During the day, the region of Poonch in Pir-Panjal these days is becoming a newfound host to adventure activities like paragliding and river-rafting, but the nights are filled with rumour-mongering, fear generated from some recent state advisories and notices.
In the Degwar-Maldyalan village, while looking up in the sky at a group of the day’s first few paragliders taking flight, Madan Lal (name changed), addressing the flyers, remarked in Pahari: “Dhyan rakhyo thoda, sidhha udyo, aey na hovey ke hawa puthi chale te tuss paarli side jaayi labbo [Be careful and fly straight, lest the wind change course and push you to the other side across the Line of Control].”
The rumours of the advisories being circulated around in the local news channels, asking local folks not to leave their homes after nine in the evening, are both ironic and humorous at the same time, given their wording, such as – ‘No one in the village or far-flung areas should be seen during the night, wrapped in shawls or blankets during these tense times’.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
Besides the irony of defining ‘far-flung’ in these borderlands already situated on extreme hostile fronts, what is also interesting is to see these advisories asking people not to be seen in a shawl or chaddar – which is a predominant choice in everyday clothing among both men and women here.
These advisories are the culmination of a long period of socio-political churning that Pir-Panjal has been witnessing, especially in the post-Article 370 abrogation era after 2019. The phantasm of peace at the borders brought in by the declaration of a ceasefire in February 2021 between the militaries of India and Pakistan was broken when in the October of the same year, an attack on Indian troops by militants occurred in Dera ki Gali (DKG).
Even though the ceasefire at the borders brought much-needed respite to scores of villages that have been up in flames every now and then, the attack, however, changed everything, with the situation quickly deteriorating after that.
Pir-Panjal had seen many such attacks and counter-attacks between the military and militants in the past decades, especially during the bloody nineties and the millennium’s turn, but these fresh attacks, occurring after a long period of relative peace and quiet, also ushered in a new spectre of violence, with the attacks being carried out with sophisticated weaponry and duly videographed by militants using bodycams, and the videos later shared on social media pages such as those of the People’s Anti-Fascist Front, a proxy of the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM).
This new style of insurgency, while challenging the military as a mighty equal if not less, was clearly aimed at gathering mass appeal.
A lot has brewed since the Dhangri killings and the brutal custodial torture of three Gujjar men at Topa Pir. Scores of insurgency and counter-insurgency have since then turned Pir-Panjal into a battleground with significant civilian casualties and injuries such as recently in Reasi.
As Pir Panjal simmers, people on the ground in these hills have continued with their lives despite the violence, fear and uncertainty looming large in their subconscious, much reminiscent of ‘the troubles of the nineties’.
As soon as you cross the Nowshera bridge on the way to Poonch, the evident heavy deployment all along the highway of the new armoured light specialist vehicles reminds one of the fast-changing situation. The one-tons and stallions have become household names, with the elderly mistaking them for tanks at times – ‘badi gaddi’ (‘big vehicle’) as they call them.
The regular sounds of military whistles and the no-entry zones in and around the villages are on a rampant rise. Such restrictions come and go depending on the level of the threat perceived by the state and its apparatuses, often proving to be an unnecessary regimen in the day-to-day routine of civilians.
Gates come up where there had been no gates before, and villagers and other civilians are asked to show identification papers in corners that were freely accessible just a day ago, often leading to much difficulty for cattle grazers and villagers who live on the frontline.
While moving towards Kalsan, a village along the Line of Control in Degwar-Terwan, an elderly man named Shaqeel (name changed) hastily walked to join an entry queue at a security gate on his way home. When asked about the tough times, Shaqeel said: “Mahol siddha kadun hoya? [When has the situation been better here?]”.
The hills have eyes here, and so do the villagers. They gauge the changing times and see through them in order to make survival possible. As the evenings approach, most villages along the Line of Control take a deserted look after sunset, a sort of undeclared curfew. There is no authority declaring this curfew but the authority of the mind, wary of untoward incidents from the past recurring in the present and the near future.
One can see the village defence committees, the self-proclaimed law of the land, suddenly turning proactive in self-defence, communicating through WhatsApp groups to keep a check on any suspicious movement in the villages and often meeting for intermittent drills trying to keep their rusty .303 rifles alive so that they are able to fire if indeed such a situation arises.
In the meantime, much like its beloved river on whose banks it sits, all sorts of stories keep meandering through everyday spaces like ration depos, bus-stands and local shops in Poonch. The local men in villages gather around all day in that one beloved hatti-shop, and sitting on those flat, long benches that have over time lost their wooden colour and have settled for somewhere between grey and white, discuss the news of the day.
