|
Hindu Vivek Kendra |
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA |
|
|
|
15. On Kashmiri Pandits
15.1 One of the features of the debate
on communalism in India is that the attacks on Hindus are to be given a
secular colour, even when the perpetrators say that they are doing a communal
act. This is best seen in terms of the issue of the Kashmiri Pandits is
handled. Many analysts have highlighted the double standards of those who
have the same ideology as the authors of the Report. However, even today,
if at all the Kashmiri Pandits are mentioned, they are done in a perfunctory
manner.
15.2 The cavalier treatment of the
plight of the Kashmiri Pandits by Teesta Setalvad, one of the two primary
promoters of Sabrang, needs to be highlighted. The people who are shedding
crocodile tears over the Muslims in Gujarat, have not even done this with
respect to the more than 300,000 Pandits who are living as refugees in
their own country for the last thirteen years. In a speech in Delhi on
August 20, 2002, she said:
15.3 Thus in a speech of about 900
words, only 47 are devoted to the Kashmiri Pandits, while the rest deals
with the violence in Gujarat after the burning of the Hindus in Godhra.
Interestingly, the word Godhra does not occur even once in her speech.
It should also be noticed that the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits are not
treated with sympathy, but an attempt is made to explain the problem away.
15.4 The Kashmiri Pandits are refugees
in their own country for the last 13 years. Except for the Hindu organisations,
their plight is of no concern to anyone else - political or secular organisations.
According to Ashish Nandy of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies,
secularists have been foolishly soft on minority communalism. He said:
· "When Hindus began
to be exterminated systematically in Kashmir and to leave in large numbers,
our secularist friends said then governor Jagmohan had deliberately organised
the forced migration. I would like to see people leaving their ancestral
homes with a sack in hand just because the governor of the state asks them
to do so! When questioned later as to how the killings of Hindus were not
condemned strongly enough, some of them said newspapers had refused to
carry their statements." ("A Dangerous Symbiosis", Outlook, April 1, 2002.)
15.5 There are many explanations for
the silence of the secularists with respect to the Kashmiri Pandits. What
Nandy informs is one of them. Another has been given by one Asha Kachru,
in a letter to Manushi, in its issue nr 113. She wrote:
· "I (feel) no one
wants to talk about the (Kashmiri) Pandits..., Now because of the Pandit-BJP
nexus I also feel uncomfortable raising the issue."
15.6 So, tomorrow if the Sangh says
that sun rises in the East, there will be a sustained campaign amongst
the intellectuals to say that this is yet another falsehood propagated
by the Sangh!
15.7 Setalvad has written extensively
about the Kashmiri terrorists (she calls them militants, mercenaries, etc.,
but never terrorists), both foreign and home-grown, in quite favourable
light in the past. But this is probably the first time that she has condescended,
even in a perfunctory manner, to talk about the Kashmiri Pandits. She has
visited and talked to the terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir quite a few
times. But, she never found it necessary to even make a fleeting visit
to the refugee camps of the Kashmiri Pandits.
|