Kashmiri Pandits: The Exodus & Rehabilitation- Historic Treachery & Cruel Joke: Lalit K Kaul

 

Kashmiri Pandits: The Exodus & Rehabilitation- Historic Treachery & Cruel Joke

Lalit K Kaul

It’s a nice feeling to see some Kashmiri Muslims holding placards and requesting the Pandits to return to the Valley as, according to them, it longs to coexist with them; also apologizing for the forced exodus of the Pandits; all this on the day of their exodus- the 19^th of January, 1990. It also betrays a level of ignorance about, and/or a capacity to grasp, the political dynamics that unleashed acts of tyranny against a miniscule minority and took pride in emotionally traumatizing them by acts of barbarism against their men, women and children. The scars left on the psyche of Pandit community and the breach of trust it created between the two communities is indescribable in words and what added insult to the injury (rubbing the salt into afflicted wounds) of the Pandits was the narrative communicated down the generations by the Muslims that the Pandits had left on their own accord and were assisted by Sri Jagmohan in the process of their voluntary migration from their hearth and homes in the valley to the stinking and filthy temporary dwellings in Delhi and Jammu region; that they had decided on their own, as if overnight, to transform themselves from a well to do middle class community to that of slum dwellers! This narrative is not due to irrationality of thought, but an outcome of a venomous religion based political doctrine that inhibits coexistence in a pluralistic society; it is due also to a mindset of a community that accords its religion the top most place in the Super Set of religions and believes in thrusting its world view on one and all in the Globe.

The Wicked Vs the Virtuous: 

The apology tendered to the Pandits by those holding placards may be indicative of their cultivated virtues, but in Realpolitik such gestures are of no consequence because they don’t set rules of the game. The threat to the life and honour of the Pandits, if ever the conditions are proclaimed to be conducive to their return, is not from such placard holding people, but from the political outfits like Jamait-e-Islami; JKLF; HM etc who are all active in the Valley even while maintaining a low profile due to obtained situation post formation of NDA government in Delhi; yet their respective political ideologies/aims haven’t undergone any transformation of the kind that would encourage the Pandits to contemplate return to the Valley to the villages/towns wherein they once belonged.

More than the political outfits that are avowedly anti Indian, it is the “mainstream” political outfits that have stabbed in the back of the Pandits by colluding with the communally motivated political ideologies that can’t tolerate a heterogeneous society; the JNKC, the PDP, the Congress etc continued to be covertly fuelling the communal agenda based on a religious doctrine while wearing a “secular” mask and the initiation of this politics of treachery was done by none other than the tallest political figure in the erstwhile princely state of J&K; Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.

The apology, if at all, is to be tendered to the Pandits by the so called “mainstream” political outfits as it is they who ruled the J&K State and were in power at the time of the Exodus and thereafter because 1) they failed to protect the life, property and honour of the Pandits; 2) failed to inculcate a kind of confidence in the Pandit community that the government of the day would protect their interests and therefore they need not flee from the Valley and 3) since the 19^th January, 1990 all the successive governments in the erstwhile J&K State failed to work out an honourable and reassuring rehabilitation programme for the community that had been forcibly displaced at the point of gun and lurking fear of forced conversions including kidnap and rape followed by murder of their womenfolk.

The greatest act of treachery, by the parties in power, insofar as Pandits are concerned was active participation of the “mainstream” party governments and its collaboration with the Jamait-e-Islami, JKLF etc in subverting the entire administrative machinery and chalking out a plan for homogenizing the Kashmiri society; a long drawn process that ended up with a document listing all the details of Pandit families including their residential addresses; number of children- male and female- and  number of men and women in a family; etc and it was this document that enabled the as and when killings and rapes of men and women respectively. The government of the “mainstream” party was more than a willing partner and facilitator in this heinous crime that was to dehumanize the Kashmiri Society in the years to come.

Therefore, it is the leadership of such political outfits – Jamait-e-Islami, JKLF, HM etc and JKNC PDP Congress etc- who need to tender a public apology to the Pandits for their diabolical political game that they played against an unsuspecting community and not those holding placards.

Responsibility the tormentors of Pandits need to take:   

The rhetoric that “Pandits are welcome back” is more insulting and humiliating than the Exodus because implicit in it is the reminder/warning to the Pandits that they can live in the Valley only at Muslims’ mercy. The Muslim leadership – the fanatic religious outfits and the so called mainstream- must ingrain in their minds that they don’t own the land and if any community can claim to own the Valley it is the Dogras because a Dogra King purchased the region from the British for a consideration of Rs. 70 lacs.

The political leadership in the Valley need to engage themselves on one to one basis with the Pandit leadership (no matter how dispersed) and to start with confess and admit publicly of their nefarious role, in conjunction with the plans of their masters across the border, in ensuring the exodus of the Pandits and own the responsibility for the same.

