K N Pandita
In recent months the complex question of return and rehabilitation of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits has been talked about loudly in political circles and the media in our country. It is a notable deviation from the thirty-two-year-old policy of neglect and abandonment. Credit should go to the two-decades-old RSS – sponsored academic and intellectual organization Kashmir Study Centre, which not only brought full awareness of Kashmir narrative to the broad sections of the Indian nation but also effectively reconstructed its grave and misleading distortions. The myth of Kashmir being the crown on the head of Indian secularism is one of these lies and distortions
For the first time after the Pandit exodus, the Indian civil society is talking somewhat inquisitively about the saga of the community that has become the victim of Kashmir ethnic cleansing.
This ethnic cleansing happened during the coalition government of the National Conference and Congress who often boasted of ideological convergence between them. This was not truer than in the exodus of the Pandits because, after stoking the flames of Theo-fascism in Kashmir in 1989-90, the coalition government backed out knowing that the flames it had lit would engulf their feigned secularist theory.
This ideological convergence became the catalyst for their apathy, nay hatred, for the Pandits because it was the adroit and immensely dedicated Pandits who shredded the secularist mask donned by the two complimenting political groups. There was hardly any political or social platform in the democratic world where the oppressed victims of Indian secularism did not give a lie to this feigned secularist ideology and demolished the bogus structure of the “Kashmir freedom struggle”. Therefore the Pandits never expected the rulers of the day to do something that would be called solidifying national fabric.
In both of its election manifestos – 2014 and 2019 – BJP gave priority to the rehabilitation of the extirpated community back in Kashmir. Eight years have gone by and nothing beyond some sweet words for them. It is so not because of a vote bank deficit but because of the brittleness of the nation-building agenda. Indian secularism is the secularism of the lexicon minus Kashmiri Pandits.
Pandits are victims essentially of political immaturity or emotionalism. They had to pay a heavy price for understanding albeit belatedly that Congress is the other name of the Muslim League; not only that the Muslims were its priority (as former PM Manmohan Singh once said) but also that the Pandits were expendable if that served the pro-Muslim interests of the Congress. Hence we find the rationale for the Kashmiri Muslim leadership to embrace the Congress and the Indian left. It discovered the alchemy of adding religion via Jamaat-i- Islami to the concoction of pseudo-secularism and pseudo-democracy.
Now the rhetoric of BJP leadership is that the government is seized of the Pandit problem and that it has worked out a module which will be “far beyond the imagination of the beleaguered community.” That is what the LG said recently and before him, the MOS in PMO too had said. But they are not going to disclose it as a matter of propriety. In other words, they are not going to tell five lakh displaced persons what they are planning for their future? Long live empowerment of people to the right to information.
One wonders who from the displaced community elders has the central or the state government taken on board and what are the return modules under discussion?
We know several modules are talked about like exclusive homeland, twin city, concentrated rehabilitation, the district headquarter based habitats, cluster habitats, restitution in original homes and habitats etc. We are not interested in discussing any one or multiple of the modules because before focusing on anyone, it is impotent to understand what we are discussing and what is the background scenario?
We are concerned with some fundamental realities governing the entire narrative. We believe that facts of history, however bitter, cannot be brushed under carpet and give space to emotions. The partition of India in 1947 was the result of becoming victims of emotions. It cannot be repeated in the context of Kashmir. Let us elucidate the point.
The way the Muslim majority rule has meted out callously discriminating treatment to the religious minority of Pandits (and for that matter to other two regions of the then State) right from October 26, 1947, culminated in the genocide of this community and finally its ethnic cleansing from the valley. Back in their birthplace, the displaced Pandits will neither accept the rule of the oppressive majority nor remain politically and economically acquiescent to it. We refuse to live as dhimmis of the proto-type of an Islamic Caliphate-the theocratic state in a secular Indian Union; we want to be the free citizens of free India enjoying the priceless individual and collective freedoms granted by the Constitution of India.
When armed insurgency erupted in 1989-90, local Theo-fascists taking a cue from the biography Atash-i-Chinar of Sheikh Abdullah (the book awarded by the Sahitya Academy of India) that the Pandits are the agents of India undertook their genocide. To facilitate it, the then coalition government of NC and Congress quit the government and advertently facilitated the genocide. The Sheikh and his dynasty were the foremost beneficiaries of being Indian agents yet the Pandits came to be castigated as “the other”. Under whatever module they are rehabilitated in the valley, the Pandits will be the foremost among the patriots because India is the fountainhead of our civilization and our history.
Yes, we have given a lie to Theo-fascism labelled as the “freedom struggle in Kashmir” on all available platforms on a national and international level. We have paid a price for exposing the falsehood. Various regimes in New Delhi felt embarrassed on the line we pursued at international fora and obviously, we have become the pariah in the eyes of the partisan media of India.
Going back to Kashmir under any module means to compromise with the surge of Theo-fascism in the valley, with our genocide and ethnic cleansing, with grabbing of our properties and decimating our culture and civilizational fund. Unless a module takes care of these wounds, the Pandit return remains a moot question. The world must know why we were subjected to genocide and ethnic cleansing and that can be done only through an impartial commission of inquiry.
After the ethnic cleansing of the valley, the Indian government continued to pour in billions of dollars for the development projects of the 100 per cent Muslim dominated, nay Islamized and Wahhabized valley while it left the expelled community to lick its wounds in exile. It is the thirty-second year. They are kept outside the parameters of the philosophy of even-handed development, of the flow of political rights and empowerment and their role in the nation-building process. The relation between them and the Indian nation has been reduced to a few crumbs by way of petty relief and nothing beyond that. The displaced Pandit is still groping in dark to know the meaning of the slogan “sab ka sath sab ka hath”. Does he fall within the ambit of sab is the enigma with him. What an irony that they do not figure even in the new colonial landscape.
From day one of freedom in 1947, Kashmiri Pandits were denied a role in the power structure of the State. Their representation in the legislative organ remained stonewalled owing to several factors including the Gerrymandering of two constituencies where they could have managed to vote their candidate to power. While the Muslim majority rule of the State enjoyed all privileges accruing to national minorities, the Pandits barely 5 per cent of the population were denied even the minority status in the constitution of J&K
In no case will the community tolerate distancing from the Indian flag, Indian social and cultural history and the reach of India’s nation-building vision
These observations have to be kept in mind while zeroing in on any rehabilitation module for the displaced community. The point to note is that what we want to recreate is not only the habitats for the indigenous people of the valley but also the revival of their ancient and age-old cultural ethos and grandeur that has suffered the vicissitudes of history. The question “how many Pandits will return to the homeland” is the manifestation of colonial mentality and abject ignorance of social dynamics of displaced communities. For such superfluous rabble-rousers, we suggest reading the comprehensive document on the Internally Displaced Persons of the UN Human Rights Council so that they are enlightened about the aspects of the subject they will be dealing with. They must remember that the Indian State failed miserably to fulfil the fundamental clause of the Indian Constitution of protecting the life, property and honour of a miniscule religious minority of the citizens of India.
Of all members of the community, it is our vast Diaspora in and outside the country that has strong motivation not only for a free and progressive homeland but one where they would gladly invest to restore Kashmir to its glory. Indian policy planners have to look at the issue from a futuristic vision. But mind you, if they remain bogged with vote bank discernment, Kashmir will be lost to them.
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