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'We can't stay, and we don't want to move...'

Rakesh Matto (8) and his sister Pooja (6) sit, looking rather lost and bewildered, on the verandah of an under-construction house near the Ganderbal police lines.

Near them sit a couple of policemen, and some locals. "When can we go back home, pappa?" the two children keep asking.

Never, is the answer, but Jawahar Lal Mattoo doesn't tell his children that. Instead, he makes consoling noises, trying to distract his children's attention.

'Home', for the Mattoo family, is Waskoora village. The state government, just three days earlier, shifted the Mattoos from there to Ganderbal, in the wake of the massacre at Wandhama -- the Mattoos being related to the five Kashmiri Pandit families that lost their lives in the carnage.

"The local police officer has told us that we will be shifted to a security zone at Karam Nagar, here in the city, but I am confused -- I don't know whether I should shift to Srinagar or Jammu, or stay back along with my family," says Jawahar Lal Mattoo. He broods a bit, then adds, "I still haven't told my mother about the Wandhama incident!"

The Mattoos are not the only ones who have been uprooted in the wake of the incident. In nearby Nunar village, once a model of communal amity, the police plan to shift six families of Kashmiri Pandits to Karan Nagar. The Pandit families are all gathered at Prithvi Nath's home to discuss the implications.

"We have to shift, there is little choice after the Wandhama massacre," says Bansi Lal. "But let me tell you that we have had no problems these last nine years, living here with our Muslim neighbours. Suddenly, everything seems to have changed. Now, I would migrate even if they shift me to Srinagar -- but in my heart I still don't want to leave Nunar."

"We can't stay," says Jawahar Lal. "And we don't want to go either."

Bansi Lal and Jawahar Lal Mattoo epitomise the tragedy of the Kashmiri Pandit families in Kashmir. Despite the worst excesses of militancy, they had clung to their roots, secure in the knowledge that their Muslim neighbours owed them no ill-will. But the group of gunmen who walked into Wandhama and left behind a trail of bullet-ridden corpses changed all that. And suddenly, the Pandits find themselves neither able to leave, nor yet safe enough to stay.

There are 6,500 Pandits, living in nearly 200 villages across the Valley. "We simply cannot allow them to live in their villages, with no security, we have been ordered to shift them to a secure, sanitised zone in Srinagar," says a police officer at Ganderbal.

Security has been tightened at Nunar, Manigram and Wusan villages, which have large concentrations of Pandit families. "The Wandhama incident has shaken our confidence," says Jawahar Lal. "There is no security now. We do not have any complaints about our Muslim neighbours, but at Wandhama I lost my sister, my brother-in-law, their two children, but so far we have received no word, no relief from the government. My mother is ailing, I can't inform her about the deaths because I don't know how she will take it," adds he, visibly shaken.

"The Muslim families in Wasookara village, they all pleaded with us to stay back, they promised us all help and shelter. But they too are helpless, what can they do when terrorists come from outside? When we left, there were emotional scenes, they wept and hugged us," recalls Bansi Lal.

In Ganderbal, too, this feeling of amity persisted. Bansi Lal talks of how it was the local Muslims here who helped them clean up the rooms allotted to them, collected rice and vegetables so they could cook their meals. "Local youths came and gave us money which they had collected for us," says Jawahar Lal.

"It is this kind of love and brotherhood, that we have got from the local Muslims, that kept us from migrating in 1990, when all this terrorism began and when some Pandit families began migrating to Jammu and other places," says Jawahar Lal's wife. "And despite the recent massacre, all this love still keeps us from deciding to shift to Srinagar or Jammu."

Before the outbreak of militancy, there were 350 Pandit families in Nunar. Now there are six. "If we emigrate, we will hand over our livestock to our Muslim neighbours, also our lands and gardens, ask them to look after it. We trust them," says Ramesh Raina.

Dalip Kumar, a lecturer at the Nunar Higher Secondary School, is, however, very clear in his mind. "The police officers visited us, suggested that we migrate. We told them we don't need their security, we will live and die with our neighbours who are also suffering from the militancy."

The Wandhama carnage has come as a wake up call to the the administration. Earlier, official perception was that the area in and around Ganderbal, state Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah's constituency, was sanitised, free of secessionist elements. Following the carnage, the official line is that there could be over two hundred militants, mostly foreigners, operating in and around the region.

This has prompted a heavy deployment of army and state security personnel in the region. "The administration's priority is to track down the killers of 23 innocent civilians," an official said.

Meanwhile, top security officials grapple with the sheer logistical problem of either persuading the Pandit families to move, collectively, into some sanitised zone or, alternately, providing security to 6,500 such Pandits scattered across over 200 villages. "We can't let them live scattered around in isolated villages with no security," a senior police official argued.

The Wandhama incident has had one more administrative fallout -- the chief minister, late last week, announced the setting up of Village Defence Committees on the pattern of those existing in Jammu.

Tuesday, February 3 will, meanwhile, be observed as "Protest Day" by Kashmiri Pandits all over the world, to commemorate the tenth day of the Wandhama massacre.

Pandits working in government and private institutions will go on mass casual leave, and condolence meetings will be held in various places including Bangalore, Bombay, Chandigarh, Delhi and Jammu , a spokesman for the Kashmiri Pandits Political Steering Committee announced in New Delhi.

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