Part II - Chapter 13
URL: http://kashmir-information.com//WailValley/B2chap13.html
Thereis hardly any conceivable excess
and atrocity which the Kashmiri Pandits as a characteristic religious group
have not been subjected to by the Muslim marauders. Apart from the pogrom
having no semblance of a human face that was perpetrated on them the devastating
catastrophe that could befall them was the forcible conversion to an alien
religion of Islam. History is a pulsating witness to the brutal conversions
that were realised by Muslim monarchs whether of Sunni or Shia brand through
spilling of blood, hacking of flesh and splintering of body limbs for transforming
religious complexion of Kashmir. Sikander, Ali Shah, Malik Saif-ud-din,
Kaji Chak, Aurangzeb and Afghan surrogates as medieval despots were at
pains to devise all instruments of coercion and repression with the ominous
motive of proliferating the support-base of Islam which in Kashmir at the
initial stages was near negligible. With the loss of political power to
the Sikhs the raging fury of proselytisation campaigns came to a sudden
halt but the deep and crippling scar of conversion was already inflicted
on the religious personality of Kashmir. Some of the neo-converts who were
traumatised by the forcible conversion to Islam harked back to their birth
religion. Had the process found support from the power structures it would
have turned into a roaring tide.
With the decay of Sikh state the
reins of power in Kashmir were handed over to the Dogras by the British
masters and with the speed of lightning a consistent campaign of calumny
virulent hatred was unleashed by the Punjab based violent and fanatic Muslim
groups urging the Kashmir Muslims to dismantle the Dogra rule spoke by
spoke. Demands were yelled that the rulers who were dubbed as staunch Hindus
should cease to create hurdles in the holy task of conversions from other
faiths and should desist from interference in the launch of straightforward
hate campaigns against the religious enemies.
In the murderous loot of 1931 the
seven Kashmiri Pandits belonging to a single family of the village of Kanikoot
near yusmarg were offered conversion as an alternate choice to escape slaughter.
In 1932 when riots were triggered off in Mirpur the Hindus were massacred,
arsoned and coerced to accept Islamic faith. Forty-one Hindus were forcibly
converted to Islam in the Kotli Police Station area. In the Seri Police
Station area four hundred and thirty-five Hindus from ten villages were
coerced to join the Islamic ranks. In Kotli Tehsil five Hindus were slaughtered-
who reportedly rejected the offer of conversion to Islam. A Maulvi, combative
and violent, from Kashmir was responsible for the riots in Rajouri with
their quick impact in all the adjoining areas.
"Islam is in danger" (and ironically
it is always deemed in danger) is the standard Muslim tactics of generating
Muslim paranoia against Hindus and mobilising the Muslim hordes for unleashing
wild frenzy for Jehad. In the ensuing tidal wave of chaos and mayhem the
Hindu minority for one reason or the other is charged with betrayal and
sacrilege to Islam and struck with fear psychosis generated in ample measure
by the yelling and howling Muslim crowds many succumb to the sword of Islam.
Pt. Hargopal, a poet and historian, known as the Lion of Kashmir, along
with Janki Nath and Sham Narain was accused of having used abusive language
against Islam over a trifling issue of trespass which, his neighbour, a
Moulvi, refused to remove despite numerous requests and entreaties. Hargopal
was put under detention to quell the mob fiery. His licence as a practicing
lawyer was cancelled. Despite court acquittal the Muslims as a combination
of brute force and harsh coercion never felt satisfied with the quantum
of punishment awarded to him. Ultimately all the three were exiled from
their native homes.
The tribal raid of 1947 had all
the contours of Muslim Jehad and primeval savagery. Thousands of Hindus,
men, women and children whose staggering numbers were never divulged were
mercilessly butchered and conversions as a Muslim malaise resorted to on
a large scale. Till the adjoining areas of Baramulla and the town itself
were under the deluge of tribals Kahmiri Pandits who were unable to move
to the safer zones in the city of Srinagar were not only looted and killed
but also converted to the Islamic religion by the secular progeny of humanists
drummed about as Islamic sufis. After the territories under the avalanche
of the barbarous raiders were cleared by the valiant soldiers of India,
prominent Kashmiri Pandits like Pt. Kashyap Bandhu, Pt. Shamboo Nath Ogra,
Pt. Sham Lal Shalla alongwith Rameshwari Nehru toured the villages and
hamlets where Muslim marauders having planted banners of crescent had effected
forcible conversions. The neo-converts despite threats and verbal invectives
from the Muslim bigots were re- christened and restored to their birth
religion.
