Thou shalt love thy neighbour...

Mukhtar Ahmad in Srinagar

While the entire Kashmir valley busied itself with purchases for the Id festival on February 9, the residents of Karan Nagar locality in Srinagar city were busy performing the last rites of their Hindu neighbour Shamlal, aged 80, who had passed away on the same day.

Shamlal had chosen to stay back with his mentally-handicapped daughter, Santosh Kumari, while almost all his community members, including his relatives, had fled the valley in 1990.

With none from his community left back in Karan Nagar locality, his Muslim neighbours performed his last religious rites, right from preparing the dead body to lighting his funeral pyre; every minute detail was carried out by his Muslim neighbours who had been fending for him while he was alive.

Emotion and communal amity, both were at their best, and those who witnessed the Muslim neighbours showering Gangajal (holy water from the Ganges) on the dead body, would hardly have believed that so much blood could have been shed in Kashmir.

As a mark of respect for the departed soul, the Muslims in the locality did not even go about the normal Id festivities. Instead, they were looking for ways to console his mentally-handicapped daughter who was not even able to fathom her great loss. In fact, she was the only person who ate a normal meal on that day. Everyone around offered Santosh Kumari their sympathy and food.

The death and cremation of Shamlal is not the first of its kind. In the past also, similar emotional scenes have been witnessed in the valley. Women lamenting the death of an elder in the locality and the genuine grief cutting through religious and communal lines have been the hallmark of the Kashmiri people.

Eyewitnesses in the locality told this correspondent that what they saw on that day was the real face of Kashmir and whatever might happen in the valley, they have taken an oath to keep the flame of communal harmony alive and burning.

Due to the migration of the Kashmiri Hindus, there are few purohits (priest) left behind who can perform the religious rites of their community brethren still staying in the valley. The few available carry on their normal life among their Muslim brothers in remote villages and inaccessible hamlets of the state.

Notwithstanding the resolve of Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah to bring Kashmiri Hindus back to the valley, most of the migrants disagree with the official version that the situation has improved to the extent that they can return to their roots and live normally like they did before.