One such story found Vinayak when he recently visited Essawali Dhok in the higher reaches of Mandi tehsil in Poonch a few weeks ago. A man dressed in a metal-grey salwar-kameez, an old shade of cloth that is still a favourite among the men of this region, asked for a lift. He was standing next to a general store, one of the old ones that have multiple shafts of their doors numbered in the order in which they are supposed to be locked and unlocked.
With a quick ‘Allah salamat rakhe’ as soon as he entered the car, conversation flowed. From discussing how the lack of rain was affecting the village to development and tourism prospects in recent years, one thing that really unsettled him was the rampant road construction work widely undertaken and ongoing in the district. Pointing to his piece of land, now lying fallow and filled with construction debris and stones, he lamented, “They cut roads in every direction and the debris slides down to our graves”.
Also read: Five Years After Article 370, J&K Continues to be a Tragic Saga of Control and Erasure
Much of what he discussed that day about the laying of roads in his village hinted at the need to be mindful of sustainable development, especially given the unstable ecosystems these towns and villages nestled in the Panjals are.
No roads that finally connect these villagers to nearby towns after decades of a life lived without basic roads and amenities should come at the cost of the complete annihilation of these already vulnerable Himalayan niches. A development cry, whatever that entails, cannot overlook the local vernacular traditions and ways of life that have so far held Poonch – the land of seven lakes – in Pir-Panjal by a thin thread.
Walking towards the Naawan maidan in Maldyalan, across an abandoned military post with broken trenches, erased coordinates and crawling bunkers, a Bakkerwal woman, Hameeda (name changed), rearing cattle on the maidan, when approached by Saatvik and Vinayak to discuss the growing tense situation, smiled and laughingly said, “Bhun taahri vich hawa ni lagni, ass maal-maveshi leyi upar post kol jaane aan, uthe changi hawa lagni [It’s mostly too warm these days for my cattle, we often take cattle grazing near the frontline picquets on both sides up ahead, a nice cool breeze flows up there that help cool the cattle down].”
A special police officer (SPO), a local villager, observed from a distance and came closer to take part in the conversation.
Hameeda was quick to notice his approach and knew well the purpose of an SPO walking around those border heights. With a playful smirk on her face and addressing the SPO, she shouted at the top of her lungs, immediately switching to Gojri: “Oh ji keh kara tamm, eh do geyro taaron auraar langh ke itt aa gya [You do not seem to be doing your duty properly, do you even know these two boys sitting here asking me strange questions have crossed the (barbed) wire into this side from across the border]!”
A wave of fear crept inside Saatvik and Vinayak’s chest. Even though Vinayak belongs to the same village Hameeda is from, both were not carrying any kind of identity documents to prove it. Her words brought a few seconds of silence, and then a smile on everyone’s face. She was very much proud of the prank she was able to pull off at the time.
There is a lot being discussed in the media today about the deteriorating socio-political situation in the Pir Panjals. Some of this comes from a security angle, pointing to the various insurgent groups operating in the region and the never-ending tales of attacks, while simultaneously keeping in view the infighting between proxies of the JeM, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen along with an ever-swelling military footprint.
Others move away from a security perspective and take into consideration Pir-Panjal’s unique multi-ethnic, multi-religious demography, and the calls to ensure that the biradari–bhaichara ties in these hills remain protected.
But ultimately, the need of the hour is to take note of the fact that the lives of the people on the ground who call Pir-Panjal their home have continued to remain disrupted.
A plethora of bad policies by the government in the recent past has led to alienation and the widening of social-cultural fault lines, further jeopardising the already vulnerable but very important diversity in Jammu and Kashmir.
Not going into rhetoric, what is absolutely crucial today, five years after abrogation and the downgrade of the state into a Union territory, is that the fate of Pir-Panjal and Jammu and Kashmir should be best left to its people to decide. There’s an urgent need to restore full statehood and democratic processes, while hopes of restoring the region’s special status through legal means are kept alive despite the Supreme Court’s decision in December.
Letting people take control of their present and future through free and fair elections and due representation is a pressing priority. The hills have eyes, and it is the natives who these hills nestle who can, together, best see their own present and future in the lands they call home.
Malvika Sharma has been writing on borderlands in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Saatvik Sudan is a political science master’s student at Jamia Millia Islamia. Vinayak Bhardwaj has a master’s in literature from Jamia Millia Islamia. All of them belong to Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir.
Read more from the series here.