I have many times talked about this. The best experience in
reading is when you get two books to read as a set. Sometimes they are
complimenting each other, sometimes one takes the learning of the other forward
and sometimes… sometimes they are actually two points of view of the same
history. Right now I am reading Rahul Pandita’s book – Our Moon has Blood
Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. Rahul has written a book called
Hello Bastar (about the naxal movement) in the past and he writes well and I have
felt that he does try and be objective about what he writes about. This time he
writes about his childhood and his growing up as a Kashmir Pandit who was
forced to leave the Kashmir valley with his family while he was still a boy.
The book may have many flaws but it does bring alive some of the horrors of the
terrorism in Kashmir that forced the pandits to leave the valley.
Some time back I read another book. This one was called Curfewed
Night by Basharat Peer. Similarly this is also a memoir but from the opposite
point of view. Basharat is a Kashmiri Muslim and he sees the same situation so
differently. He is also a very balanced and objective writer. He talks about
how as a young boy he idolized the Kashmiri Fighters who crossed the borders
over and received training. And how it was to be a Kashmiri under constant
threat from the Indian Armed Forces.
The same situation but the villains are the opposite
parties. Who do you believe? I would assume that both are telling the truth. I don’t
think either would really dispute the other’s point of view. But the contrast
is telling. There is never an absolute truth. I would like to gift these two
books in unison to Jispa when she grows up. What is the truth always depends on
what you have been exposed to. Your knowledge no matter how vast is colored by
your own experiences. Truth is relative. Muslims were killed and so were the
Pandits. One believed in fighting for freedom and the other believed that
freedom was already achieved. Both the authors were touched at am
impressionable age by the fundamentalist forces and both wanted to take arms
and exact revenge but were taken by their fathers to a land free from this
racial animosity. And both seemed to have grown up to be largely secular. They realize
the futility of violence but bear such deep scars that it may be impossible for
them to be completely neutral.
Can one ever be neutral? For life to go on one must take a
strong stand in one direction. These choices are made every day. We take a
stand basis the information and experience we have. I am not saying to not take
a stand. That is stupid and a complete waste. Devil’s advocate is a nice term
for it and as one of Devdutt’s piece on this explains (link)
this is many times the wrong way to discuss. Just a few days back, at the gymkhana
where I got active with the swimming department, we were presenting the budget.
Most of the office bearers were understanding and practical. One fellow was
completely irritating. He kept switching sides and said, yes, that’s a good idea
to every point and on both sides of the same point. Yes it was nice and
diplomatic but it just prolonged the meeting and got nowhere. Endless argument
and recognition of both sides got no one anything.
It is important to see both sides, to hear both sides to recognize
both sides, to understand that both exist and that both are right in their own
way. But at the end life and reality is that you have to take one side and move
on. You have to take a stand while being polite and accommodating of the other.
Its easy to be brusque about the other side. I have been guilty consistently
about this. I have tried my best to change. From merely brushing them off to
thinking actively from the other side I have understood another point of view. Now
instead of brushing the other side I try and make an argument to convince the
other. But that itself creates another sense of pressure on the opposite side. A
convincing argument is so difficult for the other to accept, possibly more
difficult that a brush off. One can be forced to accept defeat to power but not
to reason. Oh dam!
But we all need to understand the other side. See that it
exists, acknowledge it and try to live in that shoe. Possibly then we realize that
the demons on the other side aren’t that demonic after all. They too were just
acting on their prejudices. That’s all.
Like this quote my friend showed me “A great many people
think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” -
William James
Side note – I was talking to a colleague who happened to be
a Kashmiri Pandit who too left when he was 9 yrs old. I urged him to read both
the books. HE ordered one. Rahul’s book. He was reading it and he said a lot of
that was the truth. He was pretty excited. It was going to be the first book he
has ever read. On any topic! That’s a good start. I asked him if he ordered the
one by Basharat. Nopes, he dismissed it. Later. Possibly.
I guess we only know what we want to know
