Harsh Gupta | From editor’s desk | 18 September, 1989 | 21 January, 2025 | I was moving as a pedestrian on Bemina-Baramulla Road (Kashmir) with an admission letter of a medical college named Jhelum Valley Medical College (now affiliated with the prestigious Soura Institute of Medical Sciences). The college was situated on Bemina-Baramulla Road. Walking with curiosity, enthusiasm and anxiety putting on a light yellow coloured sweater on my shoulder. That was the fashion of the day. Soon the cold breeze took over the fashion and I meekly put on the sweater.
I reached the college. The whole campus was looking like some bollywood set erected in the beautiful vale of Kashmir. When I entered college somehow I found the atmosphere colder than the cold breeze. There was some hostility in the air. A bearded guy ( he was looking like anybody but a medico ) appeared from nowhere and asked me my name. I told him my first name – Harsh. His reply, “Harsh – Hindu? Jummu? (Jammu)”. I was stunned. Never in our school life had we ever discussed hindus and muslims though there were muslims and other communities, most of them were friends and they still are. He asked me to accompany him to the canteen area where I could guess ragging was going on (it was not illegal then). My Jammu classmates were already inside. The first question was – “What’s the time by your watch?”. I told them the time. A tight slap came across from a senior. On asking the reason it was told this is Pakistan and not India, change your time. He again asked the same question. My reply was the same. Again a chap got up to hit me but was stopped by one of his batchmates from Jammu. A scuffle happened. Administration intervened. The Jammu medicos were asked to wait and Kashmiris were sent back. We were advised not to be ‘political’ and avoid such ‘misadventures’. This was my first date with kashmiriyat in the land of Jhelum.
Very soon we could (Jammuites) realise that things are not smooth. My guest house where I stayed was very close to Jhelum. At nights the Jhelum used to burble as if it was sending some messages. Tension started increasing day by day in October’89. Beating Bihari labourers just for entertainment was the order of the day. These beholders of kashmiriyat would openly tease and outrage the modesty of Kashmiri Pandit women in buses and bazaars. Stranger was the response of KPs who had by now learnt to live with it. Things further worsened in December 1989 with the killing of a renowned Kashmiri Pandit Tikka Lal Taploo. Fear psychosis was the tool to make KPs flee. No Pakistani terrorist had entered Kashmir by then. It was only kashmiriyat with its ‘harmony’ and ‘brotherhood’ which was at the helm of affairs.
Soon winter holidays came and we rushed to our homes to Jammu as if a jailed person had gotten a parole, yes parole because we had to go back.
Such was the fear from the majority community that our KP classmates used to avoid talking to the Jammu students. Holidays came and went and once again I landed at the Srinagar airport. Obviously the enthusiasm was not the same. Depeopled streets, burkha clad women and hostile faces told me in advance that all is not going to be fine. I entered college and the first person I met was Rohit Khanna funnily called Mister Yogi (a popular TV serial then). We hugged each other but I could easily gauge fear and despair in his eyes.
One fine morning we were in the DISSECTION HALL, a peon came and asked for Rohit Khanna. He went out only to be shot down point blank outside the dissection hall. He was the only child of his parents. His mother didn’t cry. She kept on saying, “Paani phenko! Paani phenko ispe!”. And Jhelum kept on flowing. The poor boy remained in bed for one year and died a painful death. After the incident I went to my guest house by a matador (major transport source in J&K till date) that crossed the Jhelum. I don’t know why but that day it seemed noisier and more full of energy, and it kept on flowing.
Blood boiled against this non-sensical kashmiriyat but the anger was not less for callously indifferent center, India , as Kashmiris called. I think the next day I got a call from home. The telephone was at my neighbour’s house, owned by a muslim widow. Pitaji ( father as north Indians respectfully call) was on line. The news had come on the newspaper. He asked me to rush back immediately. I spoke to him in English so that the lady would not understand the conversation. When I ended the call she said that she could understand and endorsed my father’s point of view (“Yahan se nikalna hi behter hoga beta”).
There were announcements from mosques for KPs to leave Kashmir, leaving behind their women folk. Mind it these words were coming from ‘pious’ mosques. A friend of ours, not a classmate but a neighbour used to translate to us what was being announced continuously from the mosques. KPs were killed, raped.
Bitta Karate, whose interview, which is very viral, where he has openly admitted that he killed 14-15 KPs, was detained and when released 2 lakh Kashmiris gathered to welcome him. Kashmiriyat was at its full swing and Jhelum was flowing sarcastically and enjoyingly.
Finally we left along with lakhs of KPs for good. Finally I feel this experience filled my political vacuum with a sort of political acumen. When now asked – “Why are you a rightist?”, I tell them one should be right and not wrong.
It may sound absurd but I want to end this bitter article with some very, very bitter incident that happened with poor Girija Tickoo (a government employee).
Girija Tickoo settled in Jammu after migration but had to go to Baramulla to get her salary. In May’90 she went there and slept at a friend’s house. In the morning she was abducted, blindfolded, raped by four men in turns and in a final act of barbarism they took her to a wood processing unit and cut her alive on a mechanical saw. And Jhelum kept on flowing.
The simple purpose of this article is not spreading hatred but to request powers that be to take things in the right perspective which of late I satisfyingly feel is happening.
