REVIEW OF BANDHAK: A NOVEL IN HINDI BY KSHAMA KAUL

                                         

BOOK REVIEW                                                          

BANDHAK: A NOVEL IN HINDI BY KSHAMA KAUL

 PUBLISHER PRALEK PRAKASHAN, MUMBAI

PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 2026

PRICE RS.399/-

PAGES 321

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND FLIPKART

 

BANDHAK (The Hostage): Literature, Memory, and the Politics of Return

Bandhak is a rigorous work of contemporary Hindi literature that examines displacement, return, and the precarious condition of minority existence in post-conflict Kashmir. Neither a conventional novel nor a memoir, the text inhabits an interstitial space between narrative fiction, testimonial writing, civilisational reflection, and political inquiry. Through the experiences of its central character, Sarsij Bhatt, the book interrogates how historical violence persists not merely through memory, but through institutions, policy frameworks, and the internalisation of fear.

The title Bandhak, literally “hostage”, is not merely metaphorical. It names a structural condition. The novel argues that displacement does not conclude with exile, and rehabilitation does not necessarily restore freedom. Return itself may constitute a renewed captivity, shaped by surveillance, conditional belonging, bureaucratic rigidity, and enforced silence.

Narrative Structure, Landscape, and the Burden of Belonging

The narrative follows Sarsij Bhatt, a young Kashmiri Hindu employed in Kashmir under a government rehabilitation scheme for displaced Pandits. Officially, the programme represents reintegration and development. Within the novel, however, it becomes a lens through which power relations are laid bare. Fixed postings, the prohibition of transfers, compelled residence in vulnerable areas, and the symbolic burden of “return” tether individuals to trauma-marked spaces without guaranteeing dignity or security.

Rather than progressing linearly, Bandhak unfolds episodically. Present-day experiences — travel through villages, conversations with colleagues, expressions on social media, quiet domestic tensions — interweave with inherited memories and civilisational recollections. The instability of narrative time mirrors the instability of belonging itself. Home, in this text, is neither fully lost nor securely reclaimed.

Few contemporary works render Kashmir with such intimate observational precision. Fields, canals, temples, courtyards, mountain roads, and quiet village shrines appear with sensory clarity. Yet the landscape is never merely scenic; it is inscribed with violence, contested memory, and altered ownership.

The novel is suffused with vivid and often nostalgic evocations of Kashmiri civilisational life. The author invokes Nandikeshwar, Gangabal, Nandakol, Bhuteshwara Tirtha (now in ruins), Sumbal village, and Tulamula not as passing references but as sacred coordinates of memory. Kahva shared in winter courtyards, the deep rhythm of tumbhaknaris, the collective devotion of bhajan mandlis, and the murmuring of village streams emerge as aide-mémoire anchors. These are not decorative cultural details; they restore texture, sound, and continuity to a world disrupted by forced exile. What has been displaced is not only a population but an entire cultural ecosystem.

Sarsij’s impulse to document the land through videos, photography, and digital archiving is framed as a simple act of love and belonging. Yet even aesthetic appreciation carries risk. Visibility becomes political. Claim becomes provocation. To return is to reclaim; to reclaim is to expose oneself. The land anchors identity while simultaneously amplifying vulnerability. In this unsettling paradox, the landscape itself participates in Sarsij’s captivity.

Survival, Policy, and Ethical Ambiguity

A central analytical thread in Bandhak is the politics of survival. Survival here is not passive endurance but a disciplined practice: politeness, strategic restraint, calibrated speech, and deliberate invisibility. Through conversations between Sarsij and his father, the novel reveals how minorities internalise caution as instinct.

Speech is never neutral; it is weighed for consequence. Social media posts become acts of risk. Casual remarks carry existential stakes. What the novel exposes, with chilling clarity, is the normalisation of self-censorship as a survival mechanism.

Rehabilitation narratives come under scrutiny without resorting to sloganeering. The Prime Minister’s Employment Package for Kashmiri Hindus — officially a policy of return — is examined through lived reality. Fixed postings, restricted mobility, exposure without structural protection, and symbolic reintegration without substantive security emerge as conditions that may reproduce captivity in another form. Employment, housing, and infrastructure are portrayed as insufficient when divorced from dignity and safety.

The author is unsparing. Responsibility is neither simplified nor narrowly assigned. Politicians, terrorists, separatists, land-grabbers, opportunistic schemers, hate-mongers, planners, and those occupying influential positions within both state and Union structures are all placed within the field of ethical accountability. This is not rhetorical outrage; it is systemic indictment. The novel suggests that structural vulnerability persists as much through policy design and administrative indifference as through overt violence.

