What have you done for Pandits: SC asks J & K

The journey back home

Minhaz Merchant Aug 21, 2011

A three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by chief justice Sarosh Kapadia, is hearing a petition against the Jammu & Kashmir government on the plight of Kashmiri Pandits forced to flee the Valley. The apex court is focussing on two issues: one, jobs promised to the Pandits by the J&K government; two, rebuilding their vandalised homes. Visibly annoyed with the senior counsel representing the J&K government, the Supreme Court bench observed acidly: “We didn’t want to go by your dream proposals, but want firm action. Can you show us even one instance where you have set aside the sale (of a Pandit home) and given it back to the victim?”

With the Supreme Court likely to pass a seminal order on their rehabilitation and return to the Valley, Kashmir’s Pandits have new hope that they will receive justice after 22 years of the most devastating ethnic cleansing in post-Independence India. Under legal pressure, a special employment package announced by the prime minister has already led to a trickle of Pandits flowing back into the Valley. In a significant if symbolic move, the US House of Representatives recently introduced a resolution highlighting the plight of the dispossessed Pandits.

What have you done for Pandits: SC asks J&K

Jan 18, 2011

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has expressed displeasure over inertia of the Jammu and Kashmir government to implement rehabilitation packages for Kashmiri Pandits who fled the Valley in the aftermath of insurgency. It asked the state to take firm action to ameliorate their condition.

“Tell us what have you (state government) done with your promise of providing 15,000 jobs? Have you given a single job? Or, for that matter, have you given them a single house,” asked a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia on Monday. We don’t want to go by your dream proposals, but want some firm action”.

It was hearing a petition filed by the All India Kashmiri Samaj and others alleging neither the state government nor the Centre was addressing grievances of Kashmiri Pandits who have been suffering for over two decades.

The court asked the state government to furnish data on steps taken to ameliorate the plight of Pandits. It asked the state to explain whether the government had set aside even a single sale of house as illegal since hundreds of houses between 1990-1997 belonging to Pandits had been auctioned and sold illegally after the victims fled the Valley.

“Can you show us even one instance where you have set aside the sale and given it back to the victim.” The bench granted four weeks to the state government to explain it.

Earlier, the court had sought a response from the state government on Rs 1,618-crore special package offered by Centre for restoring properties and providing jobs to migrant Pandits. It also expressed reservations over the Centre’s scheme saying it was not clear as to how the migrants on return will stay without any accommodation.

“Where will people who want to go back stay? Now, their properties have been sold or auctioned. There are number of petitions pending in the High Court. How will they go? Without house, how can people go back to Jammu and Kashmir,” the bench asked.

Additional Solicitor-General Indira Jaising on behalf of the Centre, however, assured the court that properties auctioned between 1990 to 1997 would be declared “illegal” and would be “restored” to owners. “All those auctions are illegal and they will be cancelled,” she had said. According to the Centre, Rs 12.5 crore has already been allocated to the state government for providing transit housing to the migrants.

An estimated 4.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits had migrated from the Valley over 20 years back, fearful of the insurgency in the state.

Kashmiri Pandits criticise Amnesty International team of ignoring human rights violations by Islamic terrorists in Kashmir

Kashmiri Pandits criticise Amnesty International team

Mon, May 24

Jammu, May 24 (PTI) Slamming the conduct of an Amnesty International team during its visit to Kashmir, two organisations of displaced Kashmiri Pandits today accused it of ignoring human rights violations by ”jehadi” terrorist groups in J-K. “The way the Amnesty team has conducted itself during its recent visit to Kashmir demonstrates that their visit was guided more by political considerations than any concern for human rights,”

Chairman of Panun Kashmir Ajay Chrungoo told reporters here. The two-member team comprising B J Batra and Gopala Krishnan concluded its six-day visit to Kashmir yesterday.

President of All State Kashmiri Pandit Solidarity Conference (ASKPSC) O N Trisal alleged that the team “conveniently chose to sidetrack the issue of ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus, as it has over the years chosen to ignore the genocide of Hindus living in Pakistan and Bangladesh and in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)”. The two leaders criticised the team for meeting Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik and compared the separatist leaders to the fascist war criminals of Germany.

