Rajesh describes a project to bring internally displaced Pandits closer to their roots
(Mr. Rajesh Bhat, 43, was born in Sopore. He did his primary schooling in Sopore and completed a Master’s degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from the University of Kashmir. He passed the University Grants Commission (UGC) National Eligiblity Test (NET) for lecturership in Journalism, and worked as a Lecturer-Journalism at the Sri Partap College of Communication and Management in Jammu. Mr. Bhat’s career as a journalist started with the Kashmir Times and later he joined the Daily Excelsior. He currently works as a Program Executive on a news segment of the All India Radio and contributes special reports to leading national and local print and online dailies, including the Tribune and the Trans World Features. Mr. Bhat has reported issues of political and human interest in the wake of ongoing insurgency in J&K.)
Documentary on anecdotes of Kashmir villages on cards
Jammu: A widely travelled official of the Postal Department has taken up a mega project of documenting the history and the anecdotes linked with 595 villages of Kashmir, where Kashmiri Pandits used to live, along with the local Muslims, prior to their mass migration in 1990.
Assistant superintendent of post offices, Udhampur, Chander M Bhat, who is tirelessly working on this project for the last five years, hopes that his efforts will help the young generation in exile to know about their roots, legacy and the rich cultural heritage of the community. He has named this project in typical Kashmiri as “ool”, (the nest), believing that every individual, who has lost his nest in the valley, will derive some kind of solace after going through this well researched document, based on six volumes, each carrying 2,500 pages.
This six-volume project, the maximum portion of which has already been completed, carries the historical and religious background of each village, where Pandits were living since ages. Besides the description of the eminent personalities produced by the village, it has a mention of the village deity, the location and the topography of the village and the population of the Pandits before their migration.
Chander, originally a resident of Murran village of Pulwama district of Kashmir, said “Ool also carries the details of village springs and brooks and the names of all those religious places that were visited and equally revered by Hindus as well as Muslims.”
He said the project also intends to carry all those incidents that took place in the respective villages, after 1990, when the militancy was at its peak.
These 595 villages and localities, about which the history has been documented, fall in all the major districts of the North, Central and South Kashmir, besides the city of Srinagar.
(The Tribune)