Pursuers of Vicious Political Ideology:

Irrespective of the claims made by the powers that be that the situation in the Valley is improving, the threat to the existence of Pandits in the Valley has not diminished because the political ideology that threw Pandits out of the Valley is still alive though lying low presently only to regroup over a period of time for attempting implementation of their world view in the Valley. This impending threat will always be there so long as, under the cover of democracy, such political ideologies are allowed to flourish without any hindrance.  

Such political forces that are inimical to the interests of a secular and democratic dispensation in India are active feeding the Pak leadership and media about the imagined “genocide” of Muslims in the UT of J&K; so, a renowned Pak political analyst, Sri Najam Sethi, talks about “cleansing of Muslims and Christians” in India and another analyst, Sri Oriya Maqbool Jan, talks about “genocide” of Muslims in J&K by Modi ji. One can see how such baseless propaganda gets acknowledged by the commentators of repute; if one were to browse through the tweets of so called mainstream leadership. The other political outfits have their own covert communication channels and their lobbies to spread canards about condition of Muslims in India; according to the news channel WION, one “legal body” in UK has filed a case in the court on “Genocide of Muslims in J&K” and has made a plea to arrest the HM of India!!

What encourages these political outfits to pursue their goals unabashedly is the reluctance of the Indian State to go all out against them and one of the reasons can be vote bank politics.

So, there is no way that the leadership of such political outfits will tender the apology to Pandit community as that can be the only starting point for any possible reconciliation between the two communities. It’s one thing to exchange pleasantries and another to have political reconciliation between two distinct ideologies- one that that aims to homogenize the society and the other that aims to retain its pluralistic character.

Cruel Joke:   

Since some years now and suddenly, as if out of the blue, everyone across the country and almost every electronic media channel has started talking about the return and rehabilitation of Pandits in the Valley. Suddenly the Pandits have become important as the subject for discussions on TV channels to earn TRP; suddenly the politicians who claim allegiance to Hindutva philosophy have awakened to the scar on the psyche of the Pandits as being the refugees in their motherland. Pandits have become like a football that gets kicked around in a soccer play ground for one team or other to score goals in their favour. The politicians and political commentators belonging to one political ideology use Pandits to score political goals against the other political parties while holding their “appeasement” policy responsible for the exodus and thereby imparting strength to the “Two Nation” theory as propagated by Jinnah.

The sudden burst of human emotion for the Pandits is only for the purpose of making India’s case against Pak sponsored terrorism unimpeachable; the fact of Pak being an Islamic republic and universally known Operation Topaz including the fact that the dynamics of the exodus is well documented by European agencies; one can easily relate the exodus to Pak sponsored terrorism in the erstwhile state of J&K. The exodus is very gross output of the movement to convert Kashmir in to an Islamic State and therefore proof enough of the involvement of the Islamic State of Pak in it.

In all this well directed political drama enacted by two sovereign States – India and Pak- the saner voices-that tender apology and seek return of Pandits- and the trauma of the Pandits recede in to the oblivion.

Bring to Justice the perpetrators of Pandit Cleansing in Kashmir:

Anybody who has followed the events unfolding post the exodus, the indifference of the successive central governments towards the plight of Pandits is all too well known and understood. The final acknowledgement of Pandit’s irrelevance in the chess board of Indian politics was signed by the SC of India when it refused to admit their petition related to their near genocide and cleansing from the valley. No further proof may be required to establish the complicity of the Indian State in the barbarism that was let loose, by the forces fed on the hatred towards non Muslims, on Pandit community; but what stands out is the unwillingness of the Indian State machinery to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against a miniscule community and instead chose to provide State sponsored security to all such criminals who masqueraded as leaders. By not bringing them to justice the message sent to their followers is loud and clear and the message is: no harm will come to you for all your acts of barbarism against the communities that do not follow your religion.

Inaction by the Indian State machinery and Security issues:

Inaction compounds the security risk for Pandits; the threat of local political outfits to their peaceful and honourable stay in the Valley – if they choose to return- remains and what adds to this fear is the unwillingness/failure of the state machinery to bring such perpetrators of crime to justice even when more than 32 years have elapsed. Who would like to return expecting a bullet piercing his/her chest anytime, anywhere and any day?

Adding Insult to Injury/ Rubbing Salt in to the Wounds:

The talk of rehabilitating Pandits in earmarked areas in the Valley is akin to putting a community in a Zoo which is secured from outside attack. It presupposes that Pandits won’t be moving out of the enclosed campus! There can be nothing more insulting to Pandits than this kind of rehab programme. That’s why it is a cruel joke and more so it is an attempt to sweep under the carpet the impotence of the Indian State in ensuring a dignified life to its citizens.