Chrungoo said, “we want to clearly state that human rights violations in J&K, which the representatives of Amnesty came to assess, are mainly the violations committed by jehadi terrorist groups against the whole community of Hindus in the state who are subjected to genocide and extermination. “By persisting with its specific agenda, Amnesty has not been able to dispel the doubts about it being essentially and instrument of foreign policy of those who want to subvert the independence of India and destroy its national unity,” the leaders alleged.

They said the Centre should not have allowed the delegation to visit Kashmir after having denied it permission to do so during the last two decades.

Kashmiri Pandits continue to live as refugees in their own land

Kashmiri Pandits continue to live as refugees in their own land

Ishfaq-ul-Hassan / DNA Saturday, June 20, 2009

Srinagar: Sanjay Kumar Bhat, 41, still shivers when he remembers how his father, Ved Lal Bhat, unloaded his belongings from a truck in 1989, refusing to migrate to Jammu. Bhat had decided to stay put at his ancestral home in Sopore in the Kashmir valley, even as the entire Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) community in the town was preparing to flee in 1989, fearing for their lives. Three months later, Bhat was gunned down by suspected militants outside the school where he taught.

The tragedy scarred Sanjay, who has undergone two heart surgeries in the last 20 years. A laboratory technician by profession, Sanjay recalls how he and his seven family members migrated and began life anew in poverty in Jammu.”I was a student and had only Rs500 in my pocket when we migrated. I shuttled between Delhi and Jammu looking for job. We left everything – our house, land, etc – in Sopore and have not gone back since then,” he said.

Sanjay’s case is the tip of the iceberg of the Pandits’ saga, who have become refugees in their own land. Every Pandit has a tragic story to tell. Some lost their near and dear ones, some fled due to fear, and some to ensure a better future.

“Stones were pelted on our houses during nights and anonymous letters were sent to us asking us to leave the valley,” recalled Kashmiri Lal Bhat, who migrated from Anantnag in 1989. “Our people were killed. Fear was palpable which resulted in migration of the Pandits.”

Even Muslims and Sikh families from different parts of the valley have been forced to move to Jammu. “We have around 2,500 Muslim and 1,600 Sikh families registered as migrants,” said Vinod Koul, the Relief Commissioner at Jammu. Incidentally, though the Pandits have been demanding the status of international refugees, the government has refused, terming them only as migrants.

Around 260 Pandits were killed in early 1990 and the related fear psychosis triggered the migration of the Pandits from the valley. Official figures state that 34,878 families are registered as migrants in Jammu and 21,684 families are registered outside Jammu and Kashmir. Nearly 15,045 families are being paid a monthly relief, which comprises cash of Rs 4000 per family and nine kilogram of ration per person.

Initially, the Pandits who fled the valley were put up in tents and after a few years, they were provided one-room accommodation with common bathroom and other facilities.

“We are upgrading their accommodation by providing one bedroom-kitchen set with living room area and a separate toilet and bathroom. It is a temporary arrangement because we want the Pandits to return to their homes and the prime minister has already announced incentives for them,” said Koul.

The Pandits are not impressed with the assurances and hold the government responsible for their plight for the last 20 years. “We believe that creating a homeland within the valley for resettling the Pandits is the panacea to our ills,” said Ashwani Charangu, president of Panun Kashmir, an organisation of migrant Kashmiri Pandits.

Not that all the Pandits live in poverty. Some have prospered and do not want to return. “Several professional colleges reserved a few seats for Kashmiri Pandits and many availed of this facility to do well,” said a political leader in Srinagar, “This is one reason why affluent Pandits are unwilling of returning to the valley.”

Of course, there were some Pandits who refused to budge and braved the militants’ threats. “In 1998, nearly 19,865 Pandits were living in the valley. Now the number has shrunk to 3,100, which means that migration is still on because the government has not provided any relief to the non-migrant Pandits,” said Sanjay Tickoo, president, Kashmiri Pandit Sangrash Samiti (KPSS), an apex body of Kashmiri Pandits who did not migrate from valley.

What complicates the potential return of the Pandits to the Valley is that most of the refugees have sold their property. “Sixty per cent of the property in villages and 92% in the urban areas have been sold off. The remaining properties like houses have been destroyed or are unusable,” said Tickoo.

