inam ul rehman
Book: Those who stayed: the Sikhs of Kashmir
Publisher: Manjul India
Pages: 285
While reading Siddharth Gigoo’s latest book “A long season of Ashes” it came to my mind: why haven’t Kashmiri Sikhs written a book on their survival? Kashmiri Muslims have written on the conflict, so have Pandits. But Kashmiri Sikhs? No way.
As I finished Siddharth’s engaging book, I surfed the net to explore my curiosity, and fortunately “Those who stayed: the Sikhs of Kashmir” came up. Written by a 35-year-old Sikh youth, who returned to Kashmir as a PM package employee in 2011, this candid book is a part memoir, and part historical. It is almost written in the same vein as Siddharth Gigoo’s.
Bupinder Singh Bali starts the book from a phone call he receives on October 7, 2021, the day when a Sikhni and a Pandit were killed. The author along with his family delves into the impact of these killings, examining how these types of killings shake their outlook, confidence, and the toll it takes on their daily life. Surprisingly he does not view these killings as communal. “More than a communal killing,” writes he, “it was an ideological killing, sending a message to those who side with India.”
“When a Muslim is killed,” writes the Sikh author, “he becomes a martyr for the Kashmiris. But when a Sikh was killed,” he questions, “(He) did not want azaadi, the cause was not his to die for. So, what could we call his killing? A sacrifice or payment for living in Kashmir.”
Interestingly, the author is quizzed about the killings by a female friend, the former reveals details of the killed Sikhni, but is blank about the others. Unlike others the author does not justify this lack of information. “As human beings,” he writes, “we have an ‘our’ and ‘other’. We associate more with ‘our’, empathise and sympathise more with ‘our’ than we do with the ‘other’. This duality has been defining us always.” How much we know about the Sikhs of Kashmir? They are our neighbours but we are mostly ignorant about them.
For Kashmiri Muslims, Sikhs come across as a friendly community who have always stood for them. No one can forget their help in 2014 floods, or post Pulwama attack in 2019, when Kashmiri students were threatened in many northern states of India.
The author wants to correct the narrative around 1947 tribal raids. In popular discourse the credit for stopping the tribals is given to Abdullah Sherwani or the India army. However, the author writes it were the Sikhs of Kashmir that thwarted 1947 tribal invaders for many days. No one talks about the battle of Ichachma where the Sikhs heroically fought for two days. During this battle with Pathans the Sikhs were given choice to convert to Islam, but as proud Sikhs they refused and were put to the sword.
For standing up against this aggression, and providing the Indian army with a safe passage the Sikh community was ostracised, and cursed for many years by the Kashmiri Muslims. At some places majority of Muslims supported tribal invaders which resulted massacre of Sikhs. Sikh survivors were rehabilitated to many places including Delhi, and returned to Kashmir in 1956! As a result, Sikhs remained at the bottom of the pyramid. Their education was hit, jobs were scarce, and forced by circumstances and discrimination Sikhs migrated to many places of India.
What strikes me in the book is the social commentary on many topics and issues which we in Kashmir do not realise. His wife, a Hindu from Kerala, sums up her husband’s abode: “Kashmir is a retirement place, not for young people who want to live freely.” At another place she says that Kashmiris are a very laidback people, and interfere too much in others’ lives and decision making. For author’s father Kashmir is a negative and mentally stifling place, and he beseeches his son to leave Kashmir for ever, which the author himself is keen to do. For this micro minority, “Kashmir is not a place for Sikhs, for education, for business, for jobs, or living.”
Through his wife, parents, and friends, Bupinder beautifully and subtly informs and introduces us to the socio-political, cultural, educational, economical, religious, and emotional worldview of the Kashmiri Sikhs dismantling many stereotypes in the process. One among them is particularly ingrained in all Kashmiri Muslims: Sikhs of Kashmir come from Punjab! Unlike other authors from Kashmir, he does not hide his love life.
Importantly the author talks about the situation in Kashmir before and after the reading down of Articles 370, and 35(A) of the Indian constitution, and how the Sikhs of Kashmir perceived it. Then there is one aspect which every majority forgets or wilfully ignores in south Asia: educational institutions being not secular. As a Sikh, the author says that he too had to recite verses of the Quran during the morning assembly!
Mind you every community in Kashmir presents itself as the victim. Majority community authors here present themselves as the victim of the Hindu majority, while Pandits focus on Muslim violence, and Kashmiri Sikhs also feel the same.
Factual errors
There are few typos, and factual errors in the book. In 2010 it was not the killing of Pakistani infiltrators, but the alleged encounter of 3 local porters that sparked a protest movement against the Indian army. Zar means wealth not women, its Qamarwari not Kambarwari; Rangreth not Rangratte; similarly, we write trami not trambi, and Kashmiri Muslims’ household do not eat in trami daily, only during special occasions do the latter eat together in copper plates.
Our perennial jokes on Sikhs are in bad taste. We need to respect minority communities no matter which faith, view, they adhere before we ask others to respect us.
This book fills a long gap of our missing narratives. Hope many more Sikhs pen down their experience of living in Kashmir.
We are yet to hear Buddhist perspective, though.
Pic courtesy: Author's X account
