e-
Tadbeer Al lah o Akbar and Jeeve Jeeve
Pakistan. Many Kashmiri Muslims have
contested a slogan Pandita mentions
(Assi gacchi panunuy Pakistan, batav
rostuy, bataenein saan) deeming it a
creation of t he Pandit imaginat ion.3 The
controversy is not new to this book.
What is the true picture?
After years of grappling with this co-
nundrum of slogans, in 2008 I began to
understa nd the multilayered complexity
of such sloga ns on the memory of people.I was in Srinagar when the Amarnath
land row began and on 27 June 2008,
af ter the Friday prayers, people bega n to
pour out of mosques raising azadi slo-
gans and heading for Lal Chowk. There
were hundreds and thousands of people,
coming in big a nd small groups from all
directions and converging on Lal Chowk
where I was with a small contingent of
local and visiting journalists. Most ofthem chanted azadi slogans, some pep-
pered it w ith religion, and there wa s one
group, comprising mainly boys aged
nine to 16, who bega n dancing and clap-
ping Jeeve Jeeve Pakistan and Naara
e-tadbeer Allah o Akbar when they saw
us. Many of my journalist colleagues
sensed that the slogans had been pro-
voked by my presence and advised me to
leave. That day it dawned on me that
even one slogan was enough to create
panic and an unforgettably unpleasant
memory. Some Kashmiri Muslims do ad-
mit the slogan that Pandita mentions
was used, but maintain that it was not
really a pa rt of t he popular d iscourse it
may ha ve been used by a few odd people
in some places. Strange are the effects
of some incidents and events and the
different ways they play on the memory
of people. A slogan that became deeply
embedded in the hearts of one comm-
unity because of the fear it evokedwas not even noticed all that much by
the other.
As for the killings that lie at the core
of the fear psychosis of the Pandits,
there is no empirical evidence to sug-
gest that there were selective killings
on the basis of community.4 According
to research by the Strategic Foresight
Group, 29 Muslims were killed in 1988 in
militancy-related violence across Jammu
and Kashmir. There were no Hindu kill-
ings. In 1989 and 1990, six and 177 Hin-
dus respectively were killed, against 73
and 679 Muslims and six Sikhs. The
number of slain Hindus included non-
Kashmiri Pandits of the Valley and
from parts of Jammu. Yet, given that
the proportion of Pa ndits in t he Valley
was less tha n 5%, t his may ha ve been a
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disproportionately high number and a
cause for worry. Besides, one cannot rule
out that some Kashmiri Pandits were
killed for purely communal or at least
personal, reasons.
I ssues Over looked
The problem of Panditas book is that itis unable to offer a larger picture, and
that it is contextualised in fragments of
historical nar rat ives he chooses to weave
into an uninterrupted sequence of
events, without interpolating anything
that would mitigate the bitterness of be-
ing betrayed as a community. His own
memory blends into collective memory
and unreferenced historical events with
so much ease that it is diffi cult for some-
one unfamiliar with Kashmir to sift
through t hem. He recalls an India versus
West Indies cricket ma tch of 1983 and
his anger at how the crowds reacted, not
to mention a taunt of the Muslim milk-
man t he next day. This was w hen he was
only seven. It is surely ra re to reca ll feel-
ings of identity and anger one had at
that age w ith any precision. How much
of it is his ow n memory?
However, it would not do to t rash the
book. It is important because it offers a
very interesting insight into how the
Pandits found themselves cornered in
Ja nuar y 1990, of the unea se they lived
with and endured, and of the insecurities,
played up by frenzied slogans, that be-
came a pa rt of their psyche. One can un-derstand the horror Pandita felt on
overhearing a conversation about dis-
tributing the houses of Pand its that took
place among Muslim teenagers he
played with in his locality. But one
would have liked to know more about
his relationship with these boys. One
would also have liked to know how he
and his family coped between January
and March 1990 and t heir interactions
w ith Muslim friends and a cquainta nces.
What sense did they make of the mas-
sacres in January 1990 in which their
Muslim counterparts were killed, even
if such incidents paled into insignifi -
cance before their own deep sense of
fear and isolation? By skirting these,
Pandita leads us to believe that he has
located the story of Kashmiri Pandits in
a simplifi ed context of Pandit v ictim
and Muslim perpetrator. Even a bomb
blast on a busy Srinagar road ha s a Pan-
dit victim, but there is no mention of
any Muslim killed by either the mili-
tants or the security forces.
There is an interesting subtext of cop-
ing in Jammu a fter the exodus, where he
briefly hints at being innocently temptedto join a Rashtriya Swaya msevak Sangh
(RSS) shakha(branch). One would have
liked to know if people he knew did so.
Aga in, one w ould have liked his story to
go beyond the simple us and them to
describe the role of Kashmiri Pandits in
Jammus culture, which is very cosmo-
politan and represents the assimilation
of many streams. This could have
offered us greater insights into why a
sense of isolation and alienat ion pervad-
ed. Had he talked about these multi-
layered complexities or even offered
subtle glimpses of them, it would not in
any way have diluted the narrative of
the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits. It
would only have lent much more credi-
bility a nd authent icity to t he memoir.
Any memoir, a t t he end of the day, is a
birds-eye view. But you get a feeling that
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Pandita chooses to see only one half of
the sky and the life beneath it. He sees
his moon has blood clots, painful and
real, but does not catch a glimpse of the
other shades of the sa me moon.
Anuradha Bhasin Jamw al (anusaba@gmail.
com) is Executive Editor, Kashmir Times, anda huma n rights activist based in Ja mmu and
Kashmir.
Not es
1 The offi cial and unofficia l fig ures of the Gaw
Kadal massacre are contested, but 50 to 80
people died when Central Reserve Police Force
(CRPF) personnel sprayed bullets on an un-
armed procession crossing a bridge.
2 Balraj Puri in Kashmir: Towards Insurgency
points out that Jagmohan encouraged the
flight of many Pandit leaders and was not very
interested in efforts to restore intercommunityunderstanding and confidence.
3 The controversial slogan loosely tra nslates as
We are going to be with our ow n Pakistan, t hePandit men can go, well take their womenalong.
4 Pankaj Mishra w rites in Kashmi r: The UnendingWar, The Kashmiri Pandits formed a kind ofelite in the Valley; they had a la rge presence inthe bureaucracy, both in the Valley a nd in Del-hi, where government policy on Kashmir wasoften dictated by the fear s and concerns of thistiny minority. Their connections with India
and their relative affluence made them highlyvisible targets during the fi rst few months ofthe insurgency in 1990.