A consequence of the disappearance of the Pandits is that their temples lie neglected, and many temple lands have been encroached upon. “Out of the 565 temples, 510 lie in an extremely dilapidated state and 28 temples have ceased to exist,” said Tickoo.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_kashmiri-pandits-continue-to-live-as-refugees-in-their-own-land_1266634

Kashmiri Pandits continue to live as refugees in their own land

Ishfaq-ul-Hassan / DNA Saturday, June 20, 2009

Srinagar: Sanjay Kumar Bhat, 41, still shivers when he remembers how his father, Ved Lal Bhat, unloaded his belongings from a truck in 1989, refusing to migrate to Jammu. Bhat had decided to stay put at his ancestral home in Sopore in the Kashmir valley, even as the entire Kashmiri Pandit (Hindu) community in the town was preparing to flee in 1989, fearing for their lives. Three months later, Bhat was gunned down by suspected militants outside the school where he taught.

The tragedy scarred Sanjay, who has undergone two heart surgeries in the last 20 years. A laboratory technician by profession, Sanjay recalls how he and his seven family members migrated and began life anew in poverty in Jammu.”I was a student and had only Rs500 in my pocket when we migrated. I shuttled between Delhi and Jammu looking for job. We left everything – our house, land, etc – in Sopore and have not gone back since then,” he said.

Sanjay’s case is the tip of the iceberg of the Pandits’ saga, who have become refugees in their own land. Every Pandit has a tragic story to tell. Some lost their near and dear ones, some fled due to fear, and some to ensure a better future.

“Stones were pelted on our houses during nights and anonymous letters were sent to us asking us to leave the valley,” recalled Kashmiri Lal Bhat, who migrated from Anantnag in 1989. “Our people were killed. Fear was palpable which resulted in migration of the Pandits.”

Even Muslims and Sikh families from different parts of the valley have been forced to move to Jammu. “We have around 2,500 Muslim and 1,600 Sikh families registered as migrants,” said Vinod Koul, the Relief Commissioner at Jammu. Incidentally, though the Pandits have been demanding the status of international refugees, the government has refused, terming them only as migrants.

Around 260 Pandits were killed in early 1990 and the related fear psychosis triggered the migration of the Pandits from the valley. Official figures state that 34,878 families are registered as migrants in Jammu and 21,684 families are registered outside Jammu and Kashmir. Nearly 15,045 families are being paid a monthly relief, which comprises cash of Rs 4000 per family and nine kilogram of ration per person.

Initially, the Pandits who fled the valley were put up in tents and after a few years, they were provided one-room accommodation with common bathroom and other facilities.

“We are upgrading their accommodation by providing one bedroom-kitchen set with living room area and a separate toilet and bathroom. It is a temporary arrangement because we want the Pandits to return to their homes and the prime minister has already announced incentives for them,” said Koul.

The Pandits are not impressed with the assurances and hold the government responsible for their plight for the last 20 years. “We believe that creating a homeland within the valley for resettling the Pandits is the panacea to our ills,” said Ashwani Charangu, president of Panun Kashmir, an organisation of migrant Kashmiri Pandits.

Not that all the Pandits live in poverty. Some have prospered and do not want to return. “Several professional colleges reserved a few seats for Kashmiri Pandits and many availed of this facility to do well,” said a political leader in Srinagar, “This is one reason why affluent Pandits are unwilling of returning to the valley.”

Of course, there were some Pandits who refused to budge and braved the militants’ threats. “In 1998, nearly 19,865 Pandits were living in the valley. Now the number has shrunk to 3,100, which means that migration is still on because the government has not provided any relief to the non-migrant Pandits,” said Sanjay Tickoo, president, Kashmiri Pandit Sangrash Samiti (KPSS), an apex body of Kashmiri Pandits who did not migrate from valley.

What complicates the potential return of the Pandits to the Valley is that most of the refugees have sold their property. “Sixty per cent of the property in villages and 92% in the urban areas have been sold off. The remaining properties like houses have been destroyed or are unusable,” said Tickoo.

