I wish to start my presentation with a story about a friend living in Wayne, New Jersey (USA) – Mr Bhupendra Gadhavi, a NRI for 5 generations now. Starting 1880, one of his ancestors left Bhavnagar, Gujarat for Zanzibar, off the coast of east Africa, gradually moved to Kenya and Uganda. My friend was born in Uganda and his entire clan got uprooted in 1973 by Idi Amin; they were forced to migrate to UK as refugees where they had to start from zero. Over the last 50 yrs, they have blossomed further, spreading to US and several other countries. I visited Mr Gadhavi’s home in March 2022 and felt I was entering a typical Gujarati household – from the décor to food and language spoken. Interestingly, Mr Gadhavi and his wife HAVE NEVER VISITED INDIA yet their hearts beat for India; they retain their Gujarati culture down to the last comma! The impact of migration has been zero! This goes on to show that damage due to uprooting can be minimized!

• This is our 7th Exile since 1389 AD.
  • Each strike on us left a collateral damage yet, the first 6 exiles did not break our determination of adhering to our cultural roots
  • Our 7th exile is in its fourth decade and the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight. We are facing a unique challenge – we have en-mass migrated into an ocean called India and the chances of our losing our identity over a period are real.
• Loss of Moorings and Habitat:
  • Our community was confined to the 135x32 km ‘intermontane’ valley over last 5000 odd years
  • In Srinagar, we were confined within the 7 bridges
  • Loss of moorings and habitat has impacted our lifestyles; many amongst us failed to adapt
  • Some effects of migration became evident immediately – including various physical and psychiatric disorders.
  • The mid-term impact of our Exodus is becoming apparent now
  • We have now scattered not just across India but a healthy proportion is nowadays in different parts of the world.
  • Distances have impacted relationships. Gone are the days we used to visit our Matamal or when half a dozen cousins would play together, even sleep in one room.
• Loss of Cultural Moorings: Having got scattered all over India, there is a strong chance that we may lose our Cultural Moorings and our connect with our socio-cultural traditions. The defining parameters are:
  • Our Samskaras: The way we observe our socio-religious rituals has changed. KPs used to follow the Logakshi Paddhati amongst Grehsutras with 24 Samskaras. Today, not many KPs would be conversant with this term. Likewise, many of our rituals/ customs that were a part of the Samskaras have fallen into disuse. These traditions and rituals are very much a part of KP culture. I understand there can be practical difficulties in following our rituals the traditional way, living as we are in diverse locations. Yet, we need to be aware of our Culture. Small little things about our culture and religion that we need to know, follow, and pass on to our next generation. I have, over the last year or so, tried to highlight the socio-religious relevance of important Samskaras, trying to document those in simpler terms for our GenNext.
  • Our Language: One of the first visible impacts is on our younger generation’s aversion towards Kashmiri as the language at home. Our children are more comfortable conversing in the local language of the place they are staying in. However, as an optimist, I feel that some activity has started towards revival of Kashmiri as well as Sharada language. Kosam on-line Classes conducted by Sh MK Raina, Mumbai, Sh Kuldeep Dhar who brings out Maatrika magazine in Sharada from Surat. Several other people are working towards this end! David Ben Gurion could revive Hebrew 2000 yrs after it had fallen into disuse only when Jews started returning to Palestine! Reviving a language is possible provided we have some geographical common ground – a land we can call our own. Obviously, Ghar Wapsi is the only long-term solution.

How and what can prevent this loss?
Activating our Cultural Centres and group gatherings:
KPs have been migrating since 1389 but those who migrated 200-300 yrs back, felt the need for creating some space for social gatherings. We had Kashmiri Mohallas in Lucknow, Gwalior, Allahabad etc and Kashmiri Sabhas in one form or the other in Lahore, and Amritsar (1908) etc. Post independence saw proliferation of KP Sabhas in important cities as the KP diaspora spread. My family was in Jammu in 1970s and we used to be at the Ambphalla office of KS Jammu on every ‘aathem’, punim, zang-trey and other important festivals or religo-social events. In the last 3-4 decades, KP Sabhas have even created excellent infrastructure for conducting socio-religious events. I performed Maenzyraath and Mekhala of my son at one such facility at Faridabad in 2019. Our Sabhas shall need to be more active socially to help conserve our cultural identity.

Giving our GenNext a strong cultural base at home:
This responsibility must be borne by EVERY SINGLE KP. We must give our kids an early introduction to our religion and what constitutes our culture. Please remember the most telling comment of the movie The Kerala Story – when ‘Shalini’ tells her father:

Our generation is guilty of providing poor training about religion and culture to our younger generations. Most of us adults take pride in being ‘not very ritualistic’ if not showing apathy exactly. Home is where our kids learn. Our kids, by and large, emulate their elders. How many of us observe as basic a ceremony as Vohorvod? Gradually, events like gaad-batt and kshytche-mavas have lost relevance. Mostly, Mekhala, the most important of our Samskaras is performed a day or two before Vivah with plenty of shortcuts. Pandit jis, nowadays are performing most of the Samskars, from Garbhadan to Zar Kasay to Kahnethur along with Mekhala, not being sure if those have been performed as per schedule given in our Dharmashastras. During weddings, Photographer gets more weightage than the Pandit Ji performing the ceremony! How many of us even perform daily pooja at home? If we adults are not ready to take up our responsibility, we better stop crying about loss of culture.

