Introduction
The experience of violence, the moment of exile, and the time of recovering ordinary life has been extensively explored in forced migration studies. This article specifically explores one aspect of forced migration that is the experience and meaning of returning to a place, or rather a home, left behind. Return migration draws our interest, on the one hand, as it suggests the end of the ‘refugee cycle’.Footnote 1 On the other hand, as the Palestinian novelist Samir El Youssef observes, return is perhaps an ‘illusion’.Footnote 2 An interest in return journeys may help us understand how the displaced imagine and locate themselves in the world. In this article, I examine the different meanings return entails for communities displaced by conflict. I draw upon anthropological research conducted among Kashmiri Pandits who were displaced from Kashmir following the outbreak of conflict in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, and forced to relocate to cities such as Jammu and New Delhi in 1990, where they have remained in exile since.Footnote 3
The Kashmiri Pandits, as the Hindu minority of the Kashmir valley are better known, represent one of the most prominent communities of Internally Displaced Persons in India. They are a community that is exclusively Brahmin and hence upper caste.Footnote 4 Historically, they constituted a significant section of the state bureaucracy in Jammu and Kashmir and different parts of Northern India, consequently acquiring positions of socio-economic prominence and privilege.Footnote 5 After a period of a few years of adjustment, some of the Pandits displaced by the Kashmir conflict have been able to recoup their losses, whereas others have not been as fortunate. This article is based on research conducted in the city of Jammu where a large concentration of displaced Pandits had relocated to, who are either scattered in the city or located in displaced-persons colonies. My research primarily explored the experience of exile among Pandits, paying special attention to how they remade a place for themselves in the world and their experiences of violence and victimhood. Nevertheless, the topic of their return to Kashmir constantly surfaced in conversations with all Kashmiris, Pandit and Muslim, and others in Jammu.
Much of my research involved ethnographic fieldwork at a camp colony whose inhabitants comprised the lower strata of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, whose lives are marked by socio-economic and political uncertainty and dependency on the Indian state. I also draw on some research conducted with middle-class Pandits who remain in Jammu instead of moving to cities with greater opportunities. While the Pandits continue to enjoy a measure of political recognition, their location in Jammu complicates the meaning of being ‘elite’.Footnote 6
I will first discuss the scholarly engagement with return migration and then provide an overview of the conflict over Kashmir and the location of the Kashmiri Pandits within this conflict. I will then explore how intimate engagements with Pandit migrants challenge dominant discourses of return as articulated by the state and political organizations, by drawing on the experiences of three Kashmiri Pandits who have returned to Kashmir on visits after their displacement in 1990. The article will argue that return for displaced populations is inherently inconclusive and could instead be seen as journeys through which the displaced try to address the meaning of home and deal with the uncertainty that affect their lives.
Situating return
Return ostensibly to a place of origin has featured in a range of studies on migrants as a value that influences life in the migrant present.Footnote 7 Return takes many forms, ranging from short-term visits to remittance networks.Footnote 8 However, the discussion of return migration is refracted through different categories of migrants. As Ishkanian argues, there is a difference between those whose lives were displaced and other kinds of migrants.Footnote 9 Return migration, or rather ‘repatriation’, evokes interest in the case of forced migrants, as it is regarded to be a desired solution to displacement.Footnote 10
The concern with return, especially with regard to forced migrants, is related to the imagination of the refugee. Nations, communities, and citizens are imagined as tied to a particular territory and the political authority that governs it.Footnote 11 As the refugee threatens this schema, ‘return’ promises putting people back into place. However, it is not clear whether a distinction is made between return trips taken voluntarily by the once displaced or repatriation/resettlement, though there is an awareness of this concern.Footnote 12 An emphasis on repatriation/resettlement also tends to privilege the voice of the state or international organizations. Nevertheless, return is argued to be an emotive issue that strengthens a sense of belonging to place among forced migrants.Footnote 13 Therefore, return must also be regarded as an idea, even if the act of return is not initiated in any form. Rather, return must be seen as ‘provisional’ and ‘imagined’ with multiple meanings or as ‘homecomings’.Footnote 14
Another strand suggests that displaced peoples and other exiles often hold onto a ‘myth of return’ or a belief that they will return to their homeland at some point in the future.Footnote 15 However, as Zetter argues, the myth of return is more indicative of how the displaced imagine home, rather than the migration experience itself.Footnote 16 While the imagination of return is important, this article will suggest that there are many imaginaries, small and large, that are at work. Rather, as JansenFootnote 17 suggests, discussions of return migration raise the need to first see home as subject to longing and desire and, secondly, how it is influenced by socio-economic and political transformations of the displaced and of the landscape they return to. This will be reflected in the following pages as we go further into the experiences of displaced Kashmiri Pandits.
