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| To Kashmiri Pandits with an olive branch | |
K N Pandita
Thirty-six years after our forced exile from our birthplace of Kashmir, PDP Chairperson, Mehbooba Mufti, during her recent meeting with the LG, suggested honourable, secure and sustainable return and rehabilitation of nearly 60 thousand Kashmiri Pandit families scattered all over the country after their exodus in 1990. In her formal letter to the LG, she has appended an outline of a comprehensive rehabilitation plan for the Pandit minority in Kashmir Valley.
To many alienated Kashmiri Pandits, Mehbooba's message is a surprise because of her sustained, open and outright support to armed insurgents in Kashmir. Kashmiri Pandits carry the impressions of the 1986 assault on their community in some parts of Anantnag district and the alleged involvement of her late father in that shocking episode.
But political pragmatism does not recommend perpetual antagonism. A minority community lives in a situation that is somewhat disadvantageous. It has to bear the brunt while trying to adapt to a situation that causes minimum strain on them and their survival.
Incidentally, some weeks ago, a video became viral showing Chief Minister Omar Abdulla performing puja at Kheer Bhavani shrine in Tulmula which falls in his election constituency of Ganderbal. A Pandit priest made him perform all the rituals at the shrine and the Hindus present at the site gave him a hand of applause.
Apparently, a change is visible in the policy of two major regional political parties, viz. NC and PDP towards the extirpated Kashmiri Pandit community. This is the first occasion in the 36-year-old history of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus that an empathizing gesture from them is visible.
No doubt the Pandits and even the Muslim population of Kashmir, too, will be guessing why this U-turn. However, whatever the reason, it is a noble sentiment no doubt, whether implemented or not. KPs are somewhat skeptical about the positivity of the change in political winds in Kashmir. Frankly speaking, their skepticism arises not from the known and tested double standards of Kashmir Valley political leadership but because of the antics of the deep political state of New Delhi.
The question that has caused deep anguish to the exiled community is this. Why did not the Congress government at the Centre take cognizance of the threat to which their government exposed the small Pandit minority in Kashmir in the context of the 1986 assault on the Hindus in South Kashmir? Why did not the Union government take a lightning step on 19 January 1990 to deploy a battalion or two of troops to control the anti-India volatile mobs in the capital city of Srinagar and allow the insurgency to make a foothold? The reason is that the Home Minister of India at the time capitalized on the externally sponsored ethnic cleansing design of Kashmir.
The NDA government is running the third term of its rule at the center. In all of its manifestos, the return and rehabilitation of the displaced community have been among prioritized items. But history shows us that except for labelling the valley-based Kashmir politicians for being accomplices in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Pandit minority, their leadership from top to bottom did not utter a single word, nay a single syllable, about the return and rehabilitation of the Pandits. Not only that, one NC responsible leader said they would not allow the displaced Pandits to return because in that case each Pandit will bring ten Israelis with him.
In December last, PM Modi visited Srinagar where he addressed a mammoth crowd of nearly 2 lac people. He spoke to them for more than an hour. He touched upon almost all big and small aspects of life in Kashmir but alas! he did not take even the name of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits even once. This is the limit of hatred and animus.
