Records of Divide

Decolonisation of the Indian subcontinent was also accompanied by the redrawing of national boundaries. The phenomenon did not just change the course of history but held some of the past hostage as well. Tasavur Mushtaq reports on the fate of the records of the land people of Poonch on the Pakistani side of the LoC own but papers remained on the Indian side.

Relationship with land is one of the most lasting ones people can have. But when forces of history and tyranny divide homelands and people, a melancholic, sometimes agonising time ambience envelopes personal histories as well.

When the Chakan-da-Bagh crossing point on the LoC in Poonch was opened for the divided families to start meeting, no one would have thought about the numerous ways memory chests would receive fresh air and renewed life. People from the two sides of the cruel divide started meeting and began re-establishing connections that history had snapped some six decades earlier.

Apart from the intimate family connections, the divided people of Poonch, particularly on the Pakistani side of the LoC, also had to suffer uniquely. Two-thirds of the erstwhile principality of Poonch became a part of Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PaK). But their land records, housed in an 18th-century fort, remained on the Indian side.

So, owners on the Pakistani side had the land, but records remained on the other side. When the Chakan-da-Bagh crossing point was opened, applications slowly started landing up in the Fort record house or Muhafiz Khana. However, the disputed sovereignty of the Poonch people, like all of the citizens of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, made it impossible for them to obtain their land revenue records.

This record, almost held hostage in the Fort, has become the principal reason people from the PaK side of Poonch undertake the journey to the other side, besides, of course, meeting their relatives. This is one way how relations between New Delhi and Islamabad become a variable, even for as simple a thing as obtaining revenue records of the land their respective clans own on the PaK side.

The records are hosted inside a dingy, dark room inside the fort, where people, relatives of those living on the PaK side, can be seen on a beeline, hoping to retrieve copies of the land records. This houses the entire land record of the erstwhile Poonch principality, a sprawling mountainous stretch on both sides of the LoC, now visible even during nights by the illuminated fencing.

The Fort built by Rustum Khan in 1760 had taken 17 years to complete and was later renovated by Moti Singh in 1852; work carried on for nearly 40 years. It used to house 19 state government departments when it partially collapsed. Most of its 270 rooms are dilapidated and undergoing some renovation at a snail’s pace.

From across the LoC, people have been waiting to reach this dark room for months and even years. “Since the principality was always ruled from Poonch, the records would always stay here and when 1947-48 divided Poonch, people on the other side of the line had the land but not the records that would sustain their occupation and ownership claims,” says a lawyer and a local politician Imtiaz Ahmad Banday.

The process is not easy for all. “Under the law, we can not deny requests for copies of the record, but in case of citizens coming from PoK, we prefer seeking applications and issuing records to their hosts,” said Kifayat Hussain Sofi, the in-charge of the records. He believes the number of applications from across the LoC is significant.  “I may not have the exact number, but it is substantial because almost every family in Poonch has relations across.”

The records room that has scores of wooden and iron stands stuffed with ancient clothes pasted with paper hand-drawings is host to records of around 120 years old, when the last settlement happened in the Poonch belt. Though in dilapidated condition, the entire land records of the four erstwhile tehsils (which are now districts) – Sudhunuti, Bagh (PoK), Mendhar and Haveli (J&K) are still kept there. “These are actually 486 villages and only 186 of these villages are now in India, and the rest are in Pakistani Kashmir,” informs Sofi.

Officials have started realising the importance of preserving these records. “We are trying our level best to protect the records, but there are several misls (sheets with the drawings) which have been eaten by moths,” Sofi said.

To safeguard the data, the Deputy Commissioner, according to Sofi, has sanctioned three lakh rupees. Currently spending money to hard-bind the records, the officials in the records room believe they will get some chemicals this year that will reduce the moth attacks on the precious records.

The records of this side of the LoC are safe to a large extent compared to those of the PaK side. Sofi says, records of Poonch, Mendhar and Surankote are in good shape, the Pakistani records have a problem. “Since nobody could touch them for all these decades because no application came about those records, it was easy for moths to chew them without ever being disrupted.” Some of these records, he said, are destroyed, besides records of a few villages from Mendhar like Mankote, Mansai, and Banwat. “I have already informed my seniors about that in black and white,” Sofi said.

The 2005 earthquake destroyed part of the Fort, in which a precious library of an erstwhile Raja was destroyed to the extent that not even a single book could be retrieved. But now, the records will have to undergo a survival test. The district’s mini-secretariat is coming up in the periphery of the historic town.

“We will have to shift it, and some of the documents will be touched for the first time,” Sofi said, adding, “It would be the real major task for us to ensure there is no damage and the new system is as user-friendly as it is in the fort.”

Given their adherence to the old ways of keeping and accessing the records, the staff of the room is so efficient that they are able to get the particular records within a minute, and the applications are disposed of within 30 minutes. Sofi is assisted by many of his junior colleagues in the manual copying of the drawings.

The room has been kept dark on purpose. Sofi said, once when electric lights were fitted in the records room, he registered his concern and got the electric supply snapped. “I took a strong note of it and took an application to the Deputy Commissioner that no land records room housed in such a complex can have electricity because it can trigger a short circuit and destroy records,” Sofi said. He and his staff usually use rechargeable handheld battery lights to navigate the room. Once they identify a particular missal, they take it out of the room and draft its copies on the fort balcony under the sunlight.

There seems to be no plan to digitise these precious records. “Unless the ongoing settlement is over, I doubt we will be able to do it (digitisation).”

While Sofi would lament over the moths and insects that had invaded the records, he would not even mention rodents, usually a major threat to the records kept in a centuries-old fort that remained mostly uninhabited after the 2005 earthquake.

“We are adequately protected from rodents thanks to the snakes,” Sofi said. Snakes, he said, have always been here in the Muhafiz Khana ever since it existed. “There are at least three different snakes that we know, which come outside and later return after moving around.” Never, Sofi asserts, did these reptiles attack any of the officials working here. “We never felt bothered, even about the species they belong to, because they help us save the institution from rodents,” he said.