Image and Narrative points contributed by Anil Dhar, Mumbai
This is probably the first, and as it turned out, the last ever photograph taken of my entire Kashmiri Pandit extended family. The Dhar Family. My grandmother, Tara Dhar, stands second from right in the top row, and my grandfather Raghunath Dhar, fourth from right in the same row. Between the men is my great grandmother, Sokhmal Dhar. The family was photographed in Vicharnag, a small village situated on the outskirts of Srinagar, Kashmir.
Vicharnag when translated, means “the spring of contemplation”. The village has a centuries-old temple complex which housed several Pandit families including mine for hundreds of years. The Dhar family belongs to the Kashmiri Pandit community – the only Brahmin Hindu community native to Kashmir. These were also good times, when ties between all communities, be it Hindu or Muslim, were strong and warm.
This picture holds so many cultural nuances. For instance, the headgear of the elder male members was different from the younger male members. Moreover, the women were not in purdah (veiled) displaying some liberal social and cultural aspects of the community at the time.
After belonging to a land for centuries, the families were forced to uproot themselves because of Indo-Pakistani border War of 1947, and then again in 1990 because of the eruption of radical militancy and ethnicity based massacres by subversives, on the Pandits. It is said that approximately 250,000 of the total Kashmiri Pandit population left the Kashmir valley during the 1990s. Soon every single member of the Dhar family too fled Vicharnag for good.
Their derelict temple complex and abandoned houses are now occupied by squatters and carry a hazy memory of the community who lived there so long. Most of the family’s descendants now live all over the globe, and today Vicharnag has no Kashmiri Pandits.
