Thirty-six years.
For a human being, it is almost half a lifetime.
For a child, it is enough time to be born, go to school, graduate, marry and become the parent of another school-going child.
For technology, it is the distance between the landline telephone and artificial intelligence.
For a country, thirty-six years can be enough to rebuild an economy, transform public health, create new cities, produce universities, develop industries and alter the destiny of an entire generation.
For a Kashmiri Pandit displaced in 1990, however, thirty-six years have somehow remained classified as temporary exile.
That is why, this Independence Day, I am less interested in asking what India has done during its 79 years of freedom.
I want to ask something much smaller.
What exactly do my 36 years mean in the life of an independent nation?
Because 36 years are not an interruption.
They are history.
Look at what nations can do with time
India was not the only country to emerge into freedom in the great post-war decolonisation era.
Pakistan became independent a day before us. Sri Lanka and Myanmar followed within months. Jordan and the Philippines had emerged shortly before. Indonesia was fighting its way towards recognised sovereignty. Israel became a state in 1948.
Look at where some of these countries travelled in roughly eight decades. (See Box)
BOX
| Nation | Independence / Statehood | HDI 2023 | Life Expectancy | Mean Years of Schooling | GNI per Capita, PPP |
| Israel | 1948 | 0.919 | 82.4 years | 13.5 | $48,050 |
| Sri Lanka | 1948 | 0.776 | 77.5 years | 10.8 | $12,616 |
| Jordan | 1946 | 0.754 | 77.8 years | 10.2 | $9,222 |
| Indonesia | 1945/49 | 0.728 | 71.1 years | 8.7 | $13,700 |
| Philippines | 1946 | 0.720 | 69.8 years | 10.0 | $10,731 |
| India | 1947 | 0.685 | 72.0 years | 6.9 | $9,047 |
| Myanmar | 1948 | 0.609 | 66.9 years | 6.4 | $4,919 |
| Syria | 1946 | 0.564 | 72.1 years | 5.9 | $3,918 |
| Pakistan | 1947 | 0.544 | 67.6 years | 4.3 | $5,501 |
The point is not that every country succeeded equally. Far from it. Some advanced spectacularly. Some stumbled. Some were damaged by wars, authoritarianism or economic crises.
The point is simpler:
Countries change enormously in three or four decades.
Thirty-six years can change national income, longevity, education, infrastructure, technology and social aspirations.
Apparently, it was just not enough time to change one particular word in India:
Migrant. We carried it. Our children carry it.
India changed too. Dramatically.
Perhaps comparing India with other nations is unnecessary.
Let us compare India with itself.
The India from which Kashmiri Pandits fled in 1990 was a very different country.
There was no internet in our homes.
No mobile phone; No Aadhaar; No UPI; No Metro in Delhi; No social media.
No Google Maps on which an ageing Pandit could today zoom into the village he once walked through without needing directions.
India’s life expectancy was around 59 years in 1990. Today it is above 70.
Its human-development index has risen dramatically.
Income has multiplied.
Millions entered the middle class; Highways crossed mountains; Tunnels were drilled through the Himalayas; Airports expanded; Satellites went farther into space; India landed near the Moon’s south pole; We can transfer money across the country in seconds; We can identify a parcel of land from a satellite; We can geo-tag a toilet; We can digitise a village; We can map a pothole.
But somewhere in this technologically muscular Republic, a Kashmiri Pandit can still spend years establishing what his grandfather knew without a computer:
That this is my land.
There is a certain genius in that contradiction.
In 1990 I was displaced. In 2026 I am still being rehabilitated. I am a milch cow
Governments came; Governments went; Prime Ministers changed; Chief Ministers changed; Governors changed.
The Constitution itself changed in Jammu & Kashmir.
Words changed too.
Relief; Return; Rehabilitation; Package; Employment; Transit accommodation; Restoration; Reconciliation.
One word survived all political regimes with admirable durability:
Migrant. Damn migrant!
Thirty-six years later, perhaps the Kashmiri Pandit is one of independent India’s most successful temporary arrangements.
Temporary accommodation became permanent life.
Temporary displacement became permanent geography.
Relief became a system.
Return became an annual subject.
Rehabilitation became a department.
And exile acquired files, forms, offices, portals and official vocabulary.