A consequence of the disappearance of the Pandits is that their temples lie neglected, and many temple lands have been encroached upon. “Out of the 565 temples, 510 lie in an extremely dilapidated state and 28 temples have ceased to exist,” said Tickoo.

Anupam Kher to work for empowerment of Pandits affected by Islamic terrorism and fascism

Anupam Kher to work for empowerment of Kashmiri Pandits

Indo-Asian News Service
Jammu, April 11, 2009

Bollywood actor Anupam Kher Saturday vowed to work for the empowerment of exiled Kashmiri Hindus and for their return to their homeland with “honour and dignity”.

Kher was speaking at a conference here to draw “global attention toward the burning issues confronting the Kashmiri Pandits”, who fled the Kashmir Valley in early 1990s as Muslim militancy peaked, at times targeting members of the community.

“My friends and relatives suffered and, therefore, as a member of the community, it is my duty to work for the community, take them back to the Valley with honour and dignity,” said Kher, himself a Kashmiri Pandit.

He said successive governments in Jammu and Kashmir “made so many promises, but delivered none. The solution to this is to gain power. The change and empowerment will come through power.”

“I am not joining politics. But working for the community is different,” he maintained.

The conference, organized by Kashmiri Pandit organistions, was attended, among others, by leading journalist and Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra.

Some 300,000 Hindus have fled the Valley and have been living in Jammu and other parts of the country.

Jan 19, 1990 when Kashmir Pandits were exiled from their homelands due to Islamofascism

19 years to the 19th day of 1990: Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits

Read here

http://kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com

Photo Galleries – The wound on Hindu heart

1. The Muthi refugee camp photos in photo gallery when HJS team visited that camp.

http://www.hindujagruti.org/phpgal/index.php?level=album&id=86

2. Online Exhibition of Hindu Genocide

http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/campaigns/national/hindu-genocide/gallery.php?level=album&id=17

3. Photos of Remnant of Sharada Devi temple – When would Hindus get ‘Darshan’ of Sree Sharada Devi in Kashmir?

http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/1028.html

4. HJS Jammu Visit

http://www.hindujagruti.org/phpgal/index.php?level=album&id=82

Many reasons why no Azaadi for Kashmir

The case against azadi for Kashmir

Sushant Sareen, September 11, 2008

In recent weeks, a seditious assault has been launched on the will of the Indian nation by rootless liberals, ‘mobile republics’, and amoral columnists who are exhorting India to ‘think the unthinkable’ and concede the demand for azadi in Kashmir.

There are two ways of responding to those who advocate azadi for Kashmir. The first way is to gun them down, throw a grenade on their house, kidnap their children, threaten to rape their wives and daughters, or drive them forcibly out of their homes. This is precisely what was done to Kashmiris — Muslims and Pundits — who opposed the so-called ‘freedom-fighters’ in Kashmir, whose brief these faux-intellectuals hold. Of course, the moment any of these steps is taken, these same people will demand protection from the very law enforcement agencies that they so ardently revile. At the same time, there will be a manufactured uproar by the NGO industry over how voices of dissent are being stifled. Only, those shouting about their right to dissent seem to readily acquiesce when dissent is brutally throttled in Kashmir by the jihadists and separatists.

There is however a more civilised way of answering those who propose a vivisection of India. This is the way of an ‘argumentative Indian’, a way that is in keeping with the ‘Idea of India’.

As it stands, the Idea of India is good and noble. It is an idea that is progressive, inclusive, pluralistic, tolerant and accommodating. Above all it is a Republican idea which holds the ideal to be more important than the extant beliefs of the common herd. Compare the idea of India with the idea of a Talibanised Kashmir (as professed by the Geelanis, Salahuddins and their ilk), or even the idea of Pakistan — denominational, exclusivist, reactionary, intolerant and very violent. No doubt, there is a lot of prejudice and discrimination still present in India. But the task of nation-building in India is a ‘work-in-progress’. Countries like the US are over 200 years old and have not yet solved all their social and communal problems.