One of the most powerful sections of the work concerns Sarsij’s visit to his ancestral village and his interactions with Muslim residents who now inhabit that social space. These encounters are rendered with remarkable restraint and psychological precision.

Hospitality and menace coexist. Warmth is inseparable from uncertainty. Offers of milk, recognition, conversation, and genuinely human gestures are shadowed by memory and asymmetry. The villagers are neither demonised nor romanticised; they are themselves shaped by loss, pressure, and history.

The ethical complexity here is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Bandhak refuses the comfort of binaries. Trust is shown to be structurally fragile, even when individuals desire it. Conflict is not reduced to caricature; instead, it is revealed as something that corrodes everyday human relations at the most intimate level.

The author demonstrates an extraordinary command of narrative technique in her portrayal of the hostage-like existence endured by PM Package employees. Without resorting to polemics, rhetorical excess, or the predictable binaries of accusation and defence, she documents deeply sensitive episodes — including the reported change of faith by some PM Package women employees and the tragic killings of Amrit Kaur, Rahul Bhat, and Rajneesh Sharma, with unsparing yet disciplined clarity. Nothing essential is withheld; yet nothing is sensationalised.

What distinguishes her craft is not merely the courage to confront painful realities, but the rare intellectual restraint with which she renders them. The truth in her narrative operates on multiple registers: explicit in detail, implicit in implication, raw in fact, yet refined in articulation. Through a synthesis of moral steadiness, acute sociological observation, and aesthetic control, Kshama Kaul transforms reportage into reflective literature.

Her handling of facts reveals an observer of exceptional depth, one who perceives beyond event to pattern, beyond incident to structure. She does not manipulate emotion; she cultivates understanding. In doing so, she establishes herself not merely as bold but as monumental, a literary presence marked by Himalayan clarity, scale, and composure.

Memory, Style, and Literary Significance

Memory in Bandhak is not nostalgia; it is a burden. Sarsij inherits stories of temples desecrated, wells abandoned, rituals interrupted, and homes vacated under duress. These narratives constitute civilisational memory. To relinquish them would mean erasing identity itself.

The novel insists that genocide and ethnic cleansing are not singular episodes but prolonged processes, extended through economic marginalisation, cultural erasure, property dispossession, and compelled forgetting. The erosion of confidence: religious, linguistic, and historical, is portrayed as devastation deeper than physical displacement. Religious and mythological motifs surface throughout the text, not as dogmatic assertions but as repositories of continuity. Faith operates as both an interpretive framework and a resistance against epistemic erasure. Spiritual memory becomes a counter-archive.

Stylistically, Bandhak is dense, reflective, and intellectually disciplined. The prose is measured and recursive, mirroring the circular rhythms of trauma. Interior reflection takes precedence over conventional plot propulsion. For readers expecting minimalist brevity, the work may demand patience. Yet its form is inseparable from its argument: unresolved history cannot be narrated in simplistic arcs.

The author demonstrates notable moral courage and literary control. There is no aesthetic softening, no rhetorical evasion. With rare seriousness and composure, she transforms historical trauma into sustained philosophical inquiry. Her command of memory, language, and political nuance marks this work as a significant contribution to contemporary Hindi literature. The narrative does not seek catharsis; it seeks clarity.

From a journalistic perspective, Bandhak is striking for its refusal to dilute lived experience for the sake of balance. It interrogates official discourse surrounding rehabilitation and asks whether administrative inclusion equates to justice. It questions whether returning without security constitutes restoration or exposure.

The book will provoke disagreement. It will unsettle readers across ideological positions. Yet its value lies precisely in this discomfort. It expands the literary archive by documenting a narrative often marginalised or reduced to abstraction. This is not polemic; it is testimony sharpened by intellect.

Bandhak is a serious, unsettling, and intellectually demanding work. It documents a condition of constrained existence, where return does not restore freedom and survival requires permanent vigilance. In refusing simplification, the author performs an act of uncommon intellectual honesty. She spares none who participate in the perpetuation of injustice, yet she avoids caricature. She renders memory without sentimentality and politics without hysteria. As literature, Bandhak expands the moral and thematic range of contemporary Hindi writing.

As testimony, it preserves suppressed histories with disciplined clarity.

As a critique, it raises foundational questions about justice, state responsibility, and the meaning of belonging in the aftermath of unresolved violence. The book positions itself not merely as a novel, but as the record of an unfinished history, one that refuses closure because reality itself remains unresolved. In doing so, the author establishes herself as a writer of bold moral vision, stylistic rigour, and rare clarity: an unmistakable and courageous voice in contemporary Indian letters.

(Avtar Mota )

 

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