The Muslim fundamentalist movement
of 1989-variety targeting the Kashmiri Pandits as enemies of Islam and
agents of Brahmanical imperialism realised their massive exodus to the
Siberia of Indian plains. History has been repeating for them. They were
slaughtered and their hefty properties looted, grabbed or destroyed as
per the religious ordinances and fatwas that have been relentlessly and
immutably in vogue. Buzzing off to safer zones despite heavy losses in
terms of life and limb, what satisfied them the most was that they preserved
their ideological and religious personality which they had acquired through
civilisational processes of growth and flowering and had not renounced
even in the worst.times of Muslim holocaust. Yet there are a few thousand
of their co-religionists who chose to stay back for their own reasons despite
polarisation on communal lines and religious cleansing. Their presence
in the valley though confined to the high security zone has been blown
out to authenticate and propagate the dubious theory of Muslim secular
sense, tolerant ethos and intellectual acceptance of composite culture.
As is buttressed by the authentic reports their numbers are believed not
to exceed a bare two thousand. But the vested interests in cohorts with
unscrupulous elements in the corridors of central government inflated their
figures to a whopping twenty thousand only to secularist the troubled times
and to establish that the Pandits' perception of deadly threat from the
Muslim majority was only a ploy to be in self-exile.
The Kashmiri Pandits who have chosen
to stay back as subservient to Muslim identity and majoritatianism are
to all intents and purposes hostages to the Muslim majority and have been
victims to Muslim fundamentalist terror attacks and Qrgies of carnage.
The fate of Sohan Lal Braroo, his wife and his innocent daughter has blackened
the countenance of Muslim rationality and exposed the Muslim pretensions
of allegiance to Sufi Islam and caused shivers in the corridors of Geneva,
the seat of Human Rights Commission. T.N. Bhat who had stayed back and
was a poor guy eking out existence from the scarce earnings from a few
temples. The inhuman terrorists earning tremendous favours and sympathies
from the Muslim masses robbed him of his earnings at the Shrine of Zeshta
Devi, tied him to a three wheeler, wounding him brutally and fatally and
hurled him in an unconscious state into the Dal Lake for final burial.
But the humiliating disability and torture that they have been subjected
to is the forcible conversion to Islam and adoption of Muslim dress codes,
language nuances and other outer appearances that stand out a Muslim.
The Report of a team of the Gandhi
Peace Foundation which visited Kashmir very recently reveals, "Those Kashmiri
Pandits who have stayed back with their families have made adjustments
with the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Their women do not wear sari,
do not put on a bindi or wear 'dejohur'. They have no outward sign of being
married."
Since the volcanic eruption of fundamentalist
insurgency till June, 1994 a good number of Kashmiri Pandits and their
daughters under duress have been forcibly converted to Islam at the hands
of rabid Muslims owing allegiance to multiple armed outfits.82 The Pandit
girls who were abducted from their house-holds and work - places were forcibly
converted and married to Muslims after meting out to them the treatment
prescribed for the looted women of Kafirs. In the hateful conversion campaigns
the Jammaati-Islami has been in the active vanguard and has drawn unstinted
and unqualified support from a Muslim fanatic, Qazi Nissar, and some Janata
Dal turn-coat politicals with a dubious track- record in politics. The
pages of "Kashmiriayat" as the official organ of umat-e-Islami have showered
a litany of plaudits and praises on Qazi Nissar impelled by the Islamic
concept of Kufra for the initiation and direction of the conversion campaign.
The hapless victims to the brutality of conversion generally belong to
the villages of Anantnag, Pulwama and Tangmarg.