Marrying outside community – leading to dilution: In March 23, I attended a Salam Get Together function in Edmonton, Canada – a gathering of about 80 odd people. I saw 12 mixed couples amongst the gathering – couples with Gujarati, Marwari, Punjabi, Tamil, Malyali, Bihari partners. However, all the people were happy to participate in what was essentially a Kashmiri function with Nadur-Yakhyin, Rogan Josh and Tchakal Chaman on offer!

Vinati Sukhdev, London based scion of an ‘old Kashmiri’ family wrote recently in the South Asia Monitor those earlier migrants by and large maintained the gene pool purity with little or no marriages outside the close group of KP families! They retained their Kashmiri Identities, irrespective of having zero contact with Kashmir for a couple of centuries. “My parents' strictures were clear - contact with non-Kashmiris was on a need-to basis. They were friends, never relatives. We met them at work or in educational institutions. And we never (God forbid) married them. Right up to my generation, both my sister and I married Purana Kashmiris; people like us”.

As our kids are exposed to non-Kashmiri classmates or colleagues, some interaction is bound to happen. Our people have shown remarkable openness in accepting boys and girls from other communities as part of the family.

In such mixed marriages, much depends on how culturally strong our own children are, how much exposure they have to our rituals and cultural practices. I speak from personal experience – my daughter and son both are married to non KPs but in both households, EVERY SINGLE KASHMIRI RITUAL, including preparing and distributing Roth on Pann, Kheer on Sahibi Satam, ‘Watukj Bharun’ on Herath, performing preypyun on Vohorvod – all these are observed. Both my son-in-law and DIL can understand and speak a smattering of Kashmiri by now!

Personally, I see a lot of parallels between KPs and Jews. Both communities were forced to flee their homelands, their temples desecrated and broken several times. Jews suffered exile for almost 2000 years, spread all over the globe, spoke the language of the country they lived in. During their exile period, even while scattered in different countries, Jewish communities were able to retain their culture, traditions, and religious practices. They made their younger generations remember the destruction of Temple of Jerusalem through numerous symbolisms. A square cubit of the wall of every Jewish house was kept unpainted in memory of the fallen Temple of Jerusalem. On his wedding day, every groom would put ash on his head in memory of the fallen Temple. The Bride and Groom would crush a glass of wine under their feet as an expression of their grief for the destruction of Temple of Jerusalem. Likewise, on important religious occasions like Passover and Yom Kippur, prayers would end with a Hebrew expression L'Shana Haba'ah B'Yerushalayim, meaning Next Year in Jerusalem! The traditional toast for wishing health and happiness remained L’chaim-To Life, whether in Hebrew or in Yiddish; in context of their tragic history of persecution culminating in the holocaust, it certainly is very meaningful!

KPs have suffered religious persecution and cultural terrorism since 14th century. Some of our negative traits like being highly individualistic, very selfish, prone to ’intra- community jealousy’, are being attributed to the inhuman persecution by the Pathans and by Muslim rulers. Our people developed an ‘individual survival instinct’ as against a group survival instinct that we see in the Sikhs and Muslims. We have refused to learn from our miseries and our chequered history. A visit to the Migrant Relief Offices in Jammu, manned mostly by KP employees, mostly 1990 Exodus victims themselves, is very enlightening about lack of our ‘community spirit’! This, plus our inability to accept anything/ anyone as a leader, marks us out. Dr Chaim Weizmann, former leader of the World Zionist Organization has said about Jews,” If you have two Jews in a room, you are bound to get three opinions!” To quote MJ Akbar, “This community has a remarkable capacity of endless splitting,”! We indeed must wait for a David Ben Gurion to lead us back to our homeland!

Kashmiri Pandits are an endangered species today because numerically we are miniscule (globally <1 million). Any dilution in our gene-pool can make us extinct. We are also scattered all over India and the globe. Post 1990 exodus, we stand deprived of our homeland, our sacred religious symbols that held us together for over 5000 years. Return to Kashmir is not a viable option today or even, for next two generations at least, given the socio-political conditions in India today! Unfortunately, we do not have a centralized authority like the World Zionist Organization that could bring cohesiveness amongst various organizations working at diverse locations. It is, therefore, imperative for us to stay connected, keeping alive our culture, our heritage, and religious practices. Every KP man and woman shall need to contribute by giving their progeny a thorough socio-cultural base; home is where religion, culture and language take root in a child. Our socio-cultural and religious organizations shall need to move beyond performing occasional ‘havans’ and start engaging future generations in serious information dissemination about our rich socio-religious heritage. How many societies can boast of a +5000-year-old history, heritage, culture? How many societies have the legacy of Rishi Kashyap, of Abhinavgupta, of Kalhan, of Panini, Maharishi Charak, Acharya Vasugupt, Acharya Kshemraj, Emperor Lalitaditya? Hope springs in me when I see a young Shivani Bhan Dhar bring out a brilliant Newsletter ‘Kashmir As It Is’(KAII) dedicated entirely to KP culture, singlehandedly from Singapore, or, when I see a young lady, Dr Archana Kokroo heading the KOA in the US! That we survived seven exoduses gives me hope!