These days, Anil Kaul spends a lot of time reflecting on whether his job switch from the corporate sector in Maharashtra to a government teacher’s position in Kashmir was the right decision he made five years ago.
The 36-year-old sturdy man left a cushy situation in a multinational company based out of Nagpur to take up a teacher’s job in Kashmir under the prime minister’s special package for displaced Kashmiri Pandits in 2017. Kaul had served in the private company for 10 years and showed a lot of promise, but while his family wanted him to return, some friends and relatives warned him about the “bad career move".
“For five years I worked around a few schools in Kashmir. I was content that I was serving in my place of birth that I had left in 1990 when I was only four," he said, adding, “I stopped thinking I had left a rewarding job. The feeling of being home overpowered everything… until…" he told News18 inside the highly guarded Vessu camp in Kulgam.
The transit camp that houses 370 Pandit employees, many of whom have got their families put up, is placed bang on the Jammu-Srinagar expressway. Identical rows of white plastered buildings and some just done in mortar and bricks are accessed through a gate manned by the police and paramilitary troops. A tall fence demarcates the one from the front side of the highway while the Army camp covers it from the backside.
“…until the recent spree of the killing of minorities in Kashmir that has shaken us all," Kaul finished, looking pensive.
Pandit campers said 40 per cent of the families have left the Vessu camp and more were planning to leave after getting their children the discharge certificates from the schools they study in. The attendance in this camp is still better than the transit accommodations of Mattan, Sheikhpora, and Baramulla where more than 50 per cent of the families have left.
In the last 25 days at Vessu camp, Kaul, his friends, and KP employees have pitched up a tent to escape rain and sun to protest and urge the government to relocate them to Jammu, Chandigarh, or Delhi and not pressurise them to rejoin duties in Kashmir. “We are humans. Don’t make our children orphans," scream the banners at the site where children and women hold protests. “Hum bali ka bakra nahi banenge …Don’t make us scapegoats," said a protester.
“Why is the government risking our lives? Why don’t officials tell us straight that they want us to be killed?" said another protester, refusing to give his name.
Last week three Hindus — a teacher and a banker in Kulgam, where Kaul and his wife serve as teachers, and a labourer in Budgam — were killed in a series of attacks that started last year when suspected militants chose targets and places of shooting at will. Among those killed, three including two women were teachers. A clerk in the revenue department, a woman artiste, cops, a chemist, a few snack or pani puri sellers, labourers, panchayat members, government servants, and civilians were the others assassinated.
Last week, following a series of meetings first in Jammu and Kashmir and later in Delhi with the union home minister, the J&K lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha-led administration assured the Pandit employees of secure accommodation and workplace to resume duties.
A top government official told News18 that besides posting the KP employees and other minorities in newly allocated safe zones that would look like a security corridor, the staffers won’t be posted away from the highways and main roads. “We have asked the employees their preference of postings to make them feel secure," he added. “The employees would be posted close to their residences and camps. Security would be made accessible from their places of accommodation to offices and vice versa. All the district SPs have been told to give this plan in detail."
On Saturday, the Srinagar administration and education department transferred 177 of the nearly 1,500 KP and migrant employees to “secure areas" as part of a new plan set up by the government to encourage them to stay back in the Valley.
Chetna Kaul, a teacher, however, said she feels there is no place in Kashmir that can be termed “safe".
“We are being called by officials, ‘which safe place do you want to be posted to’, and I replied to my senior, ‘Sir, you decide for me a safe place. If there is one, post me there’," she said.
The official hung up, she added.
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