The important point is that the Idea of India must prevail over the idea of exclusivist and regressive states like Pakistan or its fan club in Kashmir. The campaigners for Kashmir’s azadi (especially those based in Delhi [Images]) should perhaps be sent on a year-long study tour of Waziristan, Swat and Bajaur (with a week in the Lashkar-e-Tayiba camp in Muridke thrown in as bonus) to make them understand why Kashmir cannot be abandoned for the Taliban [Images] and al Qaeda-inspired ‘freedom-fighters’.

The proponents of azadi and their apologists misuse, if not abuse, concepts like secularism and democracy that embody the Idea of India to undermine India. Frankly, India does not need certificates on democracy and secularism from anybody in the world, least of all from Kashmiri separatists and their supporters and sponsors who while mouthing these concepts are totally unfamiliar with the meaning, much less the practice, of these words. Nor does India need to amputate a part of herself simply to prove her commitment to democratic values.

Accepting azadi will mean subscribing to the doctrine of clash of civilisations, the fundamental assumption of which is that pluralistic societies are a quirk of history and will not be able to survive the assertion of primordial identities. This was exactly the logic that created Pakistan. It is hardly important that the bacon-loving Mohammed Ali Jinnah didn’t want a theocratic state; the Talibanisation of Pakistan is a logical outcome of the demand for a Muslim state. If today we accept that logic, then India will become a country only for Hindus.

The argument that granting azadi will be the democratic thing to do is even otherwise totally specious. What is it that prompts some people to give more weightage to what five million Kashmiris want (assuming they all want azadi) than the desire of one billion people who don’t want a communal division of India? How can we be so cavalier about the security, safety and well being of 165 million Indian Muslims for the sake of five million Kashmiris? Secularism in India is bound to suffer if we accede to Muslim communalism in Kashmir. The forces that will be unleashed by another communal division will be beyond the control of armchair intellectuals. After all,  if we are willing to give one small part of the population the right to secede, how can we deny a larger population the right to decide who stays and who is forced to leave India? Perhaps the democratic urgings of the faux-intellectuals will be satisfied by nothing less than a billion ‘independent, mobile republics’ in India.

Other than Muslim exclusivism, what is the justification for the demand for azadi in Kashmir? Kashmiri separatists normally give three or four reasons in support of their demand. The first is that Kashmir was sold to the Dogra rulers by the British. But surely acquiring territory for a state by purchasing it is far more civilised and legitimate than military conquest. In any case, the cut-off point of history on which they base their case cannot be arbitrarily and self-servingly selected by the separatists. The second argument is that Kashmir is a disputed territory. Well, in South Asia a legal dispute can be created out of nothing at all, so this argument doesn’t hold any water. Thirdly, it is said that Kashmiris are a distinct and homogeneous ethnic group and as such are entitled to azadi. The answer to this is that every ethnic group in India is distinct and if this argument is to be extended then tomorrow a condominium complex in Gurgaon or cooperative society in Mumbai could demand independence on the same grounds. Finally, the separatists talk of how much they have sacrificed for Kashmir’s azadi. But then India’s sacrifices in men and material for Kashmir are far greater.

Another false argument in favour of azadi is that India is unnecessarily spending billions to keep Kashmir in India and will be better off without it. But let’s extend this argument a little further: Why should we spend money in the northeast? What are we getting out of it? So, let’s give azadi to the north-eastern states as well. And, while we are at it, how about throwing UP and Bihar out of the Indian Union? Aren’t these two states a huge drain on India’s resources, and dragging India down?

Ultimately, Kashmir is a question of national will. If Indians lose the will to keep Kashmir today, it won’t be long before they lose UP tomorrow and Bengal the day after.

It is therefore time that India starts ‘thinking the unthinkable’ to end Kashmiri separatism. If the case for Kashmir’s azadi rests only on numbers, then let us change the numbers in Kashmir. If this means settling people there from other parts of India, then so be it. After all, if Kashmiris have never been stopped from settling down and prospering in the rest of India, why should people from the rest of India not be allowed to seek their fortune in Kashmir? Why should Kashmir be treated like an anthropological laboratory which must be kept insulated from outside influences? Kashmiriyat, a syncretic concept so favoured by neo-liberals, will only flower after absorbing new and diverse influences from the rest of India!

