Free Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits by Rahul Pandita Page B

function at the Martand temple. A few days later, he assured people that militancy would end soon.
    On Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, on October 14, a massive crowd gathered near the Budshah chowk in the heart of Srinagar, and from there, it marched towards Eidgah to the graveyard that had been renamed the ‘martyr’s graveyard’. The onlookers cheered and showered shireen on the marchers as if to welcome a marriage procession. That evening, father returned home with a neighbour and they told us they had witnessed the procession. The crowd was shouting slogans that had shocked them.
    Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa
La sharqiya la garbiya, Islamia Islamia
    What will work here? The rule of Mustafa
No eastern, no western, only Islamic, only Islamic
    Zalzala aaya hai kufr ke maidaan mein,
Lo mujahid aa gaye maidaan mein
    An earthquake has occurred in the realm of the infidels,
The mujahids have come out to fight
    It was indeed an earthquake. It toppled everything in Kashmir in the next few weeks. Within a few days the whole scenario changed. There was another series of bomb blasts outside other symbols of ‘Indianness’—India Coffee House, Punjab National Bank, the Press Trust of India. Then the tide turned against wine shops and cinema halls.
    It was only much later that we were able to connect this turmoil to world events occurring around the same time. The Russians had withdrawn from Afghanistan nine years after they swept into the country. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini had urged Muslims to kill the author of The Satanic Verses . In Israel, a Palestinian bomber struck in a bus for the first time, killing sixteen civilians. A revolution was surging across Eastern Europe; and a bloodied frenzy was about to be unleashed against the Armenian Christian community in Azerbaijan.
    In the midst of this chaos, my eldest uncle came from my father’s village to visit us. ‘The water in the spring at the goddess’s sanctum has turned black,’ he whispered. This was considered to be ominous. Legend had it that whenever any catastrophe befell our community, the spring waters turned black.
    That it was indeed a catastrophe became clear on the night of January 19, 1990.

PART TWO

‘K ashmiriyon ki ragon mein Mujahideen aur ghaziyon ka khoon hai … ’ (In the veins of Kashmiris flows the blood of the Mujahideen and the destructors of the infidels …)
    Her face quivers as she shouts at the top of her voice, and her dupatta keeps slipping down. But her lipstick remains intact. It is her moment, undoubtedly. With every drop of bile coming from Benazir Bhutto’s mouth, the mammoth crowd’s cheers grow noisier until they turn into a stormy sea. And her voice runs like a tide over it. Her rabidness is a Godzilla.
    ‘ Har eik gaanv se eik hi aawaz buland hogi: Azadi! Har eik masjid se eik hi aawaz buland hogi: Azadi! Har eik school se baccha-baccha kahega: Azadi, Azadi, Azadi! ’
    (From every village will rise a cry: Azadi! From every mosque will rise a cry: Azadi! From every school, every child will let out the cry: Azadi, Azadi, Azadi!)
    It is 1990, seventeen years before Benazir’s ghazis would end up devouring her.
    In one giant leap, it hops over from Islamabad to Kashmir. And it manifests itself in the house of a Pandit in Budgam district. Bhushan Lal Raina lives with his mother in Budgam’s Ompora area and works at the Soura Medical Institute. The developments in Srinagar have scared him and he wants to escape to Jammu. A day before he is to leave, armed men barge into his house. Raina’s old mother begs them to spare her son. ‘He is about to get married; kill me if you want, but spare him,’ she implores. But the ghazis won’t listen. One of them pierces Raina’s skull with an iron rod. Then they drag him out, strip him, and nail him to a tree.
    Throughout 1990, Pandits are picked up selectively and put to death. They are killed because Kashmir needs to be cleansed of them. And if the one chosen is not to be found, a proxy