Late autumn in Kashmir, and the foliage of the Chinar trees, standing singly and in clumps, turn a flaming orange for a few blazingly brilliant days. Then, as if in response to a signal, they are shed—a moulting that gives the landscape a forlorn air. For non-local labourers working in Kashmir, it is the time for the month-long preparation to leave the Valley. Typically, in November they collect dues from contractors, shop a bit and spend a week meeting friends. Before leaving, they would clean their rented rooms. But this year is different. It hasn’t followed the established script.
In Wanpoh and adjoining areas along the Srinagar-Jammu highway in Anantnag district, non-local labourers have disappeared. For the past two decades, around 30,000 to 50,000 labourers, mostly from Bihar, live and work in Wanpoh from March to November, earning the place the moniker Chhota Bihar.
Over the years, locals have built houses to rent them out to migrant labourers. The buildings stand vacant now. Names and phone numbers are scribbled and scrawled in Hindi and English on the doors of the rooms. Most are unlocked. In one, three pairs of jeans hang from a hook on a wall. In the corridor lies a jumble of shoes. Playing cards are scattered on the floor of another—frozen witnesses to an event that scared the inhabitants away.
A Kashmiri contractor says each room housed five skilled labourers. “If they are skilled, like masons, five of them stay in a room. Unskilled labourers stay ten to a room; each man is charged Rs 200 a month as rent,” he says.
Naveed Ahmad Malik, 46, a contractor, recounts that on the evening of October 17, he was at his shop when a labourer, Chun Chun Reshi Dev, rushed towards him, saying he has been shot at. Malik was sceptical for an instant, but then noticed his blood-soaked clothes. Asking his colleagues to rush Chun Chun to hospital, he ran towards Laran Gangipora, the scene of the incident. There, he found two bodies lying on the ground. They were identified as Raja Reshi Dev and Jogindar Reshi Dev, both from Bihar. Malik remembers the utter disbelief and shock on the labourers’ faces. Malik was shaken like he hasn’t been for a long time.
“I am shocked. Being a regular visitor to Bihar, I know their customs and habits so well. They are a close-knit community; both Hindus and Muslims live together. Every Thursday, Bihari labourers from different parts of south Kashmir would come to Wanpoh and offer Friday prayers,” he says. A day ahead of a Hindu festival, Hindu labourers would similarly trickle into Wanpoh.
Every March, when labourers troop into Wanpoh, they are accompanied by barbers, tailors, suppliers of grocery, even scooter mechanics, to cater to them. In the days after the labourers were shot dead, Santosh and Lalit, both barbers, left. Mechanics Ayub and Showkat Panwalla were gone too. “It would take a month for them to leave. This time, it is as if they disappeared,” says Malik.
Some labourers say the police asked them to leave as soon as possible. At Wanpoh market, a contractor agrees, saying the police drove more fear into the terrified labourers, so that some left in the dead of night, leaving belongings behind.
Each year, around three lakh labourers come to Kashmir, mostly from Araria, Supaul, Samastipur and West Champaran districts of Bihar. A senior government official says that if labourers stop coming to the Valley, most construction work, including the government’s developmental work, will stop. Industries, too, employ labour from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in large numbers, he says. Shortage of labour has already driven manufacturing units in Pulwama’s industrial estate into crisis. The horticulture industry has been hit hardest. There are no labourers to harvest apples.
Last year, with Covid restrictions on movement of people in place, brick kiln owners transported thousands of labourers from Bihar and UP to the Valley at their own expense. Later, with relaxation of rules, 2,000 labourers were allowed to enter the Valley.
Jai Shree, a contractor, says labourers mostly come from the Bihar districts close to the Nepal border. “I came to the Valley in March this year along with my family and was planning to leave at November end. But no one is sure of anything now. That is why I’m leaving early,” he adds.
Mohammad Mohsin, a house-painter, comes from Bihar’s Supaul. Mohsin is among the few who have stayed back; his Kashmiri landlord is helping him avoid the police, who would force him to leave otherwise. “I have Rs 2 lakh of dues pending and I cannot go back without it. Once contractors release the money, I will rush back. I don’t need to die early,” says Mohsin, a father of two.
