Chanting mantra of return: MOS has a role

K.N. Pandita
Recently MOS at PMO, Dr. Jitendra Singh, was in Jammu to attend a function of ABVP. In reply to a question he said that Modi government was committed to the return of displaced persons from the valley and no decision would be taken without taking the Pandits on board. The important thing he politely said was that “the displaced people should also frame a single opinion on this issue so that government can act accordingly.”
Dr. Jitendra Singh is a good friend of the Pandits. He has long association with them. At the same time, very few people have as deep and objective an understanding of various dimensions of Pandit issue as Dr. Jitendra has. He is now at a very important and sensitive position in Delhi and can be effectively instrumental in addressing the issues of Kashmiri Pandits. I, therefore, wish that the Pandits leave aside ego and distrust and react positively to the view he has expressed. Let me put the record straight to help the official circles as well as the displaced community do their serious homework.
Looking in retrospect, we find that neither the central nor the state government was ever seriously thinking of taking the displaced community back. The real reason is that we are no party’s vote bank being numerically insignificant. If we talk of humanism, well, it is still at a good distance from political practices of the Indian state.
Many formulae of taking us back were floated over the years by semi-official or official circles. Back to their original homes, cluster habitats, district-wise habitats, transition camps and the rest of it are all the figments of imagination of the State government.
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s so-called Pandit Package of 2008 was a mockery as far as the Pandits are concerned. However, it was and is a boon for so-called terror victims of the valley. Reading between the lines one finds that the framers of the package were concerned more about the vote bank constituency in the valley rather than the displaced persons scattered in exile.
In its election manifesto BJP made a commitment of rehabilitating them back in the valley. This is also reflected in the Agreement of Alliance between PDP and BJP.
Late Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed talked to Prime Minister Modi in Delhi on the issue. They agreed to work out a formula of their return and concentrated rehabilitation. Both made a public announcement to this effect.
When concentrated rehabilitation formula was announced all hell broke out in the valley.  Entire valley staged massive protest against our rehabilitation. Leaders of all hues in Kashmir, the mainstream political parties, the Hurriyatis, separatists and secessionists, the business class and civil society one and all rose in unison to oppose the idea of concentrated rehabilitation. The valley saw unprecedented strike for one full day. They treated Kashmir as their exclusive fief. Not only that, even the legislative assembly in session at the time saw great commotion. The opposition as well as the treasury benches created a scene in the assembly hall demanding that government clarify the matter. Most of the members from treasury as well as opposition raised voice and fists to demonstrate their opposition to Pandit return. The BJP members did not have the courage to counter the protest, sealed their lips and remained pathetic spectators. The then chief minister retracted and said that the Pandits may come and go back to their homes… Not a single sane voice was raised in a house of 84 members. Kashmiriyat zindabad.
The episode happened nearly six months back. We never heard Prime Minister reacting on it. However, the chanting of the mantra that BJP is committed to the return of the displaced person, as Dr. Jitendra Singh has also said, did not cease
BJP has not the nerve either to take any decision on the module of return and rehabilitation and implement it, or ask the state government to implement it come what may. This is a conflict between the vote bank democracy and religion based mobocracy. So far the latter has had the upper hand. Therefore, before the MOS advises us to ‘formulate one opinion’ about return and rehabilitation, he will need to make a resole whether his government is capable of coping with the question.
As regards opinion from the displaced community, I would invite the attention of the Honorable Minister to the Pandit Margdarshan Resolution of 1990 in which the entire community demanded a separate homeland in the valley. No mainstream political party in the country reacted to this unanimous resolution. However, assuming it did not suit them, what is their argument?  If the Honourable Minister wants a “single opinion”, well it has been framed twenty-seven years ago and adequately circulated. Indian state neither came out with its reaction nor engaged us in any open and meaningful debate on this resolution. Does it not show that the central government felt talking to Pandits as something below its dignity while supplicating for talks with the separatists and militant leaders as something that added to its dignity. This syndrome, the hang-over of slavery, is no less in place even today.
Some non-official quarters expressed to us that the Indian State had certain reservations in according acceptance to our homeland demand. We came out with more accommodative formula of a twin-city with composite habitation. In doing so, we gave more space to secularist dispensation notwithstanding the fact that our extirpation from Kashmir had torn Kashmir secularism to shreds.
We sincerely interacted with the Team Interlocutors led by Dilip Padgaonkar, and appointed by the previous government in Delhi. They were convinced and recommended to the Government of India that a twin-city of Srinagar accommodating the displaced Pandits and others would be an ideal, sensible and viable solution to the issue of restitution of the IDPs. The team went to the length of proposing the name of the twin city as Nov Srinagar.
Why did not the previous government react on that and why does not Modi government pull it out of cold store? Is it not the “single opinion” which he advises the Pandit community to formulate? Does “single opinion” mean an opinion that suits the policy makers in Delhi? Are they to live in Kashmir or we the IDPs?
Unfortunately, Dr. Jitendra Singh also seems to be carried away by the malicious propaganda unleashed against Pandit community that it is divided and cannot form a single opinion. It is the patent method of hiding their inherent inability of coping with the situation, and thus passing the buck on to Pandits. The reality is that BJP like Congress is incapable of mustering courage of telling Kashmiri leadership and the people at large that the minuscule Hindu minority of the valley was forced out of their homes at the point of gun —- which Indian security forces are still fighting against.
Therefore, being the indigenous people of the valley, they have every right to return and restitute in any way and any where according to their free choice. They have a right on the land, its air, water and its flora and fauna; they have a right on its political and administrative indulgence and they have a right to contribute to its development. They have a right to pursue their faith and culture. This right is enshrined in the UN Declaration on Human Rights as well to which the Union of India is a signatory.
No government either in Srinagar or in Delhi should think that rehabilitating the Pandits back in the valley amounts to obliging them. The rulers of this land need to cleanse their conscience of the blot of failing to protect the minority people and their property against violence and vandalism in 1990. They failed to stand by their pledge of upholding the constitution of India/J&K State which enjoined upon them the duty of safeguarding the life and property of the citizens of the State.
In final analysis, I would submit to Dr. Jitendra Singh to take up the two consensual options of rehabilitation offered by the Pandits, initiate a meaningful debate in the highest circles of the party and the government and come out with a final proposal for the approval of the displaced community.
We are aware that trumpeting on every available platform the commitment of the government and the party to the return and rehabilitation of displaced persons is only to sidetrack the core of the issue. As long as the two options laid by the Pandits on the table are not debated with earnestness and sidetracking of the core issue is resorted to, return of the native remains only propaganda stuff.
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com

Follow our WhatsApp channel