Better if they kill us: Indian deportation notices split Kashmiri families apart

Bashir Ahmad Najar doesn't regret his decision, but these days, in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s Bandipora district, he broods over how often he needs to express remorse over going to Pakistan in 2001 for arms training. 

Najar, 48, does not have a concrete house. He has built a one-room shed from tin and plywood - one that makes the air inside swelter unbearably on a sunny day. But that is not what bothers him. 

He has lived peacefully in this shed since 2011, when he returned to Kashmir along with his Pakistani wife and two daughters through a rehabilitation policy for men like him who had gone to Pakistan and wished to return.

In 2010, the government of Indian-controlled Kashmir announced a rehabilitation policy for Kashmiri men who had crossed over to Pakistan and wanted to return. The policy promised safe passage to former militants and their spouses through selected routes along the highly guarded India-Pakistan border.

"The policy is intended to facilitate the return of ex-militants who belong to J&K state and had crossed over the PoK/Pakistan for training in insurgency but have given up insurgent activities due to a change of heart and are willing to return to the State," the policy states. 

New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch

Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters

Since then, Najar has lived in peace with his family, despite meagre earnings and having to spend a significant chunk of his finances on his wife’s cancer treatment. But even that does not bother him. They had a son after returning to Kashmir.

But Najar's semblance of peace was shattered last week when his wife, Zahida Begum, 42, received a notice from the police asking her and their two daughters, who were born in Pakistan, to leave Kashmir. 

The next day, a policeman, visibly apologetic, handed them a deportation notice, which was part of India’s decision to downgrade all diplomatic relations with Pakistan, including suspending almost all visas for Pakistani citizens in India.

All of this comes in response to the attack that killed 26 civilians, mostly Indian tourists, at a meadow in Kashmir’s scenic Pahalgam on 22 April. 

Pakistan has refuted the allegations of its involvement in the attack. 

Stuck in limbo

In Kashmir, the decision to deport Pakistani nationals has left more than 150 women in limbo. Najar’s family is just one of hundreds of families across India whose family members have been torn apart by deportation notices.

Since the downgrading of diplomatic ties between the two countries, government officials say as many as 786 Pakistani nationals and their dependents have left India, and hundreds more have been asked to leave. This happened despite Zahida and many such women possessing an Indian identification number, voting rights, and domicile certificate of Kashmir - documents that only an Indian citizen holds. 

Since the British left India in 1947, Kashmiris have been torn between India and Pakistan, and the two nuclear-armed countries have fought several wars over Kashmir.

After an armed rebellion broke out in the late 1980s in Kashmir against Indian rule, thousands of men crossed over to Pakistan through the Line of Control (LoC) - a de facto border dividing the Indian side of Kashmir from the Pakistani side - for arms training. That continues today, albeit significantly restricted through heightened security and fencing along the LoC. 

Najar also crossed over to Pakistan in 2001 for arms training, but once there, he decided to work as a carpenter. He tried to return several times, but when he failed, he married Zahida in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in 2008. 

Then in 2011, they returned to Kashmir and settled in. Everything was in its right place until last week.

Compounding Najar's misery is the fact that the order will split his family in half.

“They want me to let go of my wife and two daughters who were born in Pakistan, and keep my son who was born here,” Najar told Middle East Eye.

'Better if they kill us'

Heartbreaking visuals of couples being separated from each other, children from their mothers and fathers, have since emerged on social media, newspapers and television. Yousuf Tarigami, a Kashmiri lawmaker and member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), was among the first to speak against these repatriations, calling the move inhumane. 

“Deporting women from Pakistan & PoK, who came to J&K after government rolled out a rehabilitation policy in 2010, is inhumane. These women, married to local Kashmiri men, have built their lives here, raising families & living peacefully since their arrival,” he posted on X.

Imran Nabi Dar, spokesperson of the National Conference, the ruling party in Indian-controlled Kashmir, told MEE that the victims of the order have committed no crime to be treated in this manner.

"Considering the number of years they have spent here. The women who have married Kashmiris and have no families left in Pakistan, this country is now their own country. They are doing normal processing of taking citizenship. They have complied with each and every law," Dar said.

​​Under the International Convention on the Nationality of Married Women, India is obliged to issue travel documents to Pakistani women married to Kashmiri men.

Back in his single-room house in Bandipora, Najar is struggling to find a way to keep his family together. As the relations between India and Pakistan grow to a war-like crescendo, he says there is no one he can turn to for help.

“This separation is unbearable. If they kill us, it would be better. If a person dies, he is gone forever and there is a proper closure. But how can they separate a 10-year-old son from his mother?” 

Najar says he has done everything to rectify his mistake of crossing over to Pakistan. “I have been a responsible citizen,” he says, recalling how he used to mentor young people in his neighbourhood and advise them against throwing stones at security forces.

“They can check my record. I am not denying my role in militancy in the past, but we are done with it,” he adds.

Just in Najar's Bandipora district, 20 families have been served deportation notices. In neighbouring Nadihal village, 41-year-old Mohammad Ramzan Wani, who fled to Pakistan in 1993 and returned in 2014 with his wife and two kids, also faces the same dilemma.

“Last week, a policeman visited our house with a notice asking my wife and kids to leave.”

His wife, Asmat, says “it would be better if they kill us here instead of sending us back” because she fears their kids may be at risk there. 

Her husband, Wani, asks: “What will happen to my kids in Pakistan? Who will take care of my son? What if they (Pakistanis) brainwash my son to wage a war against India? What if he gets involved in drugs? Who will look after him?”

Najar, Wani and many other such families are hopelessly waiting for a miracle that can save their families from being torn apart. But their hope is diminishing amidst the calls for revenge and a potential war between the two nations. 

Unwillingly, they are preparing themselves for a separation.

As the interview ends, and Wani and his family are asked for a group picture, he says, “Yes, let’s take one. It could be our last one together.”

middleeasteye.net