HVK Archives: Migration of Kashmiri Pandits: Ignoring the realities
Migration of Kashmiri Pandits: Ignoring the realities - The Times of India
Jagmohan
()
23 April 1997
Title : Migration of Kashmiri Pandits: Ignoring the realities
Author : Jagmohan
Publication : The Times of India
Date : April 23, 1997
It is a sad commentary on the present state of public affairs in
our country that some political commentators like Kuldip Nayar,
whose superficiality of approach is matched only by their obstinacy
to suppress documented facts and contemporaneous records, have been
spreading the canard that the migration of the Kashmiri Pandits
from the Valley was caused by me.
They want the nation to believe that it was not the fearsome
environment - the ruthless Kalashnikov, the 350 bomb explosions in
the second half of 1989, the hysterical exhortations for 'Jihad'
from hundreds of loudspeakers fitted on the mosques, the
'Tirana-e-Kashmir' of having Quran in one hand and a rifle in the
other, the sinister design of 'killing one and frightening one
thousand' but some unspelt inducements that had impelled the
Kashmiris to abandon their homes and hearths in the Valley and move
to the inhospitable camps of Jammu.
It is regrettable that Kuldip Nayar, in his article (Kashmiri
Pandits: Political games worsen their plight, April 18) has
knowingly distorted facts told to him by no less a person than H N.
Jattu, president of the All India Kashmiri Pandit Conference. In
his widely published article, which Jattu wrote in reply to Kuldip
Nayar's article of October 14, 1993, containing similar
allegations, he had said: ,It is wholly incorrect that I and other
Kashmiri Pandits migrated from the Valley at the instance of Mr
Jagmohan. The truth is exactly the opposite. Migration had begun
much earlier, when innocent leaders of the Pandit community were
being brutally murdered and Farooq Abdullah's government was taking
no action whatsoever. Politician Tikka Lal Taploo was shot dead on
September 14, 1989, Judge N K Ganjoo on November 4 and journalist P
N Bhatt on December 28....
"When Kashmiri Pandits were being killed on the pretext that they
were 'informers' and 'agents' of the central government, I and some
members of the All India Kashmiri Pandit Conference discussed the
alarming situation. I issued a press note on February 21, 1990 in
which I appealed to the militants not to kill Kashmiri Pandits by
labelling them as informers, and if they had suspicion about any
Pandit to bring it to the notice of our organisation. On February
2, my secretary Ashok Kazi was done to death in a savage manner.
That day members of my community decided to leave the Valley to
save our lives and the honour of our women....
"Jagmohan, on the other hand, tried very hard to persuade us not to
leave. At great personal risk, he visited the police stations in
thickly populated areas where the police machinery had totally
broken down. To instil confidence in the highly demoralised
Kashmiri Pandit community, he even went to the house of young
Satish Tikka in Habbakadal, a congested and highly
terrorist-infested locality. He consoled the old parents of Satish
who was brutally murdered by his 'erstwhile friends'. The Union
home minister acknowledged all this when he said in Parliament on
April 25, 1990: 'Jagmohan had to function in a vacuum, in a
situation where there was no respect for law or authority of the
state government. He braved terrorists, instilled courage in
government officials who had almost given up the situation as a
lost case. It is very unfair for anyone to criticise Jagmohan for
what he has done for the country'."
Driven by his bias, Kuldip Nayar has persistently ignored pertinent
questions concerning the Pandits' migration. I challenge him to
reply to a few of these questions. If the Kashmiri Pandits had
come away from the Valley at my instance, why did they not return
after I demitted office in mid-1990? Why could they not be sent
back either by Saxena's or by General Rao's administration, let
alone the 'popularly' elected government of Farooq Abdullah?
Is it not a fact that, in a memorandum submitted to my predecessor
on January 16, 1990, the Kashmiri Sabha and other organisations of
Pandits, who had already migrated to Jammu, had referred to a spate
of specific killings and kidnappings and the consequent
acceleration of migration from the Valley which would show that
migration was in full swing before I took over?
Did I not repeatedly appeal to the Kashmiri Pandits to return to
the Valley? Did I not announce my decision, through a press note
dated March 7, 1990, to establish relief camps in the Valley itself
for the families who felt threatened? And did I not appoint a
relief commissioner for the purpose?
Is it not true that, when determined efforts were being made by me
to instil confidence in the public by re-erecting the collapsed
structure of administration, eminent Kashmiri Pandits were
treacherously murdered, including poet Sarvanand Koul and his young
son Virender, engineer B K Ganjoo, Doordarshan station director
Lassa Kaul and Prof Ganjoo?
Were not Kashmiri Pandits warned by the militants, through press
notices issued in the dailies, Aftab and Alsafa on April 1 and 14,
1990 to leave the Valley within 48 hours?
What are the numbers and other particulars of the trucks which the
Governor's administration had engaged or paid for transporting
Pandits, to Jammu from different places in the Valley? How much
transport would have to be engaged for moving out two or three lakh
people? Leaving aside two or three families who were flown out by
air because a few hard-core militants had taken a vow to kill them
after they met Chaudhury Devi Lal, what are the particulars of
families to whom the facility of air tickets was extended?
And, to cap it all, are not hard facts like the ones embedded in
the above questions known to Kuldip Nayar because he had reviewed a
book which contained them? Is it, therefore, wrong to infer that
he has intentionally ignored the realities?
(Jagmohan is a member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha and a former
governor of Jammu and Kashmir.)
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