Author: B L Kak
Publication: Daily Excelsior
Date: April 10, 2005
URL: http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/05apr10/news.htm#6
All India Kashmiri Samaj (AIKS)
has warned that if Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) were prevented from exercising
their ''legitimate'' right to decide their own future, the situation in
the crisis-ridden Jammu and Kashmir State will in no way be satisfactory
and pleasant.
''It is the community of Kashmiri
Pandits----and not the Government---that will have to hammer out their
future course of action'', insists M K Kaw, president of All India Kashmiri
Samaj. ''We are in favour of the KPs' return to the Valley. But since the
Kashmiri Pandit community alone has the right to decide their own future,
we will not accept any proposal which lacks support of the KPs'', Kaw told
the EXCELSIOR in the course of 45-minute question-answer session here.
Declining to be drawn into discussion
on the recent disclosure by the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mufti
Mohammed Sayeed, vis-a-vis the number of ''willing'' Kashmiri Pandit families
on the road to Srinagar, M K Kaw made it abundantly clear that the KPs'
return to the Valley will not be in twos and threes. The process, in this
regard, will have to involve larger number of the KP migrants, he said.
More importantly, security conditions
will have to be conducive, to be followed by the KP migrants' return to
the Valley, Kaw argued. He asserted : ''We (Kashmiri Pandit migrants) have
to go back to Kashmir. But the timing has to be decided by the Kashmiri
Pandit community----not by the Government''.
Considering the fact that All India
Kashmiri Samaj is the conglomerate of as many as 48 groups across the country,
any attempt to ignore or under-estimate the AIKS in the corner of evolving
mechanism with record of the KPs return journey to the Valley will prove
counter productive. All the more reason for the AIKS president, M K Kaw,
to vehemently oppose the J&K Government's plan to re-settle Kashmiri
Pandit migrants in two zones in the Valley----Badgam and Tulmul. ''We will
not go to these places'', Kaw declared.
The AIKS, according to its president,
has already apprised the Centre and the J&K administration of the preference
for eight to ten places, where a majority of the KPs would like to get
rehabilitated. These places also include Habba Kadal, Ganpatyar, Karan
Nagar, Raj Bagh and Shiv Pora in the vicinity of Srinagar. Asked if in
the given circumstances the AIKS had found KPs willing to return to the
Valley, Kaw said: ''At present, nobody is prepared to go back to the Valley,
where terror and violence continue. I don't deny reports that some individuals
may be willing to go back this time''.
M K Kaw, well-known Kashmiri Pandit
intellectual and a former secretary in the Union Human Resource Development
Ministry (HRD), does not see eye to eye with the slogan, or talk, of a
''separate homeland'' for Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley of Kashmir.
