One of the largest student mobilisations in post-Independence history and a decade and a half after the Emergency went unremarked and unnoticed in the present discourse.
The release of the Kashmir Files has opened the door to the long-held silence over the issue of the Kashmiri Hindu genocide. The power of the film is that it manifests experience with imagery and sound, crystallises imagination in a way that few other mediums are capable of and creates memories where none existed. The Kashmir Files has done that magnificently, which is more than evident in the audience’s visceral response to the film. However, the impact of cinema must not let us forget the sustained efforts that have been made to keep the plight of Kashmiri Hindus alive in public memory. It has been a pursuit for decades to highlight the injustice done to the minority Hindu community in Kashmir. The ecosystem that had presented itself as the vanguard of morality and human rights maintained a studied silence. Over the years, attempts to highlight the issue were met with stoic silence and those who spoke out were marginalised to serve the larger narrative of an “Azad Kashmir”.
Hence, it is of little surprise that one of the largest student mobilisations in post-Independence history and a decade and a half after the Emergency went unremarked and unnoticed in the present discourse. The ABVP, the largest student body in the world, in the fall of 1990 took on a momentous challenge. In an era that preceded the conveniences of modern communication tools like WhatsApp and the internet, a group of determined students decided that the territorial integrity of India must be preserved and the injustice meted out to Kashmiri Hindus recorded. This was not a first for the student organisation that, since its inception, had answered the call of national duty, leveraging the power and energy of youth into an unequivocal voice. It had done so earlier as well, in times of national crisis, responding to exigencies in all corners of Bharat, be it the fight for the liberation of Goa, the China and Pakistan wars, or the insurgencies in the Northeast and Punjab. In September of 1990, after the endless night of June 1990, thousands of students associated with the ABVP headed for Jammu with plans of marching on to Srinagar and hoisting the Tricolour in the city, which had become the hotbed of extremist activity. It was the sort of brave precocity that afflicts the young, but it was not in thought or speech alone but in the steps that took these students—boys and girls alike to Jammu. On 11 September 1990, a few months after Kashmiri Hindus faced the devastating atrocities that rendered them homeless and refugees in their own land, thousands of students gathered in Jammu’s Parade Ground. Those who were there on that momentous day, say that the air was thick with slogans of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and “Kashmir humara hai”. The Parade Ground that day was a mini India, a mosaic of languages and identities from all parts of India, coming together for Bharat Mata, at a time when her very essence was being challenged most violently. They spoke multiple languages and in many cases had travelled thousands of miles to reach this point; it was not to be the end of their journey, they were to march onwards to Srinagar and hoist the Indian flag. These aspirations were frustrated by the authorities, who decided that it was much too dangerous to permit their onward march. But on that day in September, what it meant to be Indian and to passionately believe in nationhood, was a language that all understood despite their linguistic differences. It was a day when young India insisted on being heard.
However, the march to Jammu—known as the “Save Kashmir” campaign—had been a response to the alarming and escalating troubles in the valley. A five-member study team from ABVP visited Kashmir in the second week of April 1990 and met with a variety of stakeholders, including some of the extremists to gauge their intentions and strategy. There was an inevitability about the direction in which the disquiet in Kashmir was heading, majoritarian intolerance was raising its head and the minority Hindu community were increasingly vulnerable. In the NEC of the ABVP in June of that year, a resolution was passed, which was cautionary as well as determined—under no circumstances would India’s territorial integrity be compromised.The communication network in the student community of the ABVP was already active. In January of that year, the town of Anantnag saw the Tricolour being burnt and stone pelting on the BSF troops. Since then the situation was only worsening. On 20 June marked as Sankalp Diwas when the Save Kashmir campaign was launched, it was a series of events that “crescendoed” with the gathering at Jammu’s Parade Ground in September.
Earlier in the year, an outreach was planned where 20 students, of whom five were girls, travelled across the country highlighting the Kashmir situation and drawing the youth of the nation into the conversation. Their purpose was not only to speak of the violent message the terrorists wished to send to the rest of the country, but also to tell the students about the sufferings of Kashmiri Hindus, who were already being forgotten. In August of 1990, a nationwide college bandh was announced and adhered to with great success, calls for the removal of Article 370 gained strength and the next generation of Indians awakened to the importance of a fully integrated India. Three decades later the removal of the contentious Article during Narendra Modi’s Prime Ministership was welcomed across the country with a sense of personal satisfaction and gratitude.
The purpose of recounting these remarkable months in 1990 is to highlight how steadfastly the groundwork was laid for a social consensus and awareness on the horrors of those months. Despite the decades of propaganda that aimed to dilute and even erase the sufferings of the Kashmiri Hindu community, backed by powerful forces, a group of college students countered the propaganda in grand displays and quieter conversations. The impact of their commitment although unheralded, lived on in oral history and on college campuses, where young Indians learnt of that terrible blot in India’s post Independence history. That generation of college students from the 1990s are the adults of today. The film The Kashmir Files releases at a time when their children are on the cusp of beginning their adult journeys as citizens. These children, unlike their parents, are coming of age in an India that refuses to shrink away from the truth, however painful it might be. And in some measure, Generation Young India today have their parents’ generation and some college students to thank.
Advaita Kala is an author and award winning screenwriter.