Our Moon has Blood Clots: Rahul Pandita

It is a personal memoir of a Kashmiri Pandit. It outlines the trauma of being rendered homeless in one’s own country. Kashmiri Pandits got caught up in the politics of freedom or azaadi. The angst of Kashmiris against the Indian nation was often manifested in their attitude towards the Kashmiri Pandits. While the antagonism was at its peak in 1990s, there was a large scale exodus of Kashmiri Pandits who felt threatened by the extremist turn of politics in Kashmir. The well to do community had to face a lot of hardship owing to displacement. Rahul Pandita through the experience of his own family tries to highlight this trauma. While the book is very touching and of a very personal nature, it has faced its share of criticism as well. It tends to portray one side of the story while not talking about the repression Kashmiris faced in the hand of Indian state. Young men being picked up and killed in the name of being terrorists does not find much space in his memoir. Also there is a need to cross check the facts. The extent of massacre Pandita talks about is not corroborated by facts. While there was systemic targeting of this community there was no genocide and hence one cannot equate it with post Godhra riots in Gujarat. It was also not state-sponsored but the doings of an extremist body called the JKLF. This book is not good to understand the larger socio-political background of the separatist movement. It tends to portray incidents in vacuum without giving proper context. Nonetheless the pain of displacement cannot be dismissed and this book gives a glimpse of the lives of people lived in Refugee Camps. It also makes an imperative that any movement in Kashmir must take into account the view point of Kashmiri Pandits who are very much a part of the Kashmir.