DELAY IS DENIAL BUT MEMORY IS STUBBORN
For the exiled Kashmiri Pandits, restorative justice is not merely delayed; it is denied ; deferred across generations until memory itself is asked to shoulder the burden of proof. Across too many quarters, their uprooting, their ethnic cleansing, their three and a half decades of unhomed grief remain unatoned, as though naming the crime would implicate the present.
Beneath the polished rhetoric of “Dignified Return” lies an abyss of silence, vast and calculated, more eloquent than any eulogy and more damning than any indictment , implying that return is unwelcome . And the reluctance to acknowledge the suffering of the exiled by the people with whom they are now being proposed to relive, to rebuild, to reshare streets and institutions, has not changed for better . The false narrative that “they left of their own accord” remains still widespread on the ground.
The acknowledgement of the grief of the exiled community demands facing truth with courage and conviction. To the younger generation of majority community in Kashmir, the exiled natives remain outsiders. For many elders from the majority community in Kashmir, the refusal to acknowledge the grief of the exiled community stems from a deeper unwillingness to look into the mirror that squarely projects where they failed, where neighbourhoods fell silent, and where humanity abdicated.
Beyond the squalor of some makeshift ghettos for the employees, and the token renovation of some vandalised temples, the ground itself remains unprepared: no security guaranteed, no restitution offered, no sincere invitation extended that is worthy of the name “home”. Many vested interests ; including those who either grabbed Kashmiri Pandit properties or bought them for peanuts , now treat the return of the exiled natives as trespass.
The voices in exile that once thundered for return have been summoned, one by one, to their heavenly abodes, their keys still clutched in trembling hands, their prayers still addressed to courtyards they may never cross again. The generation that remains now walks the same narrowing road towards the other world, carrying memories that exist only in elegies.
We see it in the attrition of language. Words for snow, for the first bloom of almond, for the turn of a lane in Rainawari, they grow faint on younger tongues. We see it in the erasure of address. What is not spoken, rots. What is not recorded, vanishes.
And when the last eye that remembers those old addresses finally closes, when the last tongue that can pronounce the localities of the old city or the ghats of Jhelum is stilled, the demand to return may be declared settled by default, the ledger closed by extinction rather than justice.
So we must ask, with all the gravity this moment demands: are heartless politicians or any other powerful group, paying lip service to the Kashmiri Pandit cause, merely biding their time, waiting for memory to die ... so that justice can be buried, and history rewritten in the silence? It happens. Insensitive people at the helm of affairs do try to run out the clock. The quiet that follows can get filled with a new story, one that suits them.
But memory is stubborn. It doesn’t only live in people. It hides in letters, in photos, in books, in art, in theatre, in songs, in films and in the foundations of new structures created over old buildings. It gets carried by children who weren’t there but heard the story anyway. It lives in the fold of a pheran kept in a trunk in Jaipur or Jammu. It lives in the weight of dejhoor or the design of a Pashmina shawl passed from a mother to a daughter who has never seen Kashmir. It lives in the Isband( rue seeds) being burnt in a Kangri to welcome guests.
Justice delayed is justice denied. But memory denied does not die. It waits. It refuses to surrender. It insists. And one day, it returns, not as trespass, but as title.
(Avtar Mota)
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