Author: Kanchan Lakshman
Publication: Outlook
Date: February 10, 2003
It's over 13 years now but, political
rhetoric aside, we, as a nation, have become immune to the plight of the
Kashmiri Pandits who remain largely irrelevant in the political discourse
-- both within and outside the country.
January 19 marked thirteen years
since what is generally recognized as the beginning of the process of ethnic
cleansing by which the Kashmiri Pandits (descendents of Brahmin priests)
were hounded out of the Kashmir Valley. On this day, a Kashmiri Pandit
nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was raped
and later killed by Pakistan-backed terrorists. The incident was preceded
by massacres of Pandit families in the Telwani and Sangrama villages of
Budgam district and other places in the Kashmir Valley.
While the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation
Front (JKLF) claimed a 'secular' agenda of liberation from Indian rule,
the terrorist intent was clearly to drive non-Muslim 'infidels' out of
the State and establish Nizam-e-Mustafa (literally, the Order of the Prophet;
government according to the Shariah).
Accounts of Pandits from this traumatic
period reveal that it was not unusual to see posters and announcements
telling them to leave the Valley. On April 4, 1990, for instance, a prominent
Urdu newspaper, Alsafa, carried the following headline: "Kashmiri Pandits
responsible for duress against Muslims should leave the valley within two
days."
Pandit properties were either destroyed
or taken over by terrorists or by local Muslims, and there was a continuous
succession of brutal killings, a trend that continues even today. Ethnic
cleansing was evidently a systematic component of the terrorists' strategic
agenda in J&K, and estimates suggest that, just between February and
March 1990, 140,000 to 160,000 Pandits had fled the Valley to Jammu, Delhi,
or other parts of the country.
Simultaneously, there were a number
of high-profile killings of senior Hindu officials, intellectuals and prominent
personalities. Eventually, an estimated 400,000 Pandits - some 95 per cent
of their original population in the Valley - became part of the neglected
statistic of 'internal refugees' who were pushed out of their homes as
a result of this campaign of terror. Not only did the Indian state fail
to protect them in their homes, successive governments have provided little
more than minimal humanitarian relief, and this exiled community seldom
figures in the discourse on the 'Kashmir issue' and its resolution.
A majority of the Pandit refugees
live in squalid camps with spiraling health and economic problems. Approximately
2,17,000 Pandits still live in abysmal conditions in Jammu with families
of five to six people often huddled into a small room. Social workers and
psychologists working among them testify that living as refugees in such
conditions has taken a severe toll on their physical and mental health.
Confronted with the spectre of cultural
extinction, incidence of problems such as insomnia, depression and hypertension
have increased and birth rates have declined significantly. A 1997 study
based on inquiries at various migrant camps in Jammu and Delhi revealed
that there had been only 16 births compared to 49 deaths in about 300 families
between 1990 and 1995, a period over which militancy was at its peak.
The deaths were mostly of people
in the age group of 20 to 45. Causes for the low birth rates were primarily
due to premature menopause in women, hypo-function of the reproductive
system and lack of adequate accommodation and privacy. Dr. K.L. Choudhary,
who has been treating various Kashmiri Pandit patients, asserts that they
had aged physically and mentally by 10 to 15 years beyond their natural
age, and that there was a risk that the Pandits could face extinction if
current trends persist.
On the abysmal conditions at the
camps, one report stated that, at the Muthi camp on the outskirts of Jammu
where most of the Pandits stayed after migration from the Valley, a single
room was being shared by three generations. In certain cases at other places,
six families lived in a hall separated by partitions of blankets or bed
sheets.
The Pandits have rejected rehabilitation
proposals that envision provision of jobs if the displaced people returned
to the Valley, indicating that they were not willing to become 'cannon-fodder'
for politicians who cannot guarantee their security. Whenever any
attempt aimed to facilitate KP return to the Valley has been initiated,
a major incident of terrorist violence against them has occurred.
The Pandits insist that they will
return to the Valley only when they - and not these 'others' - are able
to determine that the situation is conducive to their safety. "We cannot
go back in the conditions prevailing in Kashmir. We will go back on our
own terms," Kashmiri Samiti president
Sunil Shakdher said in August 2002
in response to the then Farooq Abdullah regime's proposed rehabilitation
agenda. At the minimum level, these terms would include security to life
and property and, at a broader level, a consensual rehabilitation scheme.