Return migration in South Asia has been studied usually in the context of transnational migration. Studies of the South Asian diaspora in the United Kingdom have shown how immigrants maintain a connection to places they came from by investing in kin relations and in building property back ‘home’, moving easily back and forth.Footnote 18 There is also an interest in South Asian contexts of the return of migrants in terms of their impact on investment, development, and regional transformation as a form of ‘provincial globalisation’.Footnote 19 Other studies raise questions of choice and agency, for example by looking at highly skilled ‘second-generation’ Indians who leave the United States for India in search of better economic opportunities.Footnote 20
Situations of migration within national borders or regions also have something to bring to the table. Studies of labour migrants in India suggest that different peoples may be forced to leave their homelands in search of better economic opportunities within India, which does not necessarily imply that connections with home areas have been cut. Rather, migrants are able to move between different places, in some ways like their transnational compatriots, whereby migration becomes a rite of passage.Footnote 21 As Sharma writes with reference to Nepalese migrants to India, marginal groups may see migration as a way to participate in a world of modernity and consumption, moving back and forth between regions.Footnote 22
Forced Migrant returns have also been documented in different contexts in South Asia. Afghan refugees who took refuge in Pakistan returned home to rebuild a life at first, but then ‘returned’ to Pakistan as conditions in the homeland were still politically and economically insecure.Footnote 23 Other situations that push how we imagine return can be seen for Bihari Muslims who had migrated to East Pakistan following the Indian partition. With the establishment of the nation-state of Bangladesh in 1971, they became displaced again and demanded resettlement in West Pakistan as a ‘right to return home’, even though they never lived in the territories comprising post-1971 Pakistan.Footnote 24 The experience of returning ‘home’ has also been portrayed by Butalia in her study of the Indian partition when she writes about her mother and aunt, revisiting their family home Pakistan, which they had left behind in 1947.Footnote 25 South Asian experiences thus indicate how the return of the displaced, whether they are stateless or not, demonstrates the tension between individual/familial sentiment and emotion with the logic of the nation-state. Yet this is a theme that still remains relatively understudied in comparison to other situations of migration in the region.
The Kashmiri Pandits occupy an ambiguous political location and their return to Kashmir has been subject to political debate in Kashmir and in India. While some Pandits are part of regional or transnational migration processes that began before the conflict, the exodus of 1990 influences any discussion of contemporary Pandit lives. Any discussion of resettlement therefore involves an understanding of persisting conflict as seen in places like Jammu and Kashmir.
Situating the Kashmiri Pandits
The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been affected by conflict since decolonization in the South Asian subcontinent. The conflict stems from the controversial accession of the state to India and its location within the logic of disputes between India and Pakistan.Footnote 26 Following Indian independence, a history of corrupt politics and the enforcement of Indian nationalist ideals by the Indian state resulted in a mass movement for self-determination and an insurgency involving a range of militant groups within Kashmir to begin since 1990.Footnote 27 The Indian government responded with a severe policy of counter insurgency and militarization of the Kashmiri landscape. This picture is also complicated by a nationalist discourse among Kashmiris that goes back to the 1930s, when the demand of independence was first articulated against the Dogra kings who ruled Jammu and Kashmir as a princely state of British India.Footnote 28
Within the mosaic of politics in Kashmir are the Kashmiri Pandits. Most of the community, numbering approximately 150,000,Footnote 29 fled to safe havens located in the south in the first year of the conflict, especially to cities like Jammu and New Delhi, due to a combination of militant activity, selective assassinations, the breakdown of law and order, and the implementation of a policy of violent counter insurgency. The exodus of the Pandits from Kashmir is controversial. One approach emphasizes that the Pandits were specifically targeted by Kashmiri militants for their faith affiliation and perceived support for the Indian state. Another explanation is that the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir at the time had engineered the exodus to discredit Kashmiri nationalist aspirations.Footnote 30 In 2011, it was estimated that 3,400–2,700 Pandits remained in Kashmir,Footnote 31 while a Pandit activist I had met in Srinagar in 2014 stated that there were approximately 650 families left in Kashmir.Footnote 32
Since the Pandit exodus, the movement for Kashmir has changed over the years with organizations drawing on non-violent forms of protest taking centre stage while the Indian state continues to maintain a large security apparatus. However, the Pandits have only witnessed the militancy and this shapes how they regard Kashmiri politics. Consequently, they are politically situated outside demands for Kashmiri nationalism and supportive of the Indian nation-state.Footnote 33 They are officially labelled ‘migrants’—a term used by the Jammu and Kashmir and Indian state governments that has come to refer to displaced peoples in Jammu and Kashmir. Much of my own work focused on a community of migrants who were accommodated in Purkhu camp, one of several camp colonies in Jammu city that were established in 1990 and where families were forced to lead their lives in these camps in single-room tenements. While those who lived in the camps constitute a prominent section of Kashmiri Pandits, they represent the lower strata and symbolize the loss of status and relative power they once enjoyed in the past. They became visible symbols of the exodus even though the camps accommodated approximately one-sixth of registered Pandit migrants in Jammu. Over time, the camps became a part of the urbanscape of Jammu until their closure in 2011 and transfer of populations to a new township called Jagti located in the outskirts of Jammu city. Nevertheless, the majority of migrants had to seek shelter in the city and outside the camps, leading to the emergence of what have now become thriving neighbourhoods in the city.Footnote 34
The Pandits initially believed that exile was temporary, expecting that they would return to Kashmir following the re-establishment of law and order. The Governor of Jammu and Kashmir in 1990 had even stated that the Pandits were to return to their homes with the restoration of normalcy.Footnote 35 Over the years, different entities, from political parties that support the Indian state to Kashmiri separatists/nationalists, pronounce their desire for the Pandits to return and restore the semblance of communal harmony from the past. However, while prominent politicians ‘publicly express sorrow at the departure of the Pandits . . . most run of the mill politicians shy away from making any public statements about them’.Footnote 36
This has resulted in different policies and programmes varying from the construction of colonies to proposed employment schemes for the community in Kashmir. The responses of Kashmiri Pandit organizations in turn have been observed to be sceptical towards any plan for return expressed from time to time.Footnote 37 During the course of my fieldwork in Jammu, there was talk around the construction of quarters in Kashmir to accommodate Kashmiri Migrants when they returned to Kashmir. In 2008, the first quarters were finally opened for occupation, which 30 families had reportedly moved into. Later, in 2011, a scheme for young Kashmiri Pandits to seek employment in state-sector programmes in the Kashmir valley was established, which received nervous enthusiasm among Pandits. Many Pandits who secured employment with the state sector as part of the package were provided with accommodation in Kashmir that is granted as long as the Pandits remain in the employment programme.Footnote 38 Recently, the new Indian government headed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) proposed a plan for the resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits in new townships to be built in Kashmir for them (PTI 2014). Various Pandit organizations welcomed the proposal, while Kashmiri politicians in turn have criticized the townships as machinations of the Indian state to divide Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits.Footnote 39
In the meantime, the Pandits continue to wait in cities like Jammu. Some have built houses, effectively settling in the city, while others observe routine lives in temporary spaces such as displaced-persons colonies or houses taken on rent. They wait amidst the pressures of contemporary life in Jammu. Some may have even developed networks to places outside Jammu and Kashmir such as New Delhi and Mumbai, where their kin may have moved to in search of a better life. However, a return to Kashmir is extensively discussed within the community with a complexity that is not considered in policy and by political parties and other commentators, which I shall now engage with.
