DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

BRIGHT flowery printed salwar-kameez on her slightly plump frame, black Bata school shoes, and plaited, oiled, jet-black hair that ended in blood-red, thick nylon ribbons, dilated pupils, slurring lips slightly frothy, twigs in hand – this image of Suraiya is one of the most defining ones from my childhood in Jammu. Children were intimidated by her presence, and some pelted stones from behind as she trudged from her three-storey red-brick house in Dalpatian locality towards the junction between Karbala Grounds and Wazarat Road. She would chase the kids, shout incomprehensible gibberish and return to collecting twigs, stopping people, or letting them pass only if they gave her a stick. Suraiya kept chasing children, shouting and collecting twigs till her grey-haired mother came to take her home. Mostly, Suraiya would return with one of her shoes lost, a ribbon undone and sometimes with a bleeding wound.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Suraiya, known in the locality as Suraiya Paagal (crazy), was a living icon of Jammu in 1947. As a six-year old, she had witnessed her entire family, except for her mother, being burnt alive by Hindus and Sikhs during the post-Partition riots. After that, she had lost her mental balance. While my generation was growing up, Suraiya’s story was not unique; there were many such around us, whose faces spoke of the bloodied streets of Jammu. It was easy to stumble on these narratives in a neighbourhood that had once had a huge Muslim population, one that had thinned drastically in October–November 1947.

Though there were many of them, the stories also seemed distant because at the time I was growing up, communal amity was at its best. My childhood was yet to be shattered by the rise of the Hindu right and the insurgency of the 1990s. Of course, Jammu did suffer from the fallout of the Punjab insurgency in the mid-1980s. My first experience of being caught in the web of ‘us and them’ was when I heard stories whispered of how Sikhs had distributed sweets after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and how Hindus had taunted Sikhs after Operation Blue Star. The shocking memory of a Hindu friend asking a Sikh friend, ‘Why did you kill Indira Gandhi?’ is something I have not been able to shrug off my mind.

I was born in 1968, when the gory Partition, and Jammu and Kashmir’s accession and division were two decades old. The 1965 war was over and the 1971 war was yet to come. My memories of the 1971 war are rather hazy, though I recall blackouts, a trench dug in our lawn, mention of bombings, hovering aircrafts, and a midnight visit by an uncle who was in the army, clad in his fatigues. Till Punjab militancy erupted and spilled over to Jammu, life had been simple and harmonious, without the consciousness of who we were and how we were divided into the binaries of collective identities. The year 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assassinated marked the Hindu–Sikh disaffection, which also began taking on the tones of Hindu–Muslim polarization, when the Kashmiri youth took up guns in 1989.

In the 1980s, communal violence of the scale witnessed in 1947 seemed like tales from folklore. Perhaps this was also due to my own innocence and blissful ignorance of the complex narrative of Jammu, making it seem something unrealistic that could not be replicated. Before 1984, there had been, of course, glimpses of issues pertaining to the location, history and politics of Jammu vis-à-vis the Kashmir dispute. It was in 1984 that my curiosity over the past and religious identities was invoked when I began reading and talking to the people in my life who had lived through those times. It was surprising to discover that Jammu and Kashmir had a very different history from the rest of the subcontinent, that the Quit Kashmir movement against the Dogra rulers coincided with the Indian freedom movement, and that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India while a part of the state was usurped by Pakistan.

In 1947, around the time of Partition, the upper-caste Hindus owed their loyalty first to the Hindu maharaja and then to India. Most Muslims in the Jammu region were supporters of the Muslim Conference, which favoured a complete merger with Pakistan. The Sheikh Abdullah–led National Conference had never been effective in the districts of Jammu, Kathua, Udhampur and Reasi. The Muslim population, which was culturally a part of Punjab and shared its customs, dress, language and even food habits, had come under the influence of the Pakistan movement years before Partition.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed autonomy after 1947 under Article 370 of the Constitution of India. It first had its own prime minister and Sadr-i-Riyasat (president of the state), not the Indian president’s man called governor. All residents had a state subject certificate, which was like a sacred document. There was often discussion of Article 370, talks of removing it or protecting it. In the 1980s, when Farooq Abdullah revived the autonomy slogan to reclaim his voters, historians began writing articles about the Amritsar Treaty, according to which Kashmir had been bought by the Dogra rulers from the British for 75 lakh rupees. These disclosures inspired the feeling of ‘differentness’ of the state. In Jammu, which enjoyed great cultural affinity with Punjab and even Himachal Pradesh, the integration with India seemed pretty much final, despite these signs of uniqueness.

‘Jammu’ is used to denote both the Hindu-dominated province of the state and an even more predominantly Hindu city, the winter capital. This was the original home of the Dogra rulers, who brought the disparate regions together to give it shape as a kingdom, the state as it stood in 1947. I grew up in a Muslim-majority area where a vast chunk of houses was called Evacuee Property. The nomenclature was a grim reminder of the unsettled question of Kashmir. The evacuee-property homes belonged to Muslims who had fled Jammu in November 1947 and crossed the LoC to the other part of Kashmir. The other Kashmir was called Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir in Jammu.