In Tral (District Pulwama) a Pandit
family with a teenage daughter clinging to its habitat like a limpet was
coerced to accept Islam by the rabid Jammaat activists.84 Since its conversion
the brutalised family has been shifted from its ancestral house to the
house of a Muslim in the same locality. Attempts galore have been made
to abduct the teenage girl by the lecherous elements held in high esteem
as the saviours of Islam. The Pandit family is under close watch lest it
should slip off to the safer zones for retrieval from the atrocity and
as is reliably reported has been under lessons of initiation in Islamic
precepts and practices by some rabid Mullahs who have been howling along
with dogs since 19/ 20th January 1990 as generalismos of Islamic army of
marauders.
Another Kashmiri pandit girl from
Safapora was made off as a prize catch by a Muslim in broad daylight. She
was converted under the shadow of a gun and married to her Muslim abductor.
The parents of the girl living in absolutely hostile environs meekly protested
against the atrocity but were threatened with dire consequences if they
did not shut up their traps and maintain stoic silence. The mother of the
girl under a terrific shock developed serious ailments and her spouse floated
a humiliating application in the dailies for permission from the brutal
terrorists to shift his wife to Srinagar for proper medical;aid. The family
somehow managed to flee to Jammu and thus was able to save another teenage
daughter from the similar fate awaiting her.
In Tangmarg a Kashmiri Pandit lady
married with children was said to have been lifted and forcibly married
to a Muslim who is said to be a driver. Her husband tried to report the
abduction to the nearby police station but was threatened with dire consequences
by the hostile Muslims in the area. In the same area another girl with
Hindu origins was said to have been converted and married to a Muslim under
duress.
Again in Tral (District Pulwama)
a Kashmiri Pandit girl living with her parents was abducted by the Islamic
terrorists who rule the roost despite government claims of normalcy. She
was converted to Islam under gun-point and married by a terrorist affiliated
to a particular brand of terrorist formation. Another terrorist of a different
brand did not take kindly to the marriage and after an incessant chase
were able to spot the terrorist and his bride and without mincing words
commanded him to hand over the girl to him for marriage. Losing his cool
and in utter rage the terrorist pounced on his rival and in the ensuing
bloody duel he fell to a bullet. The rival made off with his catch to the
privacy of a den leaving behind no clues for tracing him out.
In the health resort of Pahalgam
a Kashmiri Pandit boy possessed of Dutch courage reportedly married a Muslim
girl from the same area. The Muslim terrorists alongwith their Muslim supporters
were shell-shocked by such a marriage as it was deemed to score off the
history that they were writing in Kashmir. They were dead set after the
two lovers for their annihilation. Ultimately after a hunt the couple was
traced, abducted and mercilessly beheaded with a blunt axe. Their bodies
with severed heads were recovered from a field. How could a space be allowed
to those who are deviants from the grammar of Islam?
Scores of Sikh girls have been abducted
and brutally converted to the Islamic religion. The abduction and subsequent
conversion of Satinder Kour D/o Bhupender Singh R/o Khawaja Bagh, Barmulla
and Surinder Kour D/o Dalip Singh R/o Alucha Bagh, Srinagar have been splashed
in the media. Appeals to the Sikh separatist leader Simranjit Singh Mann
who had informed the valley Sikhs that he had ensured their safety through
a pact with the Kashmiri terrorists failed to secure their release from
the clutches of the Islamic crusaders. The Sikh organizations of varied
hues from the Punjab have also issued numerous appeals for the redemption
of the Sikh girls but to no avail. The chief of the Dukhtaran-i-Milat,
Aisha Indrabi, has been assiduously working to the nefarious end of realising
the conversion of many a Sikh and Pandit girl.
In the villages of Sopore, Tral,
Mattan, Anantnag et al the Pandit families that have been atrociously converted
to Islam are allowed to retain the pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses
only to mislead the anti-terrorist operators and maintain the effectiveness
of the den.
Som Deva reports, "Since the eruption
of the fundamentalist insurgency till June, 1994 nearly a hundred Pandit
and many Sikh girls have suffered this fate at the hands of Jamaat-i-Islami
and Its armed outfit Hizbul Mujahideen. Later on they were married to Muslim
boys."
He continues, " In July, 1993 two
Pandit girls at the historic village Omanagri (Anantnag) and another one
at Safapore were forcibly converted to Islam by Jammaat activists. The
attempts by their families which subsequently migrated to Jammu to seek
the help of official agencies for retrieving their daughters evoked no
response."