The law forbidding non-state subjects from settling in J&K was a law made by the Dogra kings (so detested by the Kashmiris today) to protect their own interest. There is no reason why this law should not be repealed and Kashmir thrown open to every Indian — Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian — who wants to settle there. This is not an argument to dispossess the Kashmiri; rather it is to offer him a much better price for his land and his produce than he would get if Kashmir remains a no-go area for other Indians.

India should in fact offer incentives to Kashmiris who seek their fortunes in India, and other Indians who seek their fortune in Kashmir. Projects to provide greater access to and from Kashmir — the Mughal Road, railway lines, an international airport — should be speeded up. The Muzaffarabad road too should be opened up for trade, so that Indians who settle in J&K can do some direct business with Pakistan. This road will have the added advantage of making the Kashmiri trader aware of the difference between the Indian and Pakistani market. At the same time, any Kashmiri who considers Pakistan the promised land should be allowed, nay encouraged, to go and settle there; just make sure to shut the gate after they cross over.

Please, set Kashmir free, begs moron Kashmiri Hindu

This moron Hindu needs a fitting reply: s_malavika@dnaindia.net

Please, set Kashmir free
Malavika Sangghvi
Saturday, August 23, 2008 21:56 IST

As the daughter of a Kashmiri Hindu, whose family left its ancestral home in Srinagar during the turmoil that followed Partition, I would like to express a sentiment that I still haven’t heard in the rhetoric about Kashmir.

I speak for those for whom Kashmir is not a symbol of one-upman ship with Pakistan, not a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is intrinsic to the sovereignty of India and not a football to be kicked around by cynical politicians, but as the daughter of a family in whose very lifeblood Kashmir courses every moment.

Cut our hearts open and you will see Kashmir, put your ear to our sighs, and you will hear our yearning for the land where our family spent its last days intact and happy before Partition scattered us to the winds, rendering us refugees.

Growing up dislocated in Mumbai, as a child, it never failed to surprise me when people who often hadn’t so far stepped out of their suburb, would say:”Kashmir is ours! We will never give it up! Let them try and take Kashmir from us!”

Even at that early age, when I could have mistaken their jingoism for kindred sentiment, I realised that their virulence had nothing to do with my family’s love for Kashmir, but was misguided machismo.

And I would find myself seething with rage at the audacity of their presumption. “But Kashmir was never yours,” I’d say in my mind. And sometimes, when more provoked: “You don’t deserve Kashmir!” And then I’d go home to my mother, whose ever present, unshed tears for her homeland, were a leitmotif of our life in Mumbai.

Throughout my childhood, my family would go back to Srinagar (the ancestral home in Vazir Baugh had to be sold when my widower grandfather became too old to live alone) to stay with Muslim friends, with whom we shared a poignant empathy: we had lost Kashmir because we had moved away; they were losing it everyday, living there, witnessing its destruction. Over kawha, we would watch as the elders of our family weep for what had been.

Like a woman too beautiful for her own good, Kashmir was a tragedy even then. It produced an ache in our hearts when we heard its name and thought of its ill fate: and then, because you cannot sit weeping over lost Valleys all your life, when we returned home we put Kashmir on the backburner.

And on that backburner, Kashmir fermented Sheikh Abdullah, a man whose commitment to India was unquestionable, was humiliated, jailed, alienated. The most unimaginable genocide was committed on the people. Entire generations of its sons were mowed down by an army whose presence was as large as it was unpopular. And in its knee-jerk, misguided, ill-conceived approach to Kashmir the Indian polity revealed its shallowness.

But through this all, intrinsically, those of us who have Kashmir in our bloods, know that the Kashmiri Pandits who have been driven out of their homeland are not enemies of the Kashmiri Muslims, in fact they are both victims of the historic blundering of the Indian government’s Kashmir policy.

Take away Delhi’s political brinkmanship, take away the Hindutva sentiment that has played so neatly into the hands of Pakistan and its fishing-in-troubled-waters game and you may be surprised at how harmoniously Kashmir’s Hindus and Muslims can live.

