DOST KHAN
If coincidence, then what a coincidence? But it can’t be the one. Had #BharatJodoYatra managers deliberately chosen January 19 as the day to enter #JammuandKashmir to send a message? It appears so, as the main spectators of the horrendous exodus of the miniscule minority of #KashmiriPandits, beginning January 19, 1990, joined at #Lakhanpur 33 years later to, what they call, ‘end the hate and bind hearts’. The #NationalConference greeted the #Congress Yatra as a mark of solidarity. The leaders of these two parties had willfully ignored the writing on the wall, and to some extent, created a situation in which Pakistan unleashed terrorists engineered havoc and forced Pandits to flee from their homes and hearths just because they were #Sanatanis and #Indians.
On January 19, 1990 #FarooqAbdullah had resigned as Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, after having miserably failed to maintain the order in terror infested Valley, leading to free run for terrorists to cause terror and mayhem. On January 19, 1990 