Hyderabad: On January 25, 1990, when a group of terrorists led by the then Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militant Yasin Malik, gunned down officers of the Indian Air Force in Sanatnagar in Srinagar, 14-year-old Rahul Razdan, who was inside his house, could hear the gun shots and the commotion that followed.
Rahul’s father Roshan Lal Razdan had just stepped out of the house to buy bread and the Razdan family was worried for his safety as Kashmiri pandits were increasingly being attacked all across the Kashmir valley. Gun shots could be heard everywhere and stories of how Kashmiri pandits were being slaughtered were widespread. Luckily, Roshan Lal hid behind a truck while the militants opened fire at the IAF officials with their assault rifles.
“That was the period when Kashmiri pandits were being butchered, their eyes being gouged out, bodies chopped and women raped. All of us had to flee the Kashmir valley. But now, I will go back to the valley and start life afresh there. Never mind if I do not get a job there, I will figure out something. But I want to die in the land where I was born (Srinagar),” says Rahul Razdan, now 42, who works for an MNC in Gachibowli.
“In the colony where I used to stay, there were eight more Kashmiri pandit families. In a matter of days, only two were left and after the heightened violence targeting us, we too decided to leave.
“On the radio, when the then Prime Minister would say that Kashmir is an integral part of India which can never be separated, it had no meaning. But today, with the scrapping of Article 370, it conveys the true meaning that India is one,” says Razdan.
For the 200-odd Kashmiri pandits who have made Hyderabad their home for decades now, today’s announcement by the Centre of scrapping Article 370 and 35 A which gives special powers to Jammu and Kashmir, brought smiles on their faces. Their happiness over the Centre’s move knew no bounds.
“We never imagined that there would come a day when J&K would be bifurcated and Article 370 will be scrapped. I had given up all hope that something like this would happen in my lifetime. Now that it has, it is only a matter of time before I am back in my home town Srinagar,” smiles Mr Razdan.
He adds that over the last few days, while there was intense speculation that the Narendra Modi government is likely to scrap Article 370, the Kashmiri pandits living in Hyderabad had kept their fingers crossed.
“For close to 29 years we have been living like refugees in our own country. But not any more. I am just waiting for things to settle down and I will go back to Srinagar. I feel bad for my grandfather and father who breathed their last away from their home town. But I would want to die there,” says an emotionally charged Rahul Razdan.
