K N Pandita
On December 27, Kashmiri Pandits gathered in good numbers at the Abhinav Theatre, Jammu to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of Pandit Prem Nath Bhat. At least a thousand persons of the community attended the function.
The first notable martyr of KP community was Pandit Tika Lal Taploo. He was gunned down by the local JKLF terrorist outfit outside his house on 14 September 1989. The second martyr was Justice Nilakanth Ganjoo who fell to the bullets of the same outfit on December 4, 1989. Just 23 days later, on 27 December, Pandit Premnath Bhat, advocate and dedicated social activist was martyred in Anantnag. Prior to these killings, in summer 1989, the mahant (caretaker) of Vichar Nag temple was gunned down by a militant in the temple premises.
No inquiry into these killings was ordered nor was any arrest made. Congress government did not consider an inquiry worthwhile in these cases. Three years earlier, while Congress government was in power, attacks on Hindus and destruction of their temples were led by the Jamaat-i-Islami goons of South Kashmir. Mufti Saeed, the then State Congress President, had manipulated the rioting to show down Mir Qasim, the then Congress chief minister. In the tussle between the two Congress party rivals, the KPs of South Kashmir got sandwiched. Some Hindu families migrated out of Kashmir following the riots. Not to speak of setting up an inquiry, the news of the attack on the Pandits of South Kashmir was suppressed by the state as well as the national media.
This is how the State and the Central governments of Congress-NC era had converged on the obliteration of the Kashmiri Pandit community.
These killings and atrocities took place when the State was run by a coalition government of NC and Congress. Did not these killings indicate that something bigger, something catastrophic was going to happen to the miniscule Hindu minority of Kashmir Valley, which ultimately did a month and a half later on 19 January, 1990? Did the government in the state or at the centre wake up with the alarm? No. It did not consider the killings worthwhile to take action and order an inquiry into these killings, which would expose the network of an armed insurgency in the offing. After all, the Pandits were a small negligible minority, from a faith different from that of Kashmir majority. No party considers them as their vote bank and no political leader, true or fake, is willing to make them his flag bearer. That is the type of secularism we find in Kashmir, then and now.
The killing of two prominent figures of KP community did not move the state or the central government to anticipate the consequences of a pre-meditated attack on a helpless minority, take the incident seriously and galvanise the security agencies into action by giving the first priority to the safety of the Pandit minority community in a highly radicalized environs. Much later did we come to know that both governments were not averse to the decimation of the Kashmir Hindu minority community?
Pandit Tika Lal Taploo was the BJP party chief in Kashmir. He was among the top activists of the organisation and commanded high respect of party echelons. After coming to power in 2014, the party should have shown him the respect and honour he deserved. His martyrdom day should have been declared as KP Balidan Diwas, which would encompass the commemoration of all martyrs who fell during Kashmir insurgency.
The ND government should have desired the government of the UT to raise a statue of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo at some premium square in the city (preferably in Habba Kadal Chowk) with the objective of perpetuating the memory of the departed leader. Similarly, the party should have set up a statue of Pandit Prem Nath Bhat in a conspicuous chowk in Anantnag. It was the obligation on the BJP state wing to come forward and pay respects to the martyrs of the community. These steps would be symbolic of strengthening the secular image of Kashmir Valley. In fact the KP Balidan Diwas should be the focal day for commemorating all fatalities we have suffered in externally sponsored and internally abetted armed insurgence 1989-90 onwards.
The NDA government has set up a statue of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Gujarat. It is considered the highest statue in India. The Sardar did great service to the Indian nation by integrating over 560 princely states into the Indian Union smoothly thus giving cohesion to India’s social, economic and political structure. We salute him for that great service. Nevertheless, the Sardar, by sticking to loyalty to the leader at the cost of the life and future of the entire Kashmiri Pandits has left them speechless. As the Home Minister of India, and as one who had understood the covert intentions of Kashmir leadership, he should not have allowed anybody, notwithstanding his political stature, to play wantonly with the destiny of Jammu and Kashmir, especially its miniscule minority of Kashmiri Pandits by abandoning Kashmir portfolio to Nehru on the latter’s asking?
The craven surrender of his constitutional rights amounted to the betrayal of national interests, undermining of democratic dispensation and plummeting with the dignity flowing from public trust. He sympathised with the ruler of Kashmir but failed to save him from perfidy. He knew that the prime minister was going to snatch the J&K State from the hands of a benign autocratic ruler and hand it over to an unproven political trickster.
While doing so, Nehru slighted the popularity of Mirwaiz Maulawi Yusuf Shah, the top religious leader of Kashmir Valley with a large following among the Muslims of the valley. Nehru also derided, the Jammu Praja Parishad‘s tallest leader Shri Premnath Dogra who had forewarned New Delhi against the parochial and vengeful mindset of Kashmir leadership.
What did Nehru handover to the Sheikh? He handed over to him the snow-clad Himalayan peaks, gorges, crevices, and the tracts of arid Tibetan plateaux, all of which stand witness to the blood and sweat shed by the great Dogra warriors in making the northern boundaries of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Today, even the Tibetans, the one-time adversaries fighting against the celebrated commander produced by the Duggar-land, come to the memorial (Samadhi) of the great commander located in Western Tibet, near Taklakot (Burang), constructed by Tibetans in the shape of a Buddhist Chorten (stupa) to honour the heroic Dogra general Zorawar Singh, who laid down his life in 1841, defending the northern border of the state. It stands on a hill in Toyo, near the Mansarovar Lake area, revered by locals as the "Singh ba Chorten" or Warrior's Cenotaph.
Dr Jitendra Singh, who has spent a long time in the company of Kashmiri Pandits, has been their well-wisher from day one. He is perhaps the only minister in the ministerial council of the Prime Minister who knows and understands Kashmir and its problem far better than anybody else. By agreeing to be the guest of honour at the commemorative function, he has endeared himself further to the entire community of displaced people from Kashmir.
However, knowing his limitations on the one hand, and the almost negligible response of the ND government to KP problem on the other, the Pandits, as a matter of rational analysis, did not think he is in a position to dole out any substantive largesse to cheer up the spirit of the big audience. Naturally, he rambled from generality to generality, though in between, he had some subtle chastising words like mushrooming of KP groups and self-styled functionaries more to the detriment than the benefit of the community. Pandits need to take few lessons on collective wisdom while handling sensitive political issues.
We cannot blame him for overlooking the current situation of the displaced persons. Two reasons can be assigned. First, the on-ground situation of the internally displaced people from the valley has materially changed not owing to government’s instrumentation government but by their self - effort catalyzed by the disaster of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Kashmir. The second reason is that after a couple of years of government’s claim that terrorism had been contained in the valley, the sudden outbursts like the Baisaran carnage, the Red Fort RDX blast and the narrative around it, and the vast underground and over ground terrorist network that is exposed by the police and security forces, all give a lie to the claims of normalcy orchestrated by the government agencies. We do not deny that the situation has been controlled to some extent but the widespread radicalization that has overtaken the old and young in Kashmir is of the magnitude that has the potential of replacing armed insurgency.
KPs have to come out of a myopic vision of Kashmir situation. It is important for us to find out how we can become instrumental in rationalizing and normalizing the volatile situation. While we need to be aware of the current environment around us, we shall have to become instruments of solution not obstruction even when the country is passing through a critical phase in which our detractors are joining hands to pull us down.
(Shri K.N. Pandita is the former Director of the Centre for Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University)
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