: If I forget you O Jaora, may my right hand perish #WorldNEWSAll We can never forget our debt to Jaora which gave us our bread and butter for 200 years. Even 2000 years of their diaspora from Palestine,

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If I forget you O Jaora, may my right hand perish #WorldNEWSAll
We can never forget our debt to Jaora which gave us our bread and butter for 200 years.
Even 2000 years of their diaspora from Palestine, the Jews have been saying If I forget you O Jerusalem, may my right hand perish(Psalm 137:5).
Similarly, for 200 years we Katjus have been saying If we forget you O Jaora, may our right hands perish
Jaora is a small town in Ratlam district in Western Madhya Pradesh (on the border of M. P. and Rajasthan). My family still has deep emotional attachment to it.
We are Kashmiri Pandits. My ancestor Pt. Mansa Ram Katju migrated from Kashmir about 200 years ago, and took up service in the Court of the Nawab of Jaora, and thereafter my family continued to live in Jaora for several generations.
We can never forget our debt to Jaora which gave us our bread and butter for 200 years.
Kashmiri Pandits
All Kashmiri Pandits who migrated around that time, whether the ancestor of Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru or of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru or of other Kashmiri Pandits who had migrated from Kashmir to the plains, came in exactly the same way, that is, they got service in the Court of some Maharaja or Nawab.
At that time part of India was under direct British rule, and part of it was under princely states, that is, under some Maharaja or Nawab.
At that time there was no Banihal tunnel, so the Kashmiri Pandits had to come from Kashmir via Lahore, and they took up service mostly in princely states in Western India, that is, Rajasthan, Western Madhya Pradesh, etc.
They got employment in these states as the Court language there was Urdu and Persian, in which we Kashmiri Pandits were highly proficient.
Although we had migrated from Kashmir a long time back, we intermarried only among ourselves, and we retained our food habits, and were non vegetarians, unlike the Pandits of the plains who were mostly vegetarians.
Our favourite dishes still are roganjosh, yaqnee, kabargah, kofta, etc (which are mutton dishes) and damaaloo, haak, etc (which are vegetarian dishes).

However, after one or two generations, we Kashmiri Pandits who had migrated from Kashmir a long time ago forgot the Kashmiri language, which is very different from Hindi.
Thus, the main difference between the Kashmiri Pandits who stayed back in the valley (until the mass migration after 1990 due to persecution) and those who migrated a long time back (like my family) who speak only Hindi and English, is that the former can speak Kashmiri, while the latter cannot.
My wife is Kashmiri speaking (as her family had remained in Kashmir), and even now I cannot understand when she speaks to her relatives (although we were married in 1970).

As I said earlier, my ancestor who migrated from Kashmir about 200 years ago got service in the Court of the Nawab of Jaora.

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