Rahul Pandita > Quotes

“During Aurangzeb’s rule, which lasted for forty-nine years from 1658 onwards, there were many phases during which Pandits were persecuted. One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Another problem is the apathy of the media and a majority of India’s intellectual class who refuse to even acknowledge the suffering of the Pandits. No campaigns were ever run for us; no fellowships or grants given for research on our exodus. For the media, the Kashmir issue has remained largely black and white—here are a people who were victims of brutalization at the hands of the Indian state. But the media has failed to see, and has largely ignored the fact that the same people also victimized another”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“I’m on bridge, bridge is on water, bridge-bridge cancel, I’m on water.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“For most of us, Kashmir means a calendar hanging in our parents’ bedroom, or a mutton dish cooked in the traditional way on Shivratri, or a cousin’s marriage that the elders insist must be solemnized in Jammu. A”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Vidyam deehe Saraswati.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Another problem is the apathy of the media and a majority of India’s intellectual class who refuse to even acknowledge the suffering of the Pandits.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Sometimes it is best to leave things ambiguous, suspended, so that some hope remains.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“One of his fourteen governors, Iftikhar Khan, who ruled for four years from 1671, was particularly brutal towards the community. It was during his rule that a group of Pandits approached the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Punjab and begged him to save their faith. He told them to return to Kashmir and tell the Mughal rulers that if they could convert him (Tegh Bahadur), all Kashmiri Pandits would accept Islam. This later led to the Guru’s martyrdom, but the Pandits were saved.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“I remember the day when I realized I had no memory of her voice. That morning I had been reading the newspapers like I did everyday. I would read a report or two, and Ma would point out advertisements of houses for sale. There were many of them.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“During the rule of another governor, Atta Muhammad Khan, Lawrence writes: Any Musalman who met a Pandit would jump on his back, and take a ride.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“On 10 September 2008, Raghuram Rajan, noted economist and honorary advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, delivered a speech at the Bombay Chamber of Commerce where he spoke about how most of India's billionaires did not derive their wealth from IT or software but from land, natural resources, and government contracts or licences. He spoke of India being second only to Russia in terms of wealth concentration (the number of billionaires per trillion dollars of GDP). To show how extraordinary this number was he quoted the case of Brazil which had only 18 billionaires despite a greater GDP than India. Or Germany, which had three times India's GDP and a per capita income 40 times India's but had the same number of billionaires. 'If Russia is an oligarchy, how long can we resist calling India one?' he wondered.”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“How can you say that?' he barked. 'It is they who have forced you out of your homes, turning you into refugees.' I looked him in the eye and said: 'General, I've lost my home, not my humanity.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“Sir V.S. Naipaul, for his eternal lines: ‘The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“Navin Sapru’s friend, the poet and writer Maharaj Krishan Santoshi, wrote a poem on his death. In ‘Naveen my friend’, Santoshi writes:
Naveen was my friend
Killed he was, in Habba Kadal
while on the tailor’s hanger remained hung
his warm coat.
Passing as it did through scissors and thread–needle
in the tailor’s hand, till the previous day
it was merely a person’s coat
that suddenly was turned into a Hindu’s coat

In the last stanza the poet writes:

I used to ask him every time
why doesn’t he possess the cunningness of Srinagar
I still await his response
My friend! Yes, I changed my address
since after your murder
it ceased to exist
the bridge of friendship, this Habba Kadal”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“As the separatist elements got emboldened by the leadership in the state, police officers became frustrated. ‘I would arrest a stone pelter, only to watch him be set free after ten days. Sometimes we got so frustrated that we would ask the judge to at least book him on charges of eve-teasing so that he stayed in jail for slightly longer,’ said an officer.”
― Rahul Pandita, The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur : How the Pulwama Case was Cracked

“For the convenience of readers, the terms 'Naxal' and 'Maoist' are used interchangeably throughout this book. This is common practice in the media and even the police. In fact, the Maoists too use both terms to define themselves.”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“Dar kept faltering in his speech, so Hanjila Jihadi was made to dub the video. When they were satisfied, the video was sent to Pakistan to Ammar Alvi, another brother of Masood Azhar and an uncle of Umar Farooq. It was his name ‘AMMAR’ that Balwal had seen painted on one of the magazines found by Umar’s dead body.”
― Rahul Pandita, The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur : How the Pulwama Case was Cracked

“The spasms had been troubling him again. In fact, amoebic dysentery had been his constant companion, a result of a harsh life of more than three decades. And an enlarged prostate too. He was more comfortable with the pain these afflictions caused than the feel of the cold metal of a gun in his hands whenever he had had to hold it. But that was on very rare occasions, deep inside the forest along the Eastern Ghats: memorial meetings for fallen comrades, ceremonial parades or military drills. Presently, though, he was hundreds of miles away from the jungles of central India.”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“it. But, sometimes, when I’m angry at the TV shows where our murderers speak about our return, I do. On its front page is a picture of Ravi’s mutilated face. The blood from his nose—the result of a blow from the butt of a Kalashnikov—has dried up. His forehead still looks beautiful and clear, and so does his moustache that I had wanted to imitate when I was young.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: A Memoir of a Lost Home in Kashmir

“growth must not be treated as an end in itself, but as an instrument of spreading prosperity to all.”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“It would also brutally punish 'class enemies' by ordering that they be shortened by six inches—which meant beheading.”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“For most of us, Kashmir means a calendar hanging in our parents' bedroom, or a mutton dish cooked in the traditional way on Shivratri, or a cousin's marriage that the elders insist must be solemnized in Jammu.”
― Rahul Pandita, Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits

“Naxals burst Laxmi crackers and the CRPF exhaust their ammunition in the return fire,”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“Even as it sends missions to the moon and boasts of being a nuclear power, India has so far failed to ensure that nobody goes hungry. There have been cases where foodgrains were left out in the open to rot while the godowns of the state-run Food Corporation of India were rented out”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.' By”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar

“For the mehmaani mujahids (guest holy warriors), as the foreign terrorists began to be called in Kashmir, the Tral area in Pulwama became a sanctuary of choice. This was mostly due to its topography.”
― Rahul Pandita, The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur : How the Pulwama Case was Cracked

“A few days after the Pulwama suicide attack, Mudasir, they found out, had put up a WhatsApp status: ‘Who wants to be the next martyr?”
― Rahul Pandita, The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur : How the Pulwama Case was Cracked

“Journalists recall how in those days this bunch of men made fools out of eager journalists working with Western media outlets who came in droves to document the ‘rebellion’ against the Indian state. One day, a journalist would ask his local contact, usually a stringer, to arrange an interview with a JKLF commander. So, the JKLF would ask a sympathizer from Kashmir University who could speak in broken English to cover his face with a Palestinian scarf and pose as a JKLF commander and give an interview, since its own men knew no English. The next day, the same student would change his scarf and pose for another journalist as a commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen.”
― Rahul Pandita, The Lover Boy of Bahawalpur : How the Pulwama Case was Cracked

“Even as it sends missions to the moon and boasts of being a nuclear power, India has so far failed to ensure that nobody goes hungry. There have been cases where foodgrains were left out in the open to rot while the godowns of the state-run Food Corporation of India were rented out to liquor companies to store alcohol. So,”
― Rahul Pandita, Hello Bastar