Flashback: Horrific Night of Friday, The '19th January 1990' in Kashmir

FLASHBACK: 30 years back…

‘~So it was around this time that very day… exactly 30 years back… that we all KashmiriPandits experienced this horrific ever night in #Kashmir – called Friday, The #19thJanuary1990…

'It was a typical wintry cool night and we had just finished with our dinner at 'wout' (ground-floor) at around 9:30pm. Now, we were watching Doordarshan (with extremely low volume, for watching Indian TV was banned by the terrorist groups in Kashmir, and our neighbors being their informers).

And, all of a sudden, across all the mosques, we started hearing loudest ‘Azadi Azadi’ slogans coming from the loud-speakers and we absolutely unaware about the intent of this jihadist/fanatic mass cry. Such was the planning, that all this was happening at the same time across all mosques by the masses in entire Kashmir valley.

Along with this sloganeering, masses started drumming the steel roof-tops of their houses and the thundering sound of that ‘mass roof-top drumming’ along with the ‘Azadi-Azadi’ slogans was such that it sent shivers down the spine of every Kashmiri Pandit who was witness to this. It was so frightening one can never ever imagine.

After this at around 9:45pm, masses started coming out of their houses in huge numbers towards the mosques while raising pro-pakistan/anti-India/anti-KashmiriPandit slogans, some of which were:

- 'Kashmir mein agar rehna hai, toh Allah-o-Akbar kehna hai’ (if you Kashmiri Pandits want to stay put in Kashmir, you will have to chant Allah-o-Akbar);

- ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What we want in Kashmir, is the Rule of Shariah); 

- ‘Asyi gachchi Pakistan, Bataovv roas te Bateneyvv saan’ (We want Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan with Hindu women only and not with Kashmiri Pandit men).

- And, not to forget ‘Ralivv… Galivv… Tchalivv’… meaning ‘You Kashmiri Pandits – either get yourself converted, OR get killed OR leave Kashmir.

This was such a scary and chaotic scene (let no one comes across the same in one’s life) that we immediately put off all the lights to ensure a complete black-out inside, had to close all the doors with heavy stuff to support from inside for the mass mobs to find it difficult to enter our home easily (in case so). At the same time, our elder male members (being in a big joint family) sent all the ladies & kids to the top 4th floor of our home, with clear directions on ‘what to be done’ in case such mass mob enters our home and reaches 3rd floor.

This scary & life-frightening chaos continued till midnight.

And, this mass mobilization (wherein all including neighbor’s too participated and became a party to the structured part of the game plan of exodus of entire Kashmiri Pandit community from Kashmir) made it amply clear for Kashmiri Pandits to take a call of moving out of Kashmir.'

[Picture in this post was our HOME where our family witnessed that horrific night  i.e., 19th January 1990.]

And, that was not the end… as this was the curtain raiser for the irrecoverable human tragedy yet to happen to us…..

SK