At home, a stranger

Recently I met some teenagers from the Valley who had come to Delhi for a better education. Talking to them I realised that a Muslim name to...

Recently I met some teenagers from the Valley who had come to Delhi for a better education. Talking to them I realised that a Muslim name together with a Kashmiri face and a Valley address is a disastrous combination. It is enough to damn one.

These young students were not exaggerating the problem. The extent of suspicion can be gauged from the fact that last year even a senior police officer, who was posted in Baramulla and was in New Delhi on an official visit, was picked up for questioning. The students pointed out that they are always conscious of this and live in great insecurity since they could be rounded any moment and there was nobody to stand up for them.

In fact, this sense of unease is not limited to youngsters. A middle class working woman residing in a more prosperous area of the city told me that last Eid her neighbours were curious to know why she had so many visitors on that particular day. As she put it, 8216;8216;I feel my neighbours were keeping a track on my movements, just because I8217;m from Srinagar.8217;8217;

It appears that whenever Valley Kashmiris visit New Delhi, the first thing they have to do is to report their arrival and place of stay at the nearest police station. This causes great humiliation which ends in cynicism. As a young man put it, 8216;8216;We8217;re being treated like a ball 8212; with Pakistan and India having a ball of a time playing with us, as USA plays referee!8217;8217;

In fact, talk to anyone from the Valley, and they will tell you the number of times their homes have been searched and their family members subjected to questioning. Even the manner of this questioning is often extremely humiliating. Vijay Dhar, one of those Pandits who lives in the Valley and has even opened the first public school there, told me,8216;8216;Until about last year, at the Sonawar barrier, all Kashmiri women were searched by security men. It was such a humiliating sight.8217;8217;

The crucial point is that there is no accountability here or even a platform for the ordinary Kashmiri to raise his/her voice or seek redress. It is this that leads to further alienation. Last year, I remember talking to Yaseen Malik about how he came to spearhead a separatist movement. This is what he told me, 8216;8216;When I was 17, I had made a poster with the word 8216;freedom8217; on it. For that I was arrested, jailed, beaten. Although I made that poster on an impulse, the beatings turned me into a permanent rebel.8217;8217;

Today, it has become a fashion for political leaders to make grand statements about Kashmir. The fact is the state has come to this pass because of a deep-seated alienation 8212; whether it the alienation faced by Pandits, who have been turned into refugees in their own country, or the Valley Muslims caught between the might of the state and that of the militant. The majority of us who live elsewhere in India are unable to comprehend this reality. That is J038;K8217;s tragedy 8212; and India8217;s too.