Valley Pandits have Unique Funeral Rites, but a Helping Hand From a Neighbour is Always Welcome

Muzaffar Raina discusses how Kashmiri neigbours look after each other even when one is no more, and about a dying profession that is bringing out the best among Kashmiris

Muslim takes care of Kashmir’s dead Hindus

Srinagar, March 24: In a burning ground in the Valley, Hindus have to pass through a Muslim’s caring hands to leave this world.Mohammad Yasin Dar considers it his “religious” duty to ensure that the dead are not defiled—even if it means sitting by a body deep into the night amid hungry, prowling stray dogs.

“It’s a God-ordained mission for me,” says the 56-year-old, sitting under a lofty chinar. Dar is the caretaker of the lone functional Kashmiri Pandit crematorium in the Valley.

Over the past 10 years, Dar has supervised the last rites of dozens of Hindus, sometimes staying by a half-burnt body till it had turned to ash.Dar took up the job in 1998, and it was a conscious decision.

Most Pandit families had left the Valley after militancy broke out in the late eighties and the crematoriums were without a caretaker, or Kawij, as they are locally called.For the 5,000-odd Pandits who chose to stay back, it meant cremations were a hasty affair, done by people with little or no experience.Pyres were lit crudely and stray dogs sometimes devoured the half-burnt bodies. A local Pandit leader took up the job for some time, but it was only after Dar stepped in that the dead started getting a decent send-off.

“It was not a simple decision because I am a Muslim and I didn’t know how others would react. But thank God, things went smoothly,” Dar says, sitting inside the crematorium at Batmaloo.

Dar was a labourer before he took up the job. He gets a monthly salary of Rs 3,000—but money alone doesn’t keep him going. “I ensure that the bodies are not defiled. It is my religious duty to help others in need,” he insists.“I arrange the logs, make a mound of them and, after the bodies are set on fire, I stay here for hours, at times till late into the night, to ensure they are properly burnt. I have a tough time keeping dogs away, particularly in the dead of night.”

Dar also takes credit for renovating a damaged Shiva temple that adjoins the crematorium.“I persuaded the management to do it, and they did it,” he says. Sanjay Tikoo, who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, a body that represents Pandits who have not left the Valley, says his folks are “happy” with Dar’s work.

Unlike those outside the Valley, the Pandits here can say they follow all their customs and rituals while cremating their dead. “When a person dies, we put fried fish and pieces of meat in cooked rice and keep half of it beneath the funeral pyre. The other half is left for the birds,” Tikoo says.“We can do it here because the crematorium is under our control. Pandits outside the Valley can’t do it.”

But something worries Dar—the future of his children.Many gravediggers, his counterparts among Muslims, dissuade their children from taking up the job because it could come in the way of finding a good groom or bride.“God knows whether it will prove a hurdle in getting alliances for my children,’’ says Dar, a father of three.