City of Srinagar in Kashmir Valley.
Ravi Speaks:
Updated on 21.09.2022.
Every year on the “Holocaust Day”-the 19th January-Kashmiri Pandits observe it as the horrifying day in 1990-when the exodus from the valley had started. Various activities like taking the pledges and returning to the valley back are taken, but are we going back? Can we be happy and safe there once again, despite the government’s assurances? Experts may say anything like progress in the talks and influencing the community to return to the valley-are being done by the government-but to me it looks Government has failed on that front clearly. This article was written only to analyze what could be the main factor coming in the way of failure for the resettlement of our ousted community in the valley-the simple answer coming out is “SECURITY”.Read it you would also agree with me on that front.
Kashmiri Pandits won’t return to the valley
The merciless ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits, 32 years back, was perhaps the haziest and darkest part of India’s modern history. The failure of the government declaring them formally as “Internally Displaced Persons” and permitting them to get back to their motherland/homeland with the full dignity, security, and social equality that they merit just intensifies this misfortune.
On January 19, Kashmiri Pandits across the world noticed “Holocaust Day.” It was on that day 32 years prior that the Pandit mass migration from the Kashmir Valley started. Dangers from Islamist assailants in the Valley constrained around 70,000 Pandit families, including north of 350,000 ladies, men, and kids to escape their homes in the long stretches of time that followed.
On occasions in urban areas in India and abroad to check their mass migration, Pandits swore to get back. Cries of “murmur wapas avenge” (we will return) lease the air and #HumWapasAayenge has been moving via online media lately. 32 years after they had to escape their homes, the protected and noble return of Pandits to the Kashmir Valley stays a far-off dream.
Kashmiri Pandits or Kashmiri Brahmins are Hindus. A profoundly proficient local area, they were excessively addressed in the Kashmir administration and in the educating, lawful, and clinical callings, inciting disdain among different networks in the Valley, particularly Muslims, who contain over 95% of the populace.
Notwithstanding, regard for the Pandits (large numbers of whom were instructors) and a common Kashmiri character that kept Pandits and Muslims intact kept contrasts from emitting into struggle. That changed in 1989-90.
Kashmir was in age and depicted the stage of intense aggression within. Aggressiveness was building up speed and enemies of India’s opinions were running solid. In late 1989, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pioneer Jia Lal Taploo and a resigned judge, Neelkanth Ganjoo, were killed. It sent shock waves through the Pandit people group. Albeit supportive of autonomy, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) said the two men were killed because of their binds with the Indian state rather than their Pandit character, the Pandits were not persuaded.
Circumstances were created for the minority community to run away from their motherland during 1989-90:-
Developments in the first three weeks of 1990 further fueled their fears. Kashmiri Muslims wanted us to leave the Valley, Pandits were given a choice: convert to Islam, leave the Valley, or perish. The Hizbul Mujahideen put up posters ordering all Hindus to leave the Valley, and lists with names of Pandits to be eliminated were circulated. In mosques and mass rallies, people shouted inflammatory and anti-Pandit slogans. Matters came to a head on the night of January 19, 1990. With tensions peaking, hundreds of Pandit families began their journey out of the Valley. Their numbers would swell in the following months.
What happened in January 1990 is bitterly contested. Kashmiri Pandits maintain they were driven out of the Valley by the Muslims. Kashmiri Muslims disagree. They blame the then-Jammu and Kashmir governor, Jagmohan, for the Pandit exodus. Muslims argue that by arranging for buses to transport Pandits out of the Valley, Jagmohan facilitated their flight, paving the way for the Indian security forces to launch an all-out military offensive against Muslims.
Just around 600 Pandit families stayed in the Valley. While they were left unharmed mostly, terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba massacred Pandits at Sangrampora (1997), Wandhama (1998), and Nandimarg (2003).
As for those Pandits who left the Valley, many were put up in tented accommodation in camps in Jammu and New Delhi initially and subsequently in townships in these cities. Several moved to other cities in India and abroad, where they have done well professionally. Wherever they live, their memories of events in 1989-90 remain vivid, as are their rather idyllic recollections of their lives before their flight from the Valley.
Abrogation of article 370:-
With the Indian government revoking Article 370 of the constitution in August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir have been deprived of their special status of limited autonomy.
Pandits have commonly been agreeable to Kashmir’s nearer incorporation with India. Since the annulment of Article 370 fixes India’s command over the district, the choice was invited by the Pandit people group. Many Pandits praised the Indian government’s move as they agreed it would pave the way for their return to the valley. Successive governments in New Delhi and Srinagar have endeavored to move uprooted pandits back to the Valley. They have reported resettlement packages promising monetary help and occupations for the individuals who returned. These offers have failed to get a very remarkable reaction.