Any proposal to return the Pandits
to the Valley in the past has been cut short by terrorists. Whenever any
attempt aimed to facilitate their return to the Valley has been initiated,
a major incident of terrorist violence against them has occurred. The massacre
of 26 Pandits at Wandhama, a hamlet in the Ganderbal area of the Valley
on the intervening night of January 25-26, 1998; the earlier killing of
eight others at Sangrampora in Budgam district on March 22, 1997; and the
massacre of 26 Hindus at Prankote in Udhampur District on April 21, 1998;
are only three of the many examples of the terrorists' tactic to block
any proposal for the return of migrants to the Valley.
These massacres and a continuous
succession of targeted individual killings have ensured the failure of
every proposal to resolve the problem of the exiled Pandits.
It was, again, this pervasive insecurity
that led to the collapse of the proposal to create 13 clusters of residential
houses in 'secure zones' in different parts of Anantnag for the return
and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandit migrants from outside the Valley
in April 2001.
Earlier, in 1996, the then Chief
Minister Farooq Abdullah had formed a six-member Apex Committee under the
chairmanship of Abdul Ahmed Vakil, then Relief and Revenue Minister, with
the objective of drawing an action plan for facilitating a safe and honourable
return of the migrants to the Valley.
Based on the views of the migrant
Pandits and the Apex Committee's interim report, the State government subsequently
announced a Rs. 28 billion rehabilitation package. The scheme included
the creation of an authority of the Protector General of Migrant Properties;
Rs. 1,00,000 for each Kashmiri migrant family willing to return to the
Valley; setting up of a transit settlement at Srinagar, Anantnag and Baramulla
Districts; rehabilitation grants of Rs. 150,000 to each house; waiver of
loans; a sustenance allowance of Rs. 3,000 to those migrants who had been
employed in the private sector; and opportunities for the children, among
others.
Ramesh Manvati, General Secretary
of Panun Kashmir (a frontline organisation of the Pandits), said on January
19, 2002, that the J&K government's rehabilitation of some Pandits
at Tulla-Mulla in Srinagar and Matan in the Anantnag district "is being
done without consulting us and is largely an eyewash." The Kashmiri Samiti
had asked for a probe into the alleged missing 18,000 job applications
invited by the Abdullah government from Kashmiri Pandits. The Samiti also
claims that approximately 3,000 jobs had fallen vacant since many Pandits
in government service had retired over the years, and that not a single
person had been appointed from the community so far.
The current Chief Minister Mufti
Mohammed Sayeed, addressing his maiden press conference at Srinagar on
November 3, 2002, said that the rehabilitation of migrant Pandits was one
of his government's 'top priorities', adding that, "Their (the Pandits')
migration is a blot on the identity of Kashmir."
The Pandits, however, regard the
Sayeed regime's 'healing touch' policy with great skepticism. The regime's
decision to release a number of terrorists and secessionists on bail and
the proposal to hold talks "without any pre-conditions" with a mélange
of groups actively pursuing the agenda of violence has led a section of
the Pandit community to believe that the State government, "is turning
a blind eye to our plight?"
For a majority of the displaced
Kashmiris, the recent State Legislative Assembly elections held little
meaning. Panun Kashmir, during the run up to the State Legislative Assembly
elections in 2002, had dismissed the exercise as 'meaningless'. They said
the Election Commission's decision to make arrangements for Hindu migrants
to vote from outside J&K would institutionalise their migrant status.
"The move to allow migrant Hindu Pandits to vote at their respective refugee
camps only reinforces the mindset that there are no chances for them to
return to their homes, ever," said Shakdher.
A section of the Pandits have demanded
a geo-political re-organisation of the State and the carving of a separate
homeland for them. Ramesh Manvati believes that this "is the only viable
option available for our rehabilitation." While such an extreme measure
may arises out of the increasing desperation of a people whose plight has
been ignored for nearly a decade and a half, the idea itself is fraught
with the imminent danger of playing into the hands of religious extremists
who seek a division of the State along religious lines.
Their relatively small numbers,
coupled with a tradition of non-violent protest, has made the Pandits largely
irrelevant in the political discourse - both within the country and internationally
- on Kashmir. It should be clear, however, that the many 'peace processes'
and 'political solutions' that are initiated from time to time have little
meaning until these include some steps to correct the grave injustices
done to this unfortunate community.
(The author is Research Associate,
Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings
on Conflict & Resolution. Courtesy: South Asia Intelligence Review
of the South Asia Terrorism Portal)