In the evenings of my childhood, we would all sit glued to television sets to watch Pakistan Television (PTV), which screened brilliant dramas, serials and English films in comparison to Doordarshan Srinagar, which had poor reception, and programmes that were not as interesting. PTV referred to the other Kashmir as Azad Kashmir with a map that resembled ours, but without the north-eastern tip that is under Chinese control. Looking at the two maps, it was difficult to understand where the boundary of one state ended and the other began. The lands merged into one another and there were only oral references to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, as we knew it, or maqbooza (‘occupied’) Kashmir. I was sure there was a Kashmir on the other side because I knew people who had travelled there, or had relatives in Mirpur, Kotli and Bhimber. Many Hindus in Jammu also had roots in these places. My own family had a Bhimber connection. To me, it was a constant question: where was the border?*

Around my home, the evacuee properties that had belonged to Muslims who had fled were a subject of great interest to me. A fascinating two-storey red-brick structure on the main Wazarat Road had belonged to Mehboob-ul-Haq, the famous Pakistani economist. Almost every Muslim family in the neighbourhood had relatives on the other side. The visits between the families were not very frequent, because getting visas was not easy. Those who were successful invited the continuous harassment of police and the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

For me, borders became a first-hand reality in 1981, when an uncle who was in the army and headed a brigade on the Rajouri border took us to visit some villages. The Line of Control did not look like any border in my imagination. There were no demarcations, no fences, just army bunkers and watchtowers on both sides. Straddling the two sides were expanses of mountains and fields that told the tale of a land divided – a village of the same name on both sides; homes sliced in two. The border resounded with heroic stories of soldiers and officers. The regularity with which encounters happened even on my short visit made me wonder why we never got to hear of them on the news.

The border areas seemed like another land, inhabited by people who spoke a language similar to ours, but were under heavy military surveillance. The army was the unquestioned lord and caretaker of these unprivileged civilians. The officers interacted with locals and listened to their problems. We had never seen that in Jammu or in Srinagar. Apparently, there was bonhomie between people of Rajouri and the army. This impression was at odds with the bits and pieces we would hear about the Poonch revolt in 1947, the pro-Pakistan sentiment that had existed there till the 1965 war, and of people fleeing across the borders and then returning. I just absorbed these impressions, but they stayed with me; perhaps to be reflected upon and researched a decade or two later.

Not only the border regions, but also some parts of Jammu itself resembled a garrison, especially at all its exits – north, south and west. Jammu is a hub from where the army convoys move in different directions. The military presence has increased in recent decades and the cantonment areas have become almost out of bounds to the ordinary civilian. Till the 1990s, the scene was different. During my schooldays in the city’s sole convent school, which was within a stone’s throw of the army cantonment, our movements were never restricted. The school buses would drop us off every morning and wait for us every afternoon, parked on the road that led to Satwari, the large cantonment area. Frolicking children would board the buses or stroll on the road or concoct games without any hindrance. This same road is now totally barricaded. The bus stop has been shifted to the National Highway, which has its own perils of traffic hazards and accidents. Military presence before the 1990s was a common feature of the city, but never alarming, never sparking fears of retaliation from the army or grenade blasts. But now, things are different.

Yet, despite this strain, Jammu has great sympathy for the army. The province has a traditional culture of joining the armed forces and a major chunk of the men are from Jammu. Every second home in the area is connected to the army, directly or indirectly.

In my schooldays, on the crossing junction between the National Highway and the road that used to serve as our school bus stand, was stationed an old war tank from Pakistan, a relic of the 1965 or 1971 war. Another, bigger tank was kept on display outside the Maulana Azad Stadium across the bridge, the vital link between the old and new city. We grew up seeing these two tanks almost daily. During my vacations to other parts of the country, I wondered why the war relics, men in uniform and 3-tonne army trucks did not seem to have a place on the roads of Delhi, Kolkata or other cities as they did in Jammu. The proximity to the war zone, the vulnerability of the city to a conflict, was unknown in those days of innocence when the atmosphere was not so badly permeated by insecurity, fear, panic and mistrust. Today, things are very different.

By and large, Jammu has been comfortable with its Indian identity and Indian-ness, but there was enough still to spark a feeling of unease. Chilling stories of bloodshed from 1947 were not the only reason. The continuum of Hindu right-wing assertion and its provocative presence further broke the calm. My father, Ved Bhasin, who had been active as student leader during the Quit Kashmir movement in 1946–47 and later in opposing communal violence in Jammu, spoke of the RSS’s role in the brutal murders of 1947. He said that the maharaja’s forces supported the communal elements, and there was an attempt to change the demography of Jammu and Kashmir right from those days of violence. He spoke of RSS marauders marching in the streets with naked swords and of the state prime minister, Meher Chand Mahajan, telling a delegation of Hindus of the changing demographics of the state. Pointing to the Ramnagar Rakh, where hundreds of Gujjars coming to the city to supply milk had been waylaid and slain, and some bodies of Muslims were still lying, he said ‘the population ratio too can change’. Did such a history contribute to the silence of the Muslims? Such questions come to my mind now.

