And It Didn’t Let Me Sleep..
I Ahmed
I watched Baramulla last night. Not as a film critic. Not as a Kashmiri Muslim with a political stance. But as a man who has carried silence like a stone in his chest for thirty-five years.
The film is more fiction than fact. Yes, it leans into ghosts, whispers in the snow, and children vanishing like breath on a winter morning. But for me, the real horror wasn’t on the screen. It was in the mirror.
I was raised in a family that believed in progress, not pulpits. My father read the Quran, Rumi, Azad, and Mehjoor under the apple trees while the mosque loudspeaker called for prayer. He was a regular namazi, a man who would often call the azan himself at dawn. Yet, when I joined the Communist Party CPIM, to be precise he didn’t resist. He even encouraged me, in a time when the winds of communalism blew hard across our Valley, when the air was thick with suspicion toward anyone whose politics did not wear religion on its sleeve.
For that, I was branded kafir. Not once. Not twice. But countless times. Every Friday, when I joined the Jummah namaz not out of ritual, but out of respect someone would whisper, “Arre, yeh toh namaz bhi drama hai.” My faith wasn’t pure enough. My prayer wasn’t real. My existence was an act.
My elder son was three. Just three. And men from our own village men who later claimed allegiance to Jamaat-e-Islami would point at him and laugh, “Yeh communist ka baccha hai.” A toddler, branded before he could even spell his name.
In 2004, when I actively participated in the parliamentary elections and campaigned for Tarigami, a candidate of the CPI(M), a Jamaat worker came to my house. He spoke softly to my mother, almost politely. But his words cut like winter wind. He said, “Your son will be killed by his own Rafiqs.” Rafiq was the word they used for Jamaat workers, much like comrade in the communist circle. The irony of being threatened in the language of companionship was not lost on me.
So when Baramulla shows a Muslim family haunted in a house that once belonged to a Pandit family, I didn’t flinch at the ghosts or the supernatural. I flinched at the truth it dared not speak aloud: some ghosts don’t wear white sheets. They wear silence.
I believe the dead don’t rest when justice is denied. The Kashmiri Pandits who were killed, raped, looted, and driven out in 1989 and 1990 their souls are still here. Not as vengeful spirits with bleeding eyes, but as questions. As empty doorways. As broken temple bells. As mothers in Jammu camps who still cook rogan josh the way their grandmothers did, in vessels that have never seen Kashmir again.
Peace will not come with their return alone. Peace will come when we, as a community, apologise. Unconditionally. Not “I didn’t do it.” Not “It was the militants.” Not “The 1987 elections were rigged.”
It was us. Our silence.
My father was silent when the Srikant Pandit, Mahraj Krishan left. When the Babi(Kamla Davi) packed one suitcase and walked into the night. When the Rainas’ house at Anantnag set on fire. He didn’t cheer. He didn’t participate. He just looked away. That silence had a voice. And it said: “Go. You don’t belong.”
This silence has followed us for decades. It has seeped into our bones, into our prayers, into the way we tell our children the story of Kashmir, always stopping short of the uncomfortable truth. We call it politics, conflict, or exodus, as if giving it a label could wash away the shame. But there is no euphemism for betrayal.
Some say the tragedy began with the 1987 elections. I disagree. The seed was sown in 1947, when we decided that a nation could be carved with a religious knife. We didn’t learn. We repeated the sin. Only this time, the victims wore different names.
As I watched Baramulla, I thought of my childhood lane. Once filled with laughter and the aroma of kahwa from Pandit homes, now echoing with the hollow silence of walls that remember but cannot speak. I thought of my father’s friend, Pandit Mahraj Krishen, who used to visit our orchard every spring. One day he came, left a bundle of books in our verandah, and said softly, “Keep these safe. I’ll come back soon.” He never did. His books are still there. Dust-covered, but alive. Every time I touch them, it feels like an unfinished apology.
Films like Baramulla are not about history; they are about memory. They remind us of what we have buried and what refuses to stay buried. The film may be fiction, but its fear is real the fear of facing what we did, or didn’t do.
I often wonder: what if, in those dark nights of 1990, someone anyone had stood up and said, “No, not in my name”? Would the story have changed? Would the Pandits have stayed? Would my father’s orchard have remained a place of shared laughter instead of lingering guilt?
Today, decades later, we still speak of “reconciliation” as if it is a political project. But reconciliation is not an agreement between parties. It is a confession between souls. It begins with one sentence: We were wrong.
Let the Pandits return not as guests or refugees, but as owners of memory. Let them walk through their homes without needing police escorts. Let them light a diya in their courtyards without fear. Let their children play cricket where their fathers once did.
But for that to happen, we must first cleanse the air of our collective hypocrisy. We must accept that the exodus was not merely a tragedy; it was a moral collapse. Our silence was our complicity.
I don’t want another debate on television. I don’t want politicians making speeches about “brotherhood” while living behind barricades. I want a new Kashmir one where a child can pray in a mosque on Friday and read Marx on Saturday, and no one calls him kafir. Where a Pandit can recite Shiv Mahimna Stotra without being told he’s a stranger. Where religion returns to being a private faith, not a public weapon.
Let God be God. Let people be people.
The ghosts of our past are not asking for revenge. They are asking for remembrance. They are asking for an apology, not in words, but in deeds. To rebuild what we burnt not just homes, but trust.
When I turned off Baramulla last night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because of the ghosts onscreen, but because of the ones that live with me. They have names. They have faces. They have stories unfinished.
And they are waiting.
Waiting for us to speak.
Waiting for us to say, “Come home.”
Waiting for the day when Kashmir will stop whispering and start healing.