In the spring of the current year, the Home Minister paid a 4-day visit to Jammu. It was an official visit in which apart from deliberating on party affairs, he visited the families of the martyred heroes in the border towns of Poonch, Rajouri, Kathua Kishtwar, Doda, Udhampur etc. He did not ask for even one KP family either in Jagti Refugee camp or elsewhere in Jammu whose members were martyred in various massacres as shown by The Hindu in its issue of 23 April in the table below:
Major Massacres by Terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir
Place Date Year Victims*
Kulhand and Tharva, Doda district
May 1 2006 23
Lalon Galla, Udhampur district
May 1 2006 13
Nandimarg, Pulwama March 23 2003 24
Kasimpura, Jammu July 13 2002 28
Kaluchak, Jammu May 14 2002 36
Nirala, Rajouri February 16 2002 8
Behra, Poonch January 20 2002 11
Luddu and Ramsu, Doda January 6 2002 6
Mangnar Top, Poonch December 31 2001 6
Kantha, Rajouri December 30 2001 4
Trinagal, Udhampur December 2 2001 7
Galyot, Udhampur November 30 2001 7
Legislature Complex, Srinagar October 1 2001 35
Mehrot & Dundak, Poonch August 27 2001 7
Sahar Badoli, Udhampur August 15 2001 7
Jammu Railway Station August 7 2001 11
Shrotidar, Doda August 2 2001 15
Tagood, Doda July 22 2001 4
Cherji, Doda July 21 2001 15
Morha Salui, Rajouri February 15 2001 15
Tali Mohalla, Doda district November 23 2000 5
Sher Bibi, Doda District November 21 2000 5
Kalaroos, Kupwara district August 2 2000 5
Keyar, Doda district August 2 2000 8
Pogal Paristan, Doda District August 2 2000 14
Mir Nowgan, Anantnag district August 2 2000 7
Mir Bazar , Anantnag district August 2 2000 19
Pahalgam, Anantnag district August 1 2000 30
Chatisinghpura, Anantnag District March 20 2000 35
Thattri village, Doda District July 20 1999 15
Kupwara District April 29 1999 9
Chamba District, Himachal Pradesh August 2 1998 35
Shanna-Thakaraie village, Doda District July 28 1998 16
Champnari, Doda District June 19 1998 26
Prankote and Dakikote, Udhampur District April 21 1998 26
Thub Village, Udhampur District April 19 1998 13
Wandhama January 26 1998 26
Sangrampora, Srinagar District March 22 1997 7
Barshalla, Doda District Janu
Shri K K Khosa, President of Kashmiri Pandit Sabha, Ambphalla, waited on the Home Minister in Jammu to present a memorandum. He was not given five minutes to make it. He stood in the corridor and waited for the Honourable Home Minister to pass by so that he would hand over the copy of the memorandum. The minister beckoned him to give it to his aid.
It is no surprise then if the Home Minister ordered the stoppage of the paltry relief to the destitute among the displaced community living as refugees in their own country.
It is noteworthy that the amount of relief given to the displaced persons was to compensate the recipients whose lives and property the government failed to protect pitilessly violating the fundamental provision of the constitution of India.
I have deliberately elucidated how the Union government, and especially the NDA government, has callously sidelined the hapless displaced community for the bare reason that a sympathetic and humanistic approach to their problem could result in the loss of Kashmir majority goodwill for the BJP, a concept whose bottom stands blasted by the results of the previous assembly elections.
We the internally displaced Kashmiri Pandits are the victims of pseudo-secularism of the Indian mindset. If we recount the saga of our travail, we are dubbed as anti-Muslim. If we speak out our grievances to the Union government we are dubbed as anti-national. And if we speak of our fate and the fate of the vanishing community, we are called cynics. If we ask for our voting rights and constituency in exile, we are labelled as separatists and Pakistani agents.
We are the Kurds of the sub-continent who are not owned by any and dissociated by all. One of the charges brought against us is that our community has had great influence in the Congress regimes and hence we deserved to be treated in a scurvy manner by the NDA the arch-rival of Congress.
The Congress stalwarts like Nehru, Indira ji, Rajeev and his siblings were not voted to power by the Pandits. They are voted by their constituencies in UP and not in Kashmir. If anybody enjoyed maximum closeness and influence with the Congress regimes in Delhi it was Sheikh Abdullah and his progeny, not the Pandits. And yet in his biography he called Pandits the spies of Congress. The accession was endorsed by the Sheikh but those who were made to face the bullets in 1947, 1986 and 1990, were the hapless Pandits. To crown it all, the Sultans of Kashmir unleashed the propaganda that it was the then Governor Jagmohan who had engineered the exit of the Kashmiri Pandits.
Our reaction to the apparently humanistic approach of Madam Mehbooba, chairperson of PDP to the rehabilitation plan of the displaced persons back in Kashmir is simple. Is she satisfied that the conditions that were deliberately created in 1989-90 leading to the genocide of the Pandits and the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir have been reversed? Is she confident that the masses of people in Kashmir valley, various political and social organizations and their leaderships, all are convinced that their religion, conscience and human rights regime dictate the necessity of behaving as a true Musselman and a firm believer in their religion of peace? Has she taken the ruling party, the state assembly and above all the Unio government on board while formulating the contemplated plan. These questions arise not of any ill will towards her or her party but because the history of contemporary Kashmir and more importantly the radicalization of once a tolerant and accommodating community.
(Shri K.N. Pandita is the former Director of the Centre for Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University)
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