Srinagar, January . Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu and Kashmir's secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.
In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference government abdicating all responsibilities of the State. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans. Reports of killing of Hindus, invariably Kashmiri Pandits, begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.
Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.
Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: "Be one with us, run, or die!"
* * *
Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Jagmohan arrives to take
charge as governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah, whose
pathetic, whimpering, snivelling government has all but ceased to exist
and has gone into hiding, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is
imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order.
But it fails to have a deterrent effect.Throughout the day, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.
As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: 'Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai' (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar); 'Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa' (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah); 'Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san' (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).
In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, noted lawyer and BJP national executive member, by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989. Soon after that, Justice N K Ganju of the Srinagar high court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into bits and pieces at a sawmill.
In villages and towns across the Kashmir valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Kashmiri Pandits. With no government worth its name, the administration having collapsed and disappeared, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.
And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: to flee their homeland to save their lives from rabid jihadis. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.
* * *
Srinagar, January 19, 2005. There are no Kashmiri Pandits
in Srinagar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Kashmir valley;
they don't live here anymore. You can find them in squalid refugee camps
in Jammu and Delhi. As many as 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits have fled their
home and hearth and been reduced to living the lives of refugees in
their own country.Two-thirds of them are camping in Jammu. The rest are in Delhi and in other Indian cities. Many of them, once prosperous and proud of their rich heritage, now live in grovelling poverty, dependent on government dole and charity. In these 15 years, an entire generation of exiled Kashmiri Pandits has grown up, without seeing the land from where their parents fled to escape the brutalities of Islamic terrorism, a land they dare not return to, although that land still remains a part of their country.
A large number of them are suffering from a variety of stress and depression related diseases. A group of doctors who surveyed the mental and physical health of the Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps, found high incidence of 'economic distress, stress induced diabetes, partial lunacy, hypertension and mental retardation.' Statistics reflect high death rate and low birth rate among the Kashmiri Pandit refugees.
And thereby hangs a tragic tale that has been all but wiped out from public memory.
An entire people have been uprooted from the land of their ancestors and left to fend for themselves as a weak-kneed Indian state shamelessly panders to Islamic terrorists and separatists who claim they are the final arbiters of Jammu and Kashmir's destiny. A part of India's cultural heritage has been destroyed; a chapter of India's civilisational history has been erased.
Had this tragedy occurred elsewhere in Hindu majority India, and had the victims been Muslims, we would have described it as 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide.' We would have made films with horror-inducing titles. We would have filed cases in the Supreme Court of India. Our media would have marshalled remarkable rage in reporting the smallest detail. But, this tragedy has occurred in Muslim majority Kashmir valley, and the victims are all Hindus, that too Pandits. What has been lost is part of India's Hindu culture, what has been erased is integral to India's Hindu civilisation.
Therefore, the government makes bold to record that the Kashmiri Pandits have "migrated on their own" and their 'displacement (is) self-imposed;' the National Human Rights Commission, after a perfunctory inquiry, refuses to concede that what has happened is 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing,' though facts add up to no less than that, never mind that 300,000 lives have been destroyed. And, our jhola-wallah brigade of secular activists rudely turn up their noses to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits: Hindu sorrow, inflicted by Islamic terror, stinks.
Today, on January 19, the 15th anniversary of the forced flight of Kashmiri Pandits, look back at India's wretched history of secular politics and consider the terrible price the nation has paid at the altar of appeasement because the Indian State has, and continues to, toe the line of least resistance.
Reflect. Resolve. React.
Next week: The Kashmiri Pandits' living nightmare.
ALSO READ: Pandits will return on their own terms
Are we now a nation of shameless people?
India is a meaningless mass of amorphous humanity:' Oswald Spangler, The Decline of the West
A
few days ago when a group of 16 Pakistani journalists visited the Jammu
camp of Kashmiri Pandit refugees from the valley, there were unruly
scenes. Many victims of terrorist violence begged the Pakistani
journalists to ask their country to stop the violence and help them
return to their homes.
The
reaction of the visiting Pakistani journalists is not known but it
ought to make every single of the one billion plus Indians hang their
heads in shame. Here is a peaceful community of over 300,000, that was
driven out of their ancestral homes
14 years ago and have been living in pathetic conditions for all of
those 14 years. What was the 'crime' of these people other than the fact
that they practiced a religion different from the majority? Did they
commit any atrocity against the majority?
True,
Kashmiri Pandits are not the only such unfortunate people. Palestinians
have been enduring this for the last 57 years! But there is a crucial
difference, the plight of Palestinians is recognised by the entire
world. India, as the self appointed 'mukhiya' [leader] of the
Non Aligned countries, has been championing their cause. But 'we the
people of a secular, democratic and socialist Republic of India' have
resolutely and totally put them out of sight and out of mind.
The Kashmiri Pandit exodus took place in the early 1990s.
Since then we have had six prime ministers -- from V P Singh to
Manmohan Singh, and three different parties have ruled India, including
the ostensibly 'Hindu Nationalist' Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet all of
them have ignored the plight of the Pandits and did nothing to end their
suffering.
Also Read: Francois Gautier: Who cares for the Pandits?
The
ever so alert judiciary that intervenes in issues ranging from the use
of CNG in Delhi, to pollution, to even the selection of hockey teams,
does not look at the fate of 300,000 Indian citizens who have been
denied their basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution. What
stopped the Honourable Lordships from taking a suo moto cognisance of this injustice?
The
sad plight of Pandits has also not touched the conscience of the ever
so sensitive 'human rights' groups in India. The Teesta Setalvads and
Javed Anands, the Medha Patkars or Arundhati Roys of this world have been deafeningly silent on this issue. There are no street plays, no
documentaries or painting exhibitions on the sad state of these 300,000
Indians. The news media, both print and television, have shown no
inclination to highlight their cause.
Also Read: Sharanarthi: The Forgotten Ones
The political parties, government machinery, judiciary, media and the NGOs, have all failed to fight for the cause of these hapless people. The
people at large have been apathetic. In no elections was this ever made
an issue by any party. The common refrain seems 'how does it bother
me!.'
Indians
as a people have a short historical memory. It is precisely this
attitude that helped the British gobble up the whole country, one region
at a time. Thus while Robert Clive was busy finishing off
Siraj-ud-Daulah in Bengal, Shah Shuja in Awadh was least concerned, till
the British did not turn against him. In 1799, the Marathas watched the
British under Duke of Wellington decimate Tipu Sultan, knowing fully
well that it would be their turn next. After 150 years of slavery,
nothing seems to have changed in this land of Bharatvarsha.
As
a former soldier I feel ashamed that with the world's third largest
army, we are unable to ensure the safety and security of our own
citizens.
Has India reached that advanced stage of decay that we are now a nation of shameless people?
POSTED BY ;VIPUL KOUL
EDITED BY; ASHOK KOUL
No comments:
Post a Comment