The proximity to the borders, the two wars with Pakistan and the heavy presence of military across Jammu province made Jammu very different from the Indian mainland. Huge tracts of barricaded land formed forbidden army zones; barbed wire and movement of convoys were part of the normal landscape though the military presence was benign, that is, unless you had the wrong religious identity. Our experiences with the army depended on which region we were from and what religious identity we had. I was fortunate to be living in the safer confines of Jammu city. Those who lived on the borders, especially along the LoC, had a different life. The silence of Muslims in Jammu city and other Hindu areas of the province was extremely different from the way Muslim assertion shaped itself in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, which had borne the adverse impact of partition of the state, socially and economically.

There was, however, less interaction with people from Rajouri and Poonch, even though we had more of a cultural and linguistic affinity with them than with other parts of Kashmir. The legacy of the days of the maharajas had left the state with two capitals – Jammu and Srinagar – which was an economic burden that could not be questioned but which offered the opportunity for greater interaction. With time, the economy of the two regions had become interdependent, Jammu being the main trading hub. We would go to Srinagar during the long summer holidays and many Kashmiris came to the warmer plains of Jammu in the winter. Kashmiri families inhabited the flats we lived in and they were always welcome. It meant more friends, more hours of playing cricket and hide-and-seek. It hardly mattered that they were different. I remember the Muslim homes seemed different. Their rooms had warm corners with floral seating arrangements where you would always find a pheran-clad elderly person with a kangri. These winter visitors to Jammu were both Muslim and Hindu families and the two were difficult to tell apart.

Most of our time was spent in playing cricket. Our matches started with the creation of teams, which we called India and Pakistan. To my surprise, some Kashmiri Muslims were happier being part of the Pakistani team. They spoke a lot about Pakistan and their heroes were Pakistani cricketers: Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, and not Sunil Gavaskar and Vengsarkar. There were also some children from Jammu who would call Pakistan an enemy whenever some Muslim Kashmiri kid became euphoric about Pakistan’s victory in a match. Such discussions caused some discomfort, though only momentarily; they also raised queries that did not seem so significant and overwhelming in those days. Kashmir was different, not only for the enormous beauty of its verdant hills, meadows and lakes, but because the people were different in their appearances and attitudes. Many shops had posters of Pakistani cricketers pasted on their walls, and some Islamic calligraphy, quite different from some of the shops in Jammu where incense burned all day long, blurring the image of some Hindu god or goddess.

My Kashmiri friends were often far more liberated and progressive than my friends from Jammu. They did not look down condescendingly, as some Jammu children did, on groups of boys and girls playing together. They read more books and had travelled more. They were affectionate, friendly, spoke about books, characters, ideas, relationships and the world; sometimes they seemed years ahead of the other native Jammu children I knew.

In the winter of 1986, while still in school, a nearby locality witnessed a minor Hindu–Muslim clash and Jammu was put under curfew for a few days. We met our Kashmiri (Muslim) friends in the playground as usual and played our games; even laughed at the absurdity of religion-based riots and promised each other that such trivial things would never get in the way of our friendship. Little did we realize that politics was creating a different future for all of us. The Babri Masjid demolition in India and resurgence of militancy in Kashmir were likely to chart out a course where threads of conflict and communalism would be intertwined, and the multi-ethnic Jammu community would be the most severely hit.

The 1965 war had brought us stories of villages being torched in Rajouri and Poonch, of pro-Pakistan posters showing up in villages and towns in Thanamandi in Rajouri district, of people being persecuted and fleeing across the borders in thousands. In 1974, Sheikh Abdullah signed an accord with Indira Gandhi, and became chief minister of the state. At the age of six, it was difficult to pay attention to an accord, but I do have a memory of hearing about Sheikh Abdullah’s release and wondering why leaders were being arrested even after Independence.

The early 1980s, 1984 to be exact, brought the chilling account of Maqbool Bhat’s hanging in Tihar jail, and Kashmir erupted in protest. Even so, this did not surprise me. Kashmiris were known to be emotional people. They would often protest even something that happened in, say, Palestine or Iran. When a new political phenomenon in Kashmir took shape in the form of the Muslim United Front (MUF) in the run-up to the 1987 elections, some linked it to a perceived alienation from the people from India, and Maqbool Bhat’s hanging. As has been a historical malaise in Kashmir, the elections were rigged and protests erupted. But sitting in Jammu, where none of these events cast their immediate shadow, for me it was difficult to think of them as the precursor to an impending crisis.

When whispers began of Kashmiri youth crossing the border and returning as militants, they were dismissed as jokes. The traditionally militaristic Dogras stereotyped Kashmiris as ‘cowards’. But when the first signs of militancy became visible, it was momentous. I felt the need to reread the history of Kashmir, in a more authentic light, a sentiment, which is also a part of my own writing.

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal is the executive editor of The Kashmir Times. A veteran of three decades writing about Kashmir region, Bhasin is active in civil society groups including the India chapter of Pakistan–India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), South Asians for Human Rights, Forum for Democratic Rights, Women’s Regional Networking (Core group member India chapter) and Women of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir.

NOTES

*The line dividing the two Kashmirs is not a border but is recognized as Line of Control, originally called ceasefire line. Editors.