When will the Kashmiri Pundits get their land and security back?

Another anniversary of what I consider the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus from their own land has passed and though much has been gained by the abrogation of Article 370 and 35A in trying to undo the wrongs of 70 years much still remains to be done. The Supreme Court at least should take up the cause of how and why the ethnic cleansing happened and bring some of the perpetrators to justice who are still alive and escaped justice of any kind.

Such people and organizations will continue to act against the Indian state until their collusion in the Crimes against Humanity is brought out. I say Crimes against Humanity, with full respect for the phrase and I say it with conviction. Ethnic cleansing of any religion or peoples for their beliefs is just that. This has happened with the Jews during the holocaust and Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in Kashmir.

There needs to be a step towards Truth and Reconciliation as there was in South Africa. We cannot wait for another generation of Kashmiris brought up in exile to barely recall the land which was once theirs and ours. The land where the great Hindu sages came from and where Sanskrit, the very first language of the world, got the perfect grammar under Panini.

We ignore this at our own peril. The very concept of Hindu Dharma which makes us the oldest and most philosophical people on earth is at risk, if we don’t at least reclaim the narrative of what we have lost and it does not have to be at the cost of diversity or recognizing that we are a land that accepted all religions and races, it would merely ask all Indians to respect every Indian. This is not what happened with the people that lived in Kashmir since 1947, and this is what we need to address.

So, I go back to what has not been covered in detail in any anniversary of what I call the Exodus, not even on 19 th January 2022, on mainstream media. Yes, many You Tubers covered it but apart from one valiant filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, who Bollywood hates as he tells the truth, no one is really interested, it seems. Vivek has been going from city to city and Universities in the US showing his film– The Kashmir Files –and actually telling the story of our heritage which Bollywood would not or refused to tell. He is fighting a very courageous and lonely battle against a narrative that the World and even Indians, I am ashamed to say, were made to accept till 2014.

This is what happened on one night of 19 th January 1990—Thirty -two years ago.

It was at first a slow, steady drumbeat of targeted killings of well- known Kashmiri Pundits and then it became a wave which led to the night of 19 January 2019. It began even before partition when Sheikh Abdullah came into the limelight and became Nehru’s close confidant. From then onwards it became a land where Kashmiri Pundits’ fate was sealed.

Sheikh Abdullah convinced Nehru that Kashmir would need special constitutional status at the time of partition and this was Article 370 and 35A, which Nehru wanted to put into our Constitution and BR Ambedkar refused to accept. But Nehru always got what he wanted and it came in as a “Temporary” provision till Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped it with Parliamentary approval in August 5 th 2019.

From 1947 onwards the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and refugees were discriminated against, their lands confiscated, jobs taken away and opportunities lost. Slowly they started leaving the valley.

Then it morphed into targeted killings in the late 1980s and early 1990. Several Pakistani terror groups such as the Hizb al-Mujahidin, (HaM) meaning “Party of Holy Warriors” or & “Party of Mujahedeen”, founded by Muhammad Ahsan Dar in September 1989, came up as a Kashmiri separatist group.

It is designated a terrorist organisation by India, the European Union and the United States, active in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1989. The current supreme commander of the group is Sayeed Salahuddin. Recently he is supposed to have said that Indian should be nuked so Pakistan can get Kashmir.

The “HaM” holds a pro-Pakistan Ideology and was also involved in the ethnic cleansing of 500,000, Kashmiri Pundits during the years that militancy peaked in the valley from 1989 to early 1990s. This is vividly described in a book written by several Kashmiri Pandit families that have been displaced. A Long Dream of Home, The Persecution, Exodus and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits, is a chilling account of how 500,000 Indians were made to leave their home in a period of a few short months.

Kashi Nath Pandita writes that first slogans were shouted in all neighbourhoods:

“Kashmir has become Pakistan and We want our Kashmir: without Pandits, but with their women. Then the mobs roamed around stone-pelting their homes. Suddenly, their Muslim friends stopped talking to them.

At night the loudspeakers blared from mosques asking all Pandits to leave the valley or get killed. Then he describes the blatant threats:

Al Safa, the Urdu newspaper of Srinagar, published the first ultimatum issued by a militant organization. The headline read: Pandits should leave Kashmir in 36 hours. One by one, the Pandits shut their shops in Amira Kadal and other places in the city. Then the most dreadful and awful incidents began to take place. Each day a Pandit was shot down by a militant. Lassa Kaul, the Director Doordarshan was gunned down outside his house… Rattan Lal Kaul, Deputy Director of Food and Supplies was also killed in his office… Bhushan Lal Razdhan, my next-door neighbour was gunned down in his home because he happened to be the stenographer of the Governor. I came to know that his assailants were hiding in the balcony of the house of a Muslim, just opposite his house and were closely watching his movements.

Then the Pandits started to leave.”

Lawyers, doctors and people who represented the Pandits were viciously targeted and paid with their lives.

To think this happened in India under the nose of the central and state government is shocking. Why did they let this happen? Where was the security? Why wasn’t the media there to highlight it? And why have the Pandits languished for 30 plus years in displaced peoples’ camps?

Most importantly where was Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and all the other such Western NGOs? Why were they not there for the Kashmiri Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs when the ethnic cleansing was taking place? In addition, why do they still side with Pakistan when all our present government has done is to take away a Temporary Article, that discriminated against not only Hindus but even the Muslims by depriving their women of any rights to property if they married a non- Kashmiri, including all Rights given to Indians.

The situation today in Jammu and Kashmir has improved immensely for the locals and the tourist season in 2021 was great in spite of Covid. Development projects are going on and Foreign Direct Investment is coming in. But Pakistan will never stop trying to divide India on communal lines after all they divided India. But I have trust in Indians whether they are Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs or whatever their religion. Pakistan is already losing the game but there are anti India forces at play within India who are in cahoots with the enemy.

The world already knows that Pakistan exports terror but now India has enough clout to tell the world what Pakistan does within its own borders. Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer said as much in an interview with TOI some years ago about Indians:

“I’ve noticed that liberals and leftists are generally very critical of Hindu fanaticism – but not of Islamic fanaticism. Islamic fanatics are against human rights, women’s rights, free speech and democracy. Islamic fanatics are against everything Indian liberals stand for-but liberals strangely sympathise with them. They have a distorted the concept of secularism.”