There’s need for a multi-prong conversation on Kashmir, beyond the narrative

Ghazala Wahab 

Justice. The word appeared unexpectedly in the conversation. “Justice is most important,” said my interlocutor, a Kashmiri Pandit man. “What we need is justice. Everything else is meaningless.” He was forced to flee his home on the outskirts of Srinagar in 1990 with his parents. He was 14 years old then. Now he lives in the National Capital Region (NCR) but doesn’t call it home.

Years ago, I had heard this word in broadly a similar context, but from the opposite side. This was in Srinagar and I was leaving the office of human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz. Seeing me off at the base of the dilapidated staircase which led to his ramshackle first floor office with uneven furniture, he told me, “There can be no peace without justice.”

This time also the word appeared at the end of the conversation. To Imroz I had asked if he thought peace was possible. He took time to consider my question. All the time from his office to the base of the staircase. To my Kashmiri Pandit interlocutor, sitting in his air-conditioned office on the ninth floor, overlooking the urban landscape, I had asked what closure looked to him and people like him. He also took time to answer. Time in which he switched off the air conditioner and switched it on again, while I took in the view from outside his tall windows. A sudden rainstorm was lashing against them.