Ways of return
The ways of returning home to Kashmir vary from political projects such as Panun Kashmir,Footnote 40 which promotes an ideology of forming a Pandit homeland in Kashmir, to personal yearnings for seeing homes and recalling lives left behind. The sentiment of return is expressed in drawing rooms of well-to-do Pandits who have built houses and ostensibly settled in Jammu and elsewhere, to displaced-persons colonies that shelter Pandits who have nowhere else to go. Many Pandits have made small return trips to Kashmir, sometimes individually and sometimes on pilgrimages. Some Pandits I had met would point out they would visit places of pilgrimage, as many Hindu temples are under the care of Indian Security forces or the police and hence are seen as safe havens. A closer engagement, however, reveals that return, as an act and as an idea, should not presume ‘resettlement’ per se. Many speak candidly of the impossibility of return. Sunil,Footnote 41 a migrant in his thirties who ran a small shop in Purkhu camp, one of several camps for displaced Pandits, suggests that returning to Kashmir will be another displacement for the Pandits:
All this talk about returning to Kashmir is pointless. No? See people left everything behind in Kashmir. They had to start again here. And now after fifteen-sixteen years we have something. Now to go back to Kashmir as the government seems to tell us to do would mean leaving what we have made here and then start again over there, again from zero. Would people there let us start again?
The Pandits are also still affected by the circumstances of their displacement. Many migrants regard Kashmir as unsafe, with their fears exacerbated by the militarized atmosphere, militant activity, and mass protests in Kashmir reported frequently in the news. When I asked a school master I would often meet during fieldwork for a chat about why he had never returned to Kashmir since 1990, he would only reply that there was no sakoon or peace of mind there. He would say nothing more. Nevertheless, some have returned to Kashmir from time to time. The reasons may vary from the disposal of property, which may have been destroyed by looting or disrepair over time in their absence, pilgrimages, or to simply take a look and to show what the generation raised outside the valley could have called home. Consequently, many Pandits feel that they return to Kashmir as ‘tourists’—a term that is commonly heard among migrants in Jammu. A novel entitled In the Garden of Solitude written by Siddhartha Gigoo, a Pandit whose family was displaced in 1990, captures these dilemmas through its protagonist Sridar. The novel follows Sridar's life, first as a boy in Kashmir and then in exile as he comes of age. Towards the end of the novel, Sridar, now an adult, returns to Kashmir for the first time and visits his old house, now occupied by a Muslim family. The exchange with a taxi driver when he is on his way to see his family house for the first time after many years is especially poignant:
‘Where would you like to go Panditji?’ he asked. It was a question Sridar expected. And he kept his answer ready for fifteen years.
‘Home! Would you take me home? Khankah-i-Sokhta.’
‘You must be settled in Jammu now? Are you coming home after many years?’ the driver asked.
‘Fifteen years.’
‘This is your home after all. You belong here. We have lost a generation in these fifteen years. Look at the bridge here. Look at the houses. Everything is a wreck. Will Pandits never return now? Many have built houses in Jammu and are settled there now.’
Sridar did not know what to say. He had no words to describe his feelings.
‘Am I returning home? Am I a tourist? What strange feeling is this?’ he wondered.Footnote 42
The figure of the tourist emerges in an interesting study of Anglo-Indians and Jews from Calcutta who migrated to other countries during the 1950s onwards and then started to return to the city of their birth later in life on short visits. These returnees raise the feeling of now being ‘tourists’ to express a sense of being a people who do not belong to Calcutta anymore, though they did once in the past.Footnote 43 A similar sentiment circulates among the Kashmiri Pandits, where the notion of the tourist is expressed to represent the euphemerality of belonging in Kashmir. The ‘tourist’ as a figure is also especially poignant for people from a valley whose economy relies a great deal on tourism.
It took a film shoot for me to recognize the significance of the word. I had been invited by two documentary film-makers to join them when they visited Muthi Camp to interview a group of Pandit women. After the interviews were completed, we were invited for tea by one of the women to her quarters. The film-makers chatted with her and asked whether she had any old photographs, following which she brought out an album. They let the camera roll as the woman went through the photographs, most of which were recent pictures documenting her family's participation in the Amarnath Yatra, a pilgrimage that draws on large numbers of Hindu devotees from all over India to Kashmir. These photos were then followed by others of the family posing in Kashmiri Costumes, which are popular with tourists. As the woman turned the pages of the photo album, one of the film-makers remarked ‘maybe that is what they mean when they say they want us back in Kashmir only as tourists’.