So, on behalf of my mother, my family, and all those who have loved and lost Kashmir, I beg: Please. We have done enough damage to and in Kashmir. Enough to last many lifetimes. The chinars are tinged with too much blood. We have failed Kashmir and we don’t deserve her anymore. Leave Kashmir alone. Set her free.
Email: s_malavika@dnaindia.net

Kashmir needs freedom from violence
Ashoke Pandit
Monday, August 25, 2008 21:37 IST

Wallowing in idealistic romance can lead us to bizarre presumptions. Nothing illustrates this better than Malavika Sangghvi’s column, ‘Please, set Kashmir Free’, which appeared in the Sunday edition of DNA. Usually, such a piece would be ignored but given the current climate, the message that has been given out needs to be put in perspective.

Childhood reminiscences apart, one is forced to ask what the writer is trying to convey. If it is the fact that an ordinary Mumbaikar or an ordinary Indian is ignorant or jingoistic about Kashmir or the genesis of the crisis prevalent in Kashmir, the writer is no less guilty on the same count. Sans rhetoric, what historical, political or analytical perspective has she given to us? Merely stating that the Indian state is an occupying force in Kashmir does not cut much ice with either the naïve or the informed reader.

Her use of the word “genocide” is also unfortunate. This is not a term that can be used to describe the way India has treated Kashmiri Muslims. Could she care to tell us about the shrill cries of “azaadi” emanating at the onset of Pakistan-sponsored insurgency, when the loudspeakers of the mosques would blare: “We want Kashmir without Kashmiri Pandit men but with their women”?

It is worth knowing that the “proponents of the noble azaadi”, raped, killed and kidnapped and have been caught in money-laundering operations. Yet, as a healing touch measure, these very initiators of the mayhem in Valley have been set free by the very India who she accuses of genocide. Several of those who have killed are today free on the streets of Kashmir. What more compassion and catholicity does she expect of the Indian state?

I am myself a Kashmiri, a Kashmiri who has been forced out of his home, a man whose house was burnt. As a minority Hindu living in Kashmir, I have felt fear first-hand. I have heard the deafening noises of those processions which said, “Aiy zalemo aiy kafiro Kashmir hamara chod do”. My father was almost killed by the bullets of the “soldiers of God”.

There is a perception about the Indian Army’s large, unfair and unpopular presence in Kashmir. Yet, as a child, I did not even see policemen in my native village leave alone any CRPF or Indian army personnel. Before the onset of insurgency, the Kashmir valley did not have even one bunker of either the paramilitary or the armed forces. While I agree that there might have been some cases of excesses at the hands of the forces, the fact that the separatists have changed gear towards peaceful protests brings home the point that the Indian armed forces broke the back of groups like JKLF, Allah Tigers, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Tayiba and others.

It is thanks to the army’s efforts that the earthquake victims on our side of Kashmir are resettled while those in POK still live in tents provided by foreign agencies. While it may be fashionable to slander the armed forces, one must not forget that the army even looks after the education and upkeep of children of the erstwhile militants.

But that’s not the moot point. The moot point is whether we should set Kashmir free. Yes, we should. Yes, we should set Kashmir free from the obscurantist ideology that the separatists seem to be following. Yes, we should set Kashmir free from the endless cycle of violence set forth by religious fanaticism that the protagonists of the conversion of Dar-ul Harb to Dar-ul Islam have put it in to. Yes we should set Kashmir free from the heroes of hate who brought guns to Kashmir from Pakistan and are now portraying themselves as Gandhis and Nelson Mandelas, forgetting that both never killed anyone and both believed in peaceful co-existence and pluralism. Yes, we should set Kashmir free from the grip of people who forced half a million Hindus and Sikhs to live as refugees.

The writer is a filmmaker and activist.

Slogans of Kashmiri Muslims to Drive Out Kashmiri Hindus in 1989

Main Slogans of Kashmiri Muslims to Drive Out Kashmiri Hindus

Following excerpts have been taken from Kashmir: Past and Present by Prof. Mohan Lal Koul.…………..

The slogans used were:

Kashmir main rahna hai, Allah-ho-Akbar Kahna hoga.
(If you choose to live in Kashmir, you will have to say Allah-o- Akbar).

Asi gachi Pakistan, Bata ros ta batanev san.
(We want Pakistan, with Kashmiri Hindu women and without their men-folk).

Allah-o-Akbar, Musalmano jago Kafiro bhago, jehad aa raha hai.
(Allah-o-Akbar, arise and awake Muslims, buzz off infidels, jehad is approaching.)