Mohsin says that pleasant weather and higher wages lure Bihari labourers to Kashmir during summers despite militancy and regular gunfights. Migrant labourers had over the years learnt to insulate themselves from the conflict and Kashmiri politics, he says. They owned groceries and other shops in Wanpoh, but would never put up their own billboards. “Both Hindus and Muslims from Bihar find Kashmir a suitable place food-wise as rice is the staple diet here,” he adds.
Clockwise from below, a vacant dwelling of migrants in Wanpoh; a car starts off for Jammu from south Kashmir, vacant rooms strewn with belongings, and Mansoori at his room
Mohsin has been coming to the Valley for the past 15 years, and is witness to a lot of turbulence, including the devastating floods of 2014 and the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani and the protests in its wake. But he says he has never felt so fearful as now. “One day an encounter took place in the Wanpoh area. I heard gunshots. But I was least disturbed by it. But when I heard about the killings of the labourers I couldn’t step out of my room,” he says.
At the heart of these targeted killing of migrants lies the raging debate over demography. The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, an alliance of Kashmiri parties headed by former CM Farooq Abdullah, has repeatedly criticised the government about changing domicile and land laws of Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A. Earlier, Article 35A defined permanent citizens of the territory and reserved exclusive rights to “state subjects” regarding the purchase of immovable property and government jobs. The PAGD claims that changing land and domicile laws is an answer to a “long-standing demand of Hindutva elements”.
Police officials say the government’s frequent orders about land ownership have created paranoia and that militants are taking advantage of it. A senior official adds that attacks on Kashmiri minorities and migrant labourers also show that security forces and police, already stretched thin, cannot provide security to each person. Labourers concur, saying security forces asked them to leave, ostensibly because another attack would increase pressure on them. Officials say continuing attacks could also trigger anti-Kashmiri reprisals in the rest of India, alienating Kashmiris and drawing international attention.
This debate around demography puzzles 44-year-old Abdul Gaffar Mansoori from Bihar’s Supaul district. Mansoori came to Kashmir for the first time in 1999 and fell in love with the place. Since then, he faithfully follows the annual March-November migrant trail. “This place has pleasant weather, wages are good and no one bothered why I am here. It felt like home,” he says, while sitting in a Jammu-bound Tata Sumo, waiting for it to take him away.
Mansoori was brought to the Valley by a contractor called Islam, a well-known name among construction contractors, a man who encouraged Bihari labourers to move to Kashmir for work from the early noughties. Mansoori learnt plaster work, became a skilled worker and is in much demand for his workmanship. He still had one month of work pending in Kashmir’s booming construction sector. Then, the killing of the two labourers darkened his world irrevocably. “Every day my little son Shahnawaz and my wife Gulshan call me and plead to me to return. My wife asks me what I am doing in Kashmir when everyone has returned,” he says pensively.
During the devastating floods that submerged half the Valley in 2014, Mansoori was working in Pahalgam on the construction site of a hotel. The floods halted work and he came walking to Wanpoh to stay with his fellow villagers. Last year, in spite of the pandemic, he got work in Kishtwar district of Pir Panjal valley. “I don’t want to go too early but I cannot work here alone. Most of my colleagues are gone and now we ten are going too. If the situation improves, we will come back next year,” he says.
At the Harnaag area of Botengo, along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, a cluster of tents house non-local workers. They have come from Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. Since October 17 the petrified lot hasn’t left their camp. Here, too, the police have asked them to be cautious of strangers. “I have been coming here for the past six years,” says Sadiq Ali, who lives in a tent with his wife and child. Given the bleak unemployment situation in UP, says Sadiq, he came to Kashmir for work. “I do any kind of job. I sell toys and work as a labourer. I get double wages, what else you need,” he says.
On the morning of October 22, Om Prakash Chohan, 30, is the only person at the Nowgam railway station. Hailing from Narkatiaganj town of Bihar’s West Champaran district, Chohan says he cannot stay in Kashmir any longer. “My work was almost over, cold weather had set in and it is time to leave. But the killings made me hurry up things.”
These men had made Kashmir their home for half the year, keeping their faith even during natural disasters, staying their course during times of strife. Along the decades, they earned the goodwill of Kashmiris. The unprovoked killings have fractured their settled world, but perhaps not irreparably. They all would look towards next March with hope.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Season Of Fear")
—Edited by Saikat Niyogi