When return proves why you should not return
The PanditsFootnote 44 resided in Purkhu camp until its closure in 2011. Like many others, they feel that life in Kashmir was far superior to the life they led in Jammu, when they lived in their own house and tended to their landholdings. Madan Lal, who is the head of the household, had worked as a peon in a government office in Kashmir. In Jammu, he is listed as a ‘government’ category migrant.Footnote 45 As he had not been assigned to any state office in Jammu, Madan Lal had been unemployed in practice since the exodus. Suresh, his eldest son, who had finished his education at the camp school, apprenticed as a printer. Madan Lal had only a few years of schooling, while Suresh and his two younger brothers started working instead of pursuing their higher education after finishing school. They see themselves as part of a community they perceive as inherently powerless. They also regard themselves as marginal in comparison to well-to-do Pandits. According to Madan Lal, they were advised to leave their home in 1990 by Muslim neighbours, as they were one of only two Pandit families left in the village when the conflict had started to escalate.
At the end of 2006, Madan Lal had visited his village alone and shared his experience with me:
There is the thought of returning there. There is the thought of staying there. But it seems unlikely. We cannot stay as we wish. We would like to stay there on our own terms. First the Mohamedans (Muslims) have ‘captured’ everything. We had our land, trees and orchards and everything. But they (Muslims) have captured everything, what to us is kabza (seizure). So it is not right for us to sit there. Our way of living is not possible. There is now a difference. A huge difference! . . . In our area there was no question of eating the meat of cows and bulls. Now you can find such meat in every house. Hahn. So where will we stay? It is not in our dharma, it is not in our mazhab. How can we tolerate this? We do not have much desire to remain there . . .. When we went to the village we saw everything . . . the people in the village were friendly to us showing us this is fine, that is fine bas (enough) . . . we stayed in the Kheer Bhavani Shrine in Tikkar. You cannot trust staying anywhere else. There is no peace or trust there. People there are not safe so how can we be? People there . . .. The Buzurg (elders) weep. They say ‘what is this. Look at what has happened? What has God done to them?’.
Madan Lal had visited Kashmir again the following year and he shared his second experience with me over a cup of tea at his quarters in the camp:
I went to my village and met my old friends. Some eighteen people gathered around me and they all asked for any news about other Pandits they knew, their jan pehchan (close acquaintances). I told them ‘I am thinking of coming back and returning to the village. I will repair my house and I will need your help.’ I thought the Mohamedans of my village were happy to see me return. But one of my old neighbours then said ‘if ten-fifteen chulah (hearth) return, then come back. If there is only one chulah it will be difficult for you.’ He said something like that . . .. I have no intention to go back to Kashmir but I had said this to them to see what they do. Then I realised after hearing this that the Muslims of Kashmir do not want us to return!
Can we consider Madan Lal's journey as a homecoming? Kashmir, for the Pandits, was a land and home that became devalued since their displacement. Further conversations over time also reveal that stories of visits made by other migrants circulate and influence the expectations of those planning to make a short return trip. Madan Lal had heard about the alleged consumption of beef from friends visiting Kashmir, while his son Suresh recounted a visit made by his maternal grandmother to her village only to find that her house had been demolished to make way for a new road. These return trips are a confirmation of the impossibility of return to Kashmir. In any case, they were more concerned with the employment prospects of Suresh's younger brothers, who were too young to remember Kashmir. Suresh's marriage to a woman from Jammu saw the family expand in size and in connections outside Kashmir. Eventually, during the end of my fieldwork, Madan Lal revealed that he had purchased land in Jammu where eventually he will build a house to pass on to his sons. He had never mentioned this before, as I was a stranger when we first met, though, by the time I was nearly finished, I became someone they came to know. Nevertheless, a return to Kashmir incurs far too many costs to be considered.
A tentative journey home
In 2008, I returned to Jammu for the first time since the completion of my doctoral fieldwork. I found myself in the Bhatt Family quarters in Purkhu camp, like many times before. It was a clear day without a cloud in the sky as I sat on their porch after a heavy lunch of rice, haakh, and rajma. While summer was yet to arrive in its furnace-like fury, the air was beginning to weigh heavy with warmth. I caught the hum of flies, shifting in intensity from faint brittle whispers to an engine-like hum that dissipates with the swaying of a hand, only to return a few moments later. There was not a sound to be heard elsewhere apart from the television in a neighbouring household until the afternoon power cut silenced it. Mohan Lal, the head of the household, had already been sitting outside on their porch and was in a mood to chat on a languid afternoon:
‘We went last year to Kashmir, again, do you know?’ he said
‘Haah. Rohan (his son) had told me.’
‘I had my operation last year, after you left to go back to England. After the operation I felt I needed some rest. We all then went and spent two months in summer in Kashmir.’
‘Did you stay in Srinagar?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We did for a few days. My sister lives there. As you know, Raju(his elder son) is posted there. But I spent most of my time in Khanyar, my village. My yaar, dost were there. I did some work on my land. Repaired walls. Tried to fix our old house a bit. Ahh. It was good. The people there helped us out so much. They tell us ‘come. We will help you.’ And the weather. What lovely weather. Hai Hai. Let's see if we all go again this year.’
He looked on towards the compound just when a still table fan placed on the porch whirled back into life, signalling the end of the power cut.
