Migrations of races, communities and any group of people from
their native places to new areas or
countries have been either in search of greener pastures , or for conquests or due to escape the threat of
extinction from forces which they cannot resist or control.
The history of Kashmiri
Pandits is replete with tales of horror and tyranny that they had to
face from the 14th century onwards till the present. Seven
migrations have been recorded by the
chroniclers till date, the last occurring in 1990s which is unique in the sense
that it was in independent India where safety and security of the citizens is
guaranteed by the state under the constitution. This blog is not dealing with the dynamics and causes of this last
exodus of the pundits as it has already been covered in my blog series ‘The
True story’.
We are dealing with what is our irreplaceable loss with flow
of time. The pundits who are the original saraswit Brahmans of the valley of
Kashmir have a distinct individual culture, tradition ,festivals ,language and a
Shaivistic monism attuned to Shiva and Shakti
which embraces simultaneously diety and murti worship and adherence to
atharwa veda in their ritualic worship. All the above is seemingly in
recession with the passage of time and
succeeding generations in a global preserve in which this minsicule community is dispersed after the exodus.
The pandit exodus of 1990s from their homeland (the Kashmir
valley) resulted in 95% of the community migrating to other safer places in the
country and the route they took was jammu region of their parent state and most
of them settled in jammu city and such
of those who had somebody elsewhere in the country and foreign countries , made it to that destination . The pundits who were a
composite and distinct community in the
valley of Kashmir thus got distributed throughout in miniscule groups into
various cities of India and the post_exodus generation to both east and west
outside the countries for seeking greener pastures in view of their scholarship
and ethinic brilliance which was shrouded due to the trauma of this catalysm of
flight and exodus and subsequent
misery,penury,and difficulties of an unsolicited transplantaion of the the
generation of 1990s (both senior and junior) . The power of their tradition of
education and scholarship has reestablished the community once again.
Earnest efforts ,though , being made in all the big cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai,
Bangloru,Jaipur etc. by the kashmiri organistions but the effort will get diluted
from generation to generation in adhering to the use of kashmiri as our mother
tongue. The use of this language in present kasmiri pandit homes is more or
less restricted to the senior citizens, occasionally in the middle aged
generation , and seldom by the juniors and expectedly the 4th
generation will lose any pretence of even understanding it.
Jammu only seems to hold some promise of restricting this
current trend in view of a sizable population of pundits who settled here after
the exodus. New localities have sprung up which are predominantly inhabited by
them .The prominent shrines and temples have been replicated to maintain the
kashmiri pandit ethos, social, cultural,
and traditional and ritual. A young man, Mr. Hangloo.
has launched a community kashmiri language Fm channel on radio for jammu and online for
all others settled outside in the wide
world away from home anywhere in the world . The programme content is also well
oriented as it will make the generations know about the history and geography of their place of
origin,community religious traditions
,culture, festivals, shrines, fairs(now being duplicated in jammu) and music.
It gives a ray of hope if the present middle aged generation
of the pandits catches the time by its forelock. This would require a regular
hearing session of the channel where all the generations sit together and the
young ones get a guided in_ home learning
the kashmiri pandit mother tongue
and lore.