The security the main concern:-
A significant issue of concern is security. Pandits are anxious that they will be designated by Islamists, assuming they get back. The public authority should set up “independent municipalities solely for returning Pandits,” one of the Kashmiri pundit leaders says. Would it be a good idea for it gives these Pandit settlements in the Valley with tight security? Individuals would be quick to get back, he adds.
A spate of targeted civilian killings in Kashmir has led to the exodus of several Kashmiri Pandits living in transit camps. Dozens of families – many government employees who returned to the Valley after being given jobs under the Prime Ministers special employment scheme for Kashmiri migrants – have quietly left accommodations.
Kashmiri political groups and nonconformist associations, as well as Pandit bunches, have turned out in solid resistance to such Pandit-just settlements.
Their true safety concerns are an important reason against Pandits not returning to the valley. There are also several issues. Pandit youth is doing well materially and professionally in cities outside Kashmir. “There is little incentive for us to return to the Valley,” says the Pandit teacher, drawing attention to the insecurity, lack of economic development, and job prospects in Kashmir. The younger generation of Pandits looks to Kashmir as a holiday destination.
Thirty-two years after moving from his home in the valley, Kashmir’s Pandit continues to crave a large pre-settlement life in a quiet period. They dream of returning to an old wooden house surrounded by Chinese trees and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. What is heart-rending is that for the last 32 years, the Kashmiri Pandits continue to fight for their return to the Valley. They have not done so because the state of affairs in the Valley remains unstable and they fear for their lives. Most of them lost their properties after the exodus and many cannot go back and sell them. Their status as displaced people has harmed them in the realm of education, as many Hindu families could not afford to send their children to upmarket public schools. Anyway, the existence of tranquility that they remember so lovingly no longer exists in Kashmir.
The government neglected to give the essential security to Pandits:-
The Jammu and Kashmir Government and Government of India have flopped decisively to safeguard the Kashmiri Pandits against Islamic illegal intimidation.
Jammu and Kashmir are the main Muslim larger part UT areas in the entire country. The security of minorities and their living calmly in their country is significant for India to maintain as a Secular Democratic State.
Ethnic purifying of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) from Kashmir valley is the pivotal disappointment of the Indian state to maintain its responsibilities to individuals of India as revered in the Indian constitution which furnishes the right to live with pride and distinction to each resident independent of position, ideology, religion or shading.
Each new year carries with it bloody recollections of the deficiency of home for Kashmiri Pandits, the natives of the valley with a background marked by 5,000 years. It helps Pandits to remember the dull seasons of fear they saw in Kashmir in 1990. It was the evening of 19 January 1990, when the valley resounded with hostile to Pandit and enemies of India mottos like Zalimo, O Kafiro, Kashmir Hamara Chhod Do (O! Brutal, O! Heathens, Leave our Kashmir); Kashmir Mein Agar Rehna Hai, Allah-O-Akbar Kehna Hai (to remain in Kashmir, you need to say Allah-O-Akbar); Yahan Kya Chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa(what is it we need here? Rule of Shariah); Asi Gachchi Pakistan, Batav Roas Te Batanev Saan(we need Pakistan alongside Pandit ladies, yet without their men). The killings of Pandits had effectively begun a year sooner in 1989. As the Indian government and Jammu and Kashmir state government neglected to safeguard its residents, left with no decision, Kashmiri Pandits left their country in 1990.
The Indian state has not even once attempted to address the ethnic purifying of Kashmiri Pandits. The inversion of ethnic purifying should start with equity -with the indictment of the offenders of the 1990 Pandit departure. The Narendra Modi-drove National Democratic Alliance government, which had been in power for around 20 months, doesn’t appear to resolve ethnic purging. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is viewed as a party that has thought twice about its plan to get a power share in J&K. Narendra Modi gave desire to the Pandit people group that is currently gleaming.
Kashmiri Pandits have been raised by political gatherings just when it suits them. The most gatherings in J&K – Congress, BJP, National Conference, and People’s Democratic Party – have accomplished for Pandits is to have a minority cell unit of their individual gatherings headed by a Kashmiri Pandit. Honestly, Kashmiri Pandit associations and their so-called pioneers have not ended up being really beneficial for their own local area. The exile battle of the 1990s was not the same as what it has become now. Certain Pandit outfits enjoy patriotism that yields no significant result.
Modi government has still a couple of years left for the present tenure to complete. It must be checked whether it will push ahead in the correct heading of settling pandits or, as past states, simply report monetary bundles where the outcome is nothing. As the new exile year has just started, it is the ideal opportunity for Kashmiri Pandits, particularly the younger generation, to reflect regarding how they need to take forward their battle to recover the motherland. Otherwise, it would always be a fight where the fighters would remain in ambiguity which way they have to finally take their case lest the governments would yet again get a beautiful chance to put the community into an illusion.
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