What it did not acquire was an expiry date.
What do 36 years do to a human being?
Statistics cannot explain this.
In 1990, a 45-year-old Kashmiri Pandit could leave carrying his suitcase.
Today, if alive, he is 81.
My father is one such man. For the last 20 years he has fought and won court cases – 4 in all, and all in his favor, but only if the local tehsildar or a patwari or a deputy commissioner had some sanity to hand him over the possession of the parcel of land. Kashmir houses shameless people, and New Delhi cultivates their shamelessness. It is an administrative hell out there. Less said the better.
The man who once climbed walnut trees may now require assistance climbing three steps.
The woman who ran an entire household may today depend upon her daughter to give her medicines.
Someone who knew every field boundary of his village may now depend upon a young relative with a smartphone to show him a satellite image.
“Zoom there.”
“Move left.”
“No, that was our house.”
“There used to be a tree here.”
“Can you see the temple?”
“What happened to the spring?”
“Who lives there now?”
This is what thirty-six years actually means.
The Republic remained independent. The exile gradually became dependent.
Dependent upon children for travel.
Dependent upon officials for records.
Dependent upon neighbours for information.
Dependent upon lawyers for possession.
Dependent upon photographs for memory.
And eventually dependent upon somebody else simply to tell him whether the home he spent a lifetime remembering still exists.
Time is now doing what displacement could not
There was once an assumption that return could wait.
Next year.
After security improves.
After a package.
After jobs.
After accommodation.
After reconciliation.
After another committee.
After another election.
But time does not attend committee meetings.
It keeps moving.
And it is now achieving something frightening.
It is removing the witnesses.
The generation that could point towards a field and say, “ours” is disappearing.
The generation that remembers where a small Bhairav temple stood is disappearing.
The generation that knew which spring belonged to which ritual is disappearing.
The generation that remembers the Muslim neighbour who kept someone’s key, the shopkeeper at the corner, the path through an orchard, the smell of a particular kitchen and the exact spot in the aangun where the winter sun fell is disappearing.
A government can restore property to a son.
It cannot restore to his dead father the afternoon he wanted to spend once more in his own courtyard.
That opportunity, once lost, is not rehabilitated by compensation.
The cruel arithmetic of Independence Day
India will celebrate 79 years of Independence.
My community has spent 36 of those years displaced.
Think about that proportion.
Our exile has lasted for nearly half of independent India’s entire life.
When Kashmiri Pandits left in 1990, independent India itself was only about 43 years old.
We have now spent almost as much time outside our homeland as independent India had existed before we left it.
That is no longer an emergency.
That is an era.
Children born after displacement are themselves approaching middle age.
Parents have died.
Grandparents have become photographs.
Keys have passed from one generation to another.
And perhaps the greatest danger is no longer that the Kashmiri Pandit cannot return.
It is that someday his grandchild may ask:
Return where?
That would be displacement’s final victory.
Not the abandoned house.
Not the occupied land.
Not the ruined shrine.
But the disappearance of the desire to return.
So, what do my 36 years mean?
They mean India had enough time to transform itself.
Enough time to liberalise its economy.
Enough time to become a nuclear power.
Enough time to become an information-technology giant.
Enough time to build expressways, metros, airports and tunnels.
Enough time to send missions to the Moon and Mars.
Enough time for an entire analogue civilisation to become digital.
And yet apparently not enough time for one displaced citizen to cease being officially understood through the vocabulary of migration.
So this Independence Day, perhaps do not ask the Kashmiri Pandit how patriotic he feels.
Ask something harder.
What did we do with his 36 years?
Because thirty-six years are not merely thirty-six Independence Days.
They are birthdays missed in an ancestral home.
Parents cremated away from the soil they loved.
Puja rooms never reopened.
Aanguns never walked again.
Trees never touched again.
Neighbours never met again.
And thousands upon thousands of ordinary mornings that could never be recovered.
Nations measure progress in GDP, highways, literacy, life expectancy and technology.
Exiles measure time differently.
They measure it by those who were alive when they left—
and those who are no longer alive to return.
That is what my 36 years actually mean in the life of an independent nation.
Excuse me this Independence Day. Some other time please. My vocal cords are important. God bless you.
