Valley an ‘alien land’ for those born after exodus

Sumit Hakhoo

Tribune News Service

Jammu, April 26

Though the return of 3.5 lakh displaced Kashmiri Hindus has been politicised and seems a distant reality in near future, social change has swept community members living as refugees in their own country for the last 27 years.

Kashmir has become an ‘alien land’ for the post-1990 generation of Pandits who were born and brought up in squalid camps in Jammu, Udhampur and New Delhi. The emotional connect is missing in them as they have lived outside the Valley all their lives. They have assimilated into their new surroundings and have adopted cultural aspects of the place they were brought up in or live in at present.

Pandit youth have spent their entire childhood in camps and have dealt with health and economic problems and lived through the stigma of being a ‘migrant’. Now, their sole desire is to improve their economic and educational levels to sustain their families.

The community has undergone visible changes. They go for inter-community marriages, a taboo before the exodus in 1989-90, boys and girls travel to other parts of the country for education and jobs and drug addiction among youth is on a rise. All this has transformed the social dynamics of the community which was once proud of its 5,000 years of heritage.

The reason why Pandit families are sending their children to study outside is because some states have introduced the quota system under which they provide admission to Pandit youth in professional colleges, keeping in view the lack of opportunities in J&K.

The community endured a painful transition from the pristine surroundings of the Valley to the harsh climatic conditions of the Indian plains.

“At present, I don’t see any future in Kashmir. Migration led to the breakdown of the community’s otherwise close-knit social fabric. The identity of the Kashmiri Hindus is at stake if they continue to live outside the Valley,” said Akhil Koul, who works for a digital marketing company in New Delhi. Akhil was born in 1992, two years after Pandits left the Valley.

While the Prime Minister’s employment package has instilled some hope into community youth, those who left their jobs in private companies to take up government jobs in the Valley are regretting the decision.

For some, to escape the harsh reality of migration has not been easy, resulting in a spike in drug and alcohol abuse among teenagers living in migrant camps in the last decade.

Though no comprehensive study has been carried out to find the extent of the menace, doctors say there is prevalance of mental disorders among members of the community.

“There is no surprise that the prevalence of mental health disorders, particularly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, are high among Pandits after the exodus. Kashmiris in general have found escape from their daily struggle and trauma of conflict in drug abuse,” said Dr Arif Khan, a clinical psychiatrist.