For the Bhatts, Kashmir represents an ideal. They yearn to return to Kashmir whenever there is a power cut, every time they have to deal with any problems, every time they have to swat mosquitoes, and whenever they have to deal with unpleasant relatives. Before the conflict, the Bhatts enjoyed a comfortable life in their own property. Mohan Lal was employed in the state sector and involved in local-level work for a mainstream Indian political party.
Their first return trip to Kashmir since their displacement had taken place in the summer of 2006. They were visibly excited with the prospect of returning home, and the word wapas (return) floated in the air. The whole family, including Dadaji, Mohan Lal's father, was going. Mohan Lal's younger son, Rohan, was staying back in Jammu owing to work and would join them a few weeks later. Raju, his elder son who was a policeman in Srinagar, had arranged for a place to rent in an area in Srinagar close to where Mohan Lal's sister lived. Priyadarshini looked forward to this coming trip: ‘What wonderful weather it will be at this time. It is already so hot here. But there, you can sit comfortably. There will be fruits on trees. This is the best season to be in Kashmir. What does Jammu have? But who knows what will happen there?’
Their trip in 2006 coincided with a visit I made to Kashmir. I had promised to visit them in Srinagar and, before they had left, they gave me Mohan Lal's sister's telephone number, whose family had never left Kashmir. Priyadarshini advised me to ask for directions at any local shop for ‘Koul Saab's home’ when I reached the area where the house was. When I reached the area, I found a grocery shop and approached the elderly shopkeeper. He seemed surprised when I asked for ‘Koul Saab's home’. ‘Koul Saab. You are looking for Koul Saab? But he passed away,’ he said. ‘Ah, I think his family lives here. Do you have a number? Maybe you can call them and they can come and pick you up.’ He offered me the use of his phone and I called Priyadarshini. She came within a few minutes to pick me up and thanked the shopkeeper. I followed her as we walked into the area through wide paved roads flanked by deep drains. I could not help but notice the roof of a small temple cutting above the limits of a boundary wall pointing to a clear sky. As we walked, I saw large houses, some of which were still in construction. Priyadarshini spoke softly and pointed out that many of these houses were Pandit houses before migration. I later followed her to a non-descript-looking door that I probably would have ignored, seeing the prominent gates of other houses.
Mohan Lal's sister lived in a small house with her grandchildren, where I spent some time over a cup of Kehwa tea while Priyadarshini explained to her how I had met them. Eventually, we left for the place they had rented. When we reached it, Mohan Lal and Dadaji greeted me warmly and urged me to sit down on the carpeted floor. The room was bare except for a suitcase and an old black transistor radio, which was tuned to the Radio Kashmir broadcast. Mohan Lal told me that he had just returned to Srinagar after visiting his village for the first time in 16 years. Some of his old neighbours had come to Srinagar to meet him and they had insisted that he visit them. He had planned to go alone but Priyadarshini insisted on coming along as well. Dadaji, however, had stayed on in Srinagar:
He is old and he needs help. If something happened he would not be able to run away. Hann. So went to our village. We first went like thieves, quietly, chup chap se (without a sound). But when we reached the village. Oh. They were so happy, my old friends. We met everyone there. They cried, we also cried. They looked after us. I told them I will come to rebuild my house and they promised to help us!
I met the Bhatts again when they returned to Jammu. I continued to regard their ‘homecoming’ with a certain measure of optimism. However, when I was speaking to Priyadarshini about how she felt about her visit, she told me that, while she had liked it, she was afraid:
People were nice over there. They really looked after us. We even stayed at a Muslim house. But I made sure I had my own utensils to cook food. After all we cannot eat from a utensil used by a Muslim. If we return . . .. In any case you cannot trust people there!
I was surprised to see how she differed from her husband. But this statement shows how feelings of unease and mistrust persisted. A journey had been made. They met people with whom words and emotions were shared. But somehow homecoming did not result in the cessation of feelings of unease. But this changed. Priyadarshini spoke of the trip they had taken during Mohan Lal's convalescence in 2007, one year after their first visit: ‘It was nice over there. People are good and they have helped us. They have also been suffering as well.’
In late June 2008, after I left the field, violent protests broke out in Kashmir. Soon, protests erupted in Jammu to counter demonstrations in Kashmir, resulting in the imposition of a curfew for several days. The areas where the Kashmiri Pandit camps were located in Jammu were affected and I was concerned when I read that migrants had also participated in demonstrations and altercations with the police. I called them on the phone and, after several attempts, I was able to connect with Rohan. ‘We wanted to go to Kashmir this year again. This problem has now come up. Who knows if it will be safe to go this time,’ Rohan said, sounding quite disappointed. They had planned on continuing with repairs and reclaiming some of their property. However, within a year, once things had calmed down, Mohan Lal returned and, since then, has been travelling to his village on further visits, making repairs on his old home one step at a time.
Divided sentiments
‘Do you know I went to Kashmir with my daughter Neha recently?’ Neeru said as we sat in her office. Another colleague of hers had entered the room shortly afterwards and she shared the experience with her as well. I listened on and could not help but notice the sense of excitement with which she shared these brief glimpses and how she felt on seeing flowers in bloom and fields aflame with mustard and saffron. She also mentioned meeting people when she travelled to rural Kashmir with her daughter: ‘My daughter Neha was so emotional. She even spoke to some of the people. You should come one day before you leave and I will tell you more about the trip.’
Neeru is a government-category migrant who worked in Jammu but remained officially attached to her workplace in Kashmir. Her absence from Kashmir denies her opportunities of promotion and other kinds of career advancement. She is a non-camp migrant and a constituent of the well-to-do strata of Pandits who enjoy a higher quality of life. Her household includes her husband, her elderly father-in-law, and two daughters, who were both raised in Jammu. Migrants in Jammu, who were already employed in highly skilled white-collar professions before displacement, often emphasize a sense of their lives being ‘wasted’ due to the disruption effected by displacement on their professional lives. While Neeru had never expressed this view openly, she would occasionally talk about remaining at the same position, whereas her former colleagues in Kashmir have proceeded with their careers. I interviewed Neeru when she talked about her first visit to Srinagar with her daughter:
I was on one side scared that I would not know what would happen. On the other side I was curious to see what is happening there. Then I wanted to see that place, Kashmir. See my own house, my department what has happened there. Who is sitting on my chair . . . I was involved in the building of the department. But I was wondering . . . should I be going, should I not be going? . . . When I went this time I found Kashmir different. It is not what I left. It was a Friday. Most of the shops were closed. When we were there, they would not be shut down. You would have Kashmiri Pandit shops which would be open. After coming back, I feel I should have stayed some more days. Weather was nice . . .. We visited villages, especially Budgam villages. People were very warm. The area where we went to was a KP locality. Now it is occupied by Muslims. There were some empty houses which were Pandit houses that looked hollow. That made me feel . . . emotional. But then they were elderly people. We were standing on the road. People just looked at me and they were wondering ‘how come a Kashmiri Pandit is here?’ I had all symbols of a Kashmiri Pandit. They looked at me and then I just talked to some. ‘Are you surprised seeing me here?’ They said ‘Yes. How have you come?’ Then I was interacting with some women. They said ‘we have learnt through Kashmiri Pandits, they taught us to read, they taught us sanskaar (culture). They taught us how to live a life.’ Overall they were very warm. The younger generation just looked at me. Then I asked a few of them ‘do you know who is a Kashmiri Pandit?’ How many of you were born after ‘migration’? My daughter was there. They made her speak Kashmiri. They were warm. The elderly must have lived with a Kashmiri Pandit. They lived with them, celebrate functions together, they were positive. When I asked the younger generation, there was little interest. You will find this with Kashmiri Pandits here also. People like me maybe will have some attachment and may go. But the younger generation are detached emotionally. And they are running after professions. They are concerned with their livelihood. But I think the younger generation in the mind still have Kashmir. My daughter asks me. They want to know how the house looked like. What was the place? You talk so much about Kashmir, why don't we visit?
Neeru's father-in-law by then had joined us. He was excited that his granddaughter had gone to Kashmir and saw their old house, which had been sold in the late 1990s. Neeru and Neha were reluctantly allowed by the new owner to enter the house during their visit. What they were struck by was that, even though the house had been sold, it was relatively untouched. Many of their old possessions were still left as they were, including some clothes that had remained on hangers and teacups on the table. While some belongings had been taken away, they found a trunk of old possessions. Neeru and her father-in-law then drifted into memories of the Pandit exodus that talking about their visit seemed to have triggered.
What intrigued me most in the discussion was when her daughter Neha joined the conversation. Neeru had told me earlier that her daughter was deeply affected and moved by the trip to Kashmir. However, Neha held a different view of things:
Actually when I went there I was quite like insecure. How is it going to be? Keep reading in the newspaper the danger. When I went there, it didn't seem like my country. It didn't seem to be a part of India. To be true, it seemed like a part of Pakistan . . .. If you go to parts of India you feel the Indianness. Like you are from Calcutta. When you come to Jammu it is not entirely different. But when I went to Kashmir, it seems everyone wants Pakistan . . .. Everything is green out there.
Everyone laughed on hearing this. I pressed her to clarify what she meant: ‘The colour. The buildings, even the clothes are green. Initially I did not like it at all. I wanted to come back. I remember an uncle asked me which place is better. He expected me to answer Kashmir, but I wouldn't. I was not fond of Kashmir at all.’
The more I asked Neha about her experience, the more it became clear that there was a sharp difference. When Neeru asked her daughter whether she would like to visit Kashmir again, she replied: ‘Look mummy we could not roam freely. Home is where the heart is. Will you be able to work freely? If time changes, then of course. But if it doesn't, what are we to do? Sit in our homes?’
Thinking through different fields
The three cases featured here differ from each other, though they also share some similarities. Neither are they about resettlement nor do they raise the case of resettlement that political discourses with regard to Kashmiri Pandits tend to focus on. But they provide interesting ways of entering the discussion of returning to what was once home for the Pandits. Critically, these cases indicate sentiments of longing, frustration, and ambivalence that states, parties and other commentators ignore due to an emphasis on a repatriation/resettlement ethic. For Madan Lal, the trip he had undertaken proved the impossibility of return. For the Bhatts, repeated trips saw a gradual shift in the way they see Kashmir. For Neeru, her own experience contrasted with her daughter's impressions, which points to the importance of generational differences in attitudes towards returning to Kashmir as well as situating displacement in the context of the life course of forced migrants.Footnote 46 Running through the three cases are two themes that stand out, namely ‘home’ and ‘uncertainty’, which I shall now discuss in the rest of the article.
The matter of home
Forced migrants are typically imagined as lacking home and a fixity of place, which return is expected to restore. But how do populations like the Kashmiri Pandits imagine home? Is home imagined as homeland, region, locality, or the physical structure of a house? Does home exist only in memory and nostalgia, a place that once was but is no more?Footnote 47 Does home refer to social relationships that facilitated life? The three cases featured indicate the multiplicity of images raised by the term ‘home’ and avoid limitations of a nationalist orientation to homeland.
In pragmatic terms, rebuilding incurs significant costs, as it would mean being uprooted again, this time from Jammu, where many had painstakingly rebuilt their lives in exile. Many Pandits may be unable to return to Kashmir to resettle, having either sold their property in Kashmir or losing their property over the ravages of conflict and time. Yet others may not want to return to Kashmir, whether it is out of fear or disenchantment. Another problem relates to the meaning of home itself. Home does not merely refer to material spaces, but also draws upon issues of sentiment and memory.Footnote 48 As indicated earlier, the idea of return is about the idea of home for the displaced, which enables them to establish continuity with the past and enables strategies of adaptation in the present for those facing protracted displacement.Footnote 49
Jansen's work among displaced Bosnians and Serbs following the end of the Yugoslavian civil war is especially interesting for complicating the relationship between the idea and act of returning home. While foreign agencies encouraged repatriation by returning Bosnians and Serbs to their national territories, the displaced held ideas that did not correspond with the former:
people's sense of ‘home’ did not rely on an essential link between nation, self and territory, nor could it be explained solely on the premise of a desire to return safely to one's property in a pre-war, nationally mixed place of residence. A clearer picture of Bosnian yearnings for ‘home’ is obtained if we acknowledge that they were intimately related to a desired sense of worth, which in turn was embedded in a memory of and a longing for a ‘normal life’.Footnote 50
Rather, as Jansen argues elsewhere, home should be seen not only in terms of belonging, but also as a ‘socially constituted object of longing’.Footnote 51
During the period of fieldwork that I spent in New Delhi, I interacted with a group of young Pandit activists who were children at the time of the exodus. Unlike my informants in Jammu, these activists came from families who affirmed the stereotype of the middle-class Pandit. While they faced hardship, their families recouped some of their losses. Hence they were able to acquire an education that enabled them to secure jobs in the private sector and in white-collar work. Their politics was deeply critical of Kashmiri independence, which they dismissed as a movement only for Muslims at the expense of the Pandits. Puran and Ranjit were among the oldest members of the group who worked in multi-national corporations. They were indistinguishable from the Indian Middle Class and reliving the Pandit image of elites in a new form. At one meeting, they asked me whether I thought the Pandits would return to Kashmir and revealed themselves as supporters of Panun Kashmir. Upon hearing this, I asked them whether they planned to resettle in Kashmir. Interestingly, both of them denied any plans for resettling in Kashmir, as their professional ambitions can only be realized in metropolitan cities. Rather it was the principle of having a claim on the land that mattered.
As Markowitz suggests, return migrants face a struggle with the social, political, and cultural meanings of home and that the meaning of home is formed out of moments of rupture, such as displacement,Footnote 52 which is borne out for some Pandits. People like Madan Lal and Neha see Kashmir as now belonging not to them, but to Kashmiri Muslims. The two activists I have just mentioned in turn express their desire for a place in Kashmir because, as Kashmiri Pandits, they have a claim on the land, even if they choose not live their lives there. Yet Mohan Lal, Neeru, and others like them indicate possibilities, not yet fully formed.
At an initial glance, Pandit experiences shares similarities with Israelis of Moroccan origin observed by Levy who return to Morocco to revisit their old homes.Footnote 53 Moroccan Israelis, as Jews, are ostensibly in their ideal homeland in Israel. Yet they retained nostalgic longing for Morocco, which was home in the past and their place of birth. Paradoxically, while Levy's informants emphasize their ‘Moroccanness’ in Israel, after their return visit to Morocco, there is a new emphasis on their ‘Israeliness’ and a feeling that their migration to Israel was the correct decision.
Levy not only reveals the longing for home, but also demonstrates how return drastically colours ‘home’. This is reflected in the narrative of individuals such as Madan Lal. However, Levy also reveals the role of Israeli and Moroccan states in managing the visits of Moroccan Israelis. In other words, the experience of return is forcefully refracted through the logic of the contemporary nation-state, which precludes the ability to access home as known in the past.Footnote 54 With recent shifts in policy such as the employment package mentioned earlier, the Indian state appears to be carving a role in the return of the Pandits to Kashmir, no matter how unclear it may be.
Families like Mohan Lal's introduce a persisting ambivalence through their experiences, which demonstrates an awareness of the conflict and yet defies the total absorption of home into the nation-state. This also emerged when I met their extended kin in Jammu. Priyadarshini's sister's family had also visited their village in Kashmir for the first time since their displacement. While they appreciated the warm reception they had received, they felt that there was still an absence of trust that persisted in Kashmir. As they had put it, ‘wahan ghar khatam ho gaya’ (‘home over there is finished’).
What struck me in their account was that there was very little criticism of the Muslims or mention of politics, which suggests a need to revisit what we understand by the political. Hence, while nationalist politics is critical to discussions of return, it does overwhelm the discussion of return for all Pandits. Rather, Priyadarshini's relative dwelled on life in the past. The pain of life in exile often results from the contrast between an idealized sense of life and home in Kashmir before displacement, in relation to the conditions in the present and uncertainties of life in the future. However, an attention to nostalgia indicates the desire for not only home as place, but also as a time before the conflict. The longing to return to a certain time implies the impossibility of the project of return. Kashmir may have been home in the past, but does it mean it remains home in the present and for the future?
Uncertainty
In 2012, I returned to Jammu to follow up on significant changes in the lives of my informants. One development was the closure of the camps for Pandit migrants, established since their displacement in 1990. The populations of the camps, situated in different sites in Jammu, were transferred to Jagti, a township located in the outskirts of the city. This new colony is regarded as an improvement from the settlements they had inhabited in the past, with the allotment of apartments with attached kitchens and bathrooms. The Bhatts, like many others, were relocated to Jagti. When I visited them there, Rohan remarked:
Who knows how long we will be here in Jagti. We spent so many years in the camp and now we have been moved here. And do you know? Now they are talking about taking us back to Kashmir. Maybe when you return to Jammu next we will be in Kashmir.
In one sense, the question of return remains hypothetical if either no concrete plan of repatriation is proposed and implemented or if the Pandits themselves cannot imagine returning to Kashmir to ‘resettle’. As Levy and Weingrod argue, return trips must be seen as ‘another beginning that develops new contents and new directions’.Footnote 55 Yet another dimension that Jansen raises pertains to precariousness. He observed that displaced Bosnians who returned home were affected by political and economic insecurity, as they were returning to a place that saw a transition from a socialist welfare state that existed before the conflict to a market-driven economy based on private property. As result, the displaced found they lacked the support that enabled dignified life before conflict, unsure of how to adjust to a radically different political economy.Footnote 56 A similar form of precariousness marks life for the Pandits. For example, Rohan, like other youth, had applied for a job in the employment scheme for Kashmiri Pandits to work in government offices in the Kashmir valley, which I have mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, this may not resolve exile, as seen in a news report on Pandits who have found employment in Kashmir:
At the migrant colony near Haal village in Pulwama district, rehabilitation is a temporary phase, a decision that, at least for Ajay Koul, one of its residents, will be weighed against his material aspirations. An employee with the PWD, Ajay moved to the migrant colony in 2010. ‘See, rehabilitation is OK, but return is impossible. Are they going to get us jobs in the corporate sector also? Kashmir doesn't have enough companies like other states that are enjoying the fruits of industrial liberalisation. Why then should we consider returning?’Footnote 57
As Thiranagama points out, home among communities affected by violence and conflict is not just about relationships to the past, but is also about the possibilities of finding a future in which ‘one can flourish personally and collectively’.Footnote 58 For a place to become home again, a ‘sense of hope’ is required.Footnote 59 But what kind of hope or future can we imagine in return? What forms of return are being considered? What if return is marked by uncertainty?
As the material I have presented suggests, communities like the Pandits who have faced displacement due to continuing conflict demonstrate a wide range of attitudes and experiences in return. Groups like the Kashmiri Pandits often regard their state of transience and the loss of roots as a source of continuing pain rather than liberating. But do they imagine a future in Kashmir, which is their homeland, but which became a territory of danger in everyday life and imagination? Do they relate to Kashmir in the present in terms of the social, political, and economic landscape? While return journeys help situate a sense of place from the past, the future remains open and riven by political uncertainties, individual experiences, and localized choices over time.
Conclusion
In this article, I examine the phenomenon of return migration with reference to ethnographic research conducted among the Kashmiri Pandit forced migrants in Jammu and Kashmir. I first situate the experiences of the Pandits as Internally Displaced Persons in the context of scholarship concerning return journeys or homecomings, Kashmiri politics, and in the lives of displaced Pandits themselves. Dominant approaches on return migration in scholarship, policy, and politics neither differentiate between different kinds of return, nor do they distinguish return from resettlement. They ignore the perspectives and agency of displaced communities like the Kashmiri Pandit migrants for whom return is really a journey.
Return must be seen both in terms of action and as an idea. While some members of a cohort of displaced persons may contemplate or carry out a return journey, others may choose not to return at all in any form. This does not mean that the question of return is irrelevant. The impossibility of return is as potent an idea for the displaced as the actual act of return. The materials presented here demonstrate that return as an idea and in practice takes multiple forms. The Pandits return to Kashmir as pilgrims, on employment, or on their own to take a look. They may return individually or with families. Some may treat their journey as a confirmation that one cannot return to resettle in Kashmir due to perceptions of continued threat and the impossibility of living with neighbours from the past. Others may experience the joy of returning to their homeland and satisfy their longing.
For Pandits who embark on return journeys, the experience is marked by ambivalence due to existing traces of what was once home, such as landmarks, neighbours, and old friends, and having to carry them alongside other memories of violence, displacement, and loss. There is also the concern of the risks of return in terms of socio-economic and political insecurity the Pandits may face on resettling in what is still an area of conflict. Resettlement may become a second displacement, especially for those who have rebuilt lives in exile and hence exhibit a ‘paradox of permanence’Footnote 60 —that is, when the displaced yearn to return to place and time before conflict while remaking domestic and social lives, which return will disrupt. The discussion of return journeys also reveals how the experience of displacement in some ways is ignored in the discourse of resettlement articulated by the state and political parties oriented to a sedentary imagination of community.
An intimate engagement with the Kashmiri Pandits on the issue of return eventually leads to two themes: home and uncertainty. The issue of home, its loss, and the struggle to reclaim it is an important part of the experience of forced migration. Home (and homeland) is the subject of longing and nostalgia and political location, whether as citizens or as forced migrants. It is tied to understandings of belonging or feeling out of place. While the Pandits respond to their journeys differently, their experiences demonstrate how return compels the displaced to engage with the meaning of home over time. Their experiences also provide a way to look at an issue in South Asia that has been discussed mainly in the case of transnational migration. Return journeys can be regarded as both constitutive of a new beginning and as an unfinished project. However, it is necessary to recognize the uncertainty with regard to the future that affects the lives of forced migrants, especially for those who have faced protracted displacement in the context of a continuing conflict. It is in recognizing multiplicity in the meaning of return that we may understand how the displaced relate to their place in a world of movement.