Kashmir kya banega – Pakistan
(What will Kashmir be – Pakistan)

Zalimo O, Kafiro, Kashmir hamara chhod do
(Ye cruel Kafirs (infidels) vacate our Kashmir)

Yahan kya chalega, Nizam – e – Mustafa
(What will have sway here – Prophet’s governance)

Arise ye, fearless Momins,
For Russia has lost the race,
Now the sword hangs on India’s neck
Now it is Kashmir’s turn.

Islam hamara maksad hai
Kuran hamara dastur hai
Jehad hamara rasta hai.
(Islam is our destination
Koran is our constitution
Jehad is our way.)

Hamein kya chahye, Nizame Mustafa
Kashmere main kya chalaiga, Nizame Mustafa
Hindustan mein kya chalaiga, Nizame Mustafa
(What do we need – Prophet’s governance. What will
have sway in Kashmir – Prophet’s governance.
What will have sway in India – Prophet’s governance.

Ganga-Jamuna mein aag lagayenge
(We will destroy Ganga and Yamuna)

The net product of the Islamic agenda as spearheaded by the Muslim crowds chanting slogans replete with hostility and hatred unto the Hindus was an exodus, a forced exodus, a diaspora, a crisis thrust on them, an ethnic cleansing, a manipulation for their genocide, completion of the pogrom conceived in 14th century.

In face of an armed onslaught the Kashmirian Hindus marched out of their native land only to save their skin and faith. Caring two hoots for their properties, movable and immovable, worth crores, they paid hefty sums to the truck and bus owners to carry them across the Bannihal tunnel to safer zones. The villagers, poor and destitute, allowed their cows with garlands on to stray away, but sold off their bulls for paltry sums only to quit their mother-land, prowled about by monsters of murder, loot and arson. The Hindus from the border towns of Kupwara and Handwara in north of Kashmir were the first to flee followed by the teen-age girls from Srinagar and towns and hamlets in south of Kashmir. Flight of the Hindus from the millennia old homes and hearths had started much before the advent of Jagmohan on the political scene of Kashmir.

© 2001 Kashmir Information Network. All Rights Reserved.

Kashmiri Hindu: My house in Kashmir is now occupied by a bearded rag picker who became a millionaire from looting Kashmiri Pandit homes

comment in article End the Moral Idiocy on Kashmir
July 10th, 2008 by Andrew Bostom |

Kumar Vijay // Jul 12, 2008 (5 days ago) at 5:28 pm

The article is true reflection of facist Islam practiced in Kashmir. On January 1990, all mosques blared from their Loud Speakers ” We want Nizame Mustafa”. The Original inhabitants who were now a minority were selectively killed and the rest fled to the plains of India. My House in Maharaj Ganj is now occupied by a bearded rag picker who used to be a petty foot path pedlar and became a millionaire from looting the Kashmiri Pandit homes of its brassware used in the kitchens! He performed Haj with the loot and is now having a shop of stolen material in front of the Fire brigade and Post Office in Maharaj Ganj, Srinagar, Kashmir. The people address him as “Haji Sahib”

Can there be a greater insult to the intelligence of mankind in this Internet age? Calling Islam a religion of peace? It is a religion of organized and Institutionalized loot and great robbery and fooling the world by chanting peace!

Muslims complain of racial prejudice and keep repeating to put the civlized world on the defensive. Human Rights activisits mainly women have been hired to confuse the civlised west in exchange of serving the physical needs of these sexually unsatiated females.

Greatest robberies of modern age has been unleashed world over and at this rate the civilzed west will become a ghetto of ugly beareded, mousacheless human animals who take pride in looking like human animals and love to keep their women in kennels of black burqa and treat them as objects of lust and sex 4- at a time!

jihadist speech by Benazir Bhutto (part of And the world remained silent on Kashmir Pandits video)

Hear it here
Time 2:15 to 4:00 minutes, heard the jihadist speech Benazir Bhutto.

Full video is called And the world remained silent (on Kashmir Pandits)

Thanks to Andrews Bostom for bringing into attention in his article End the Moral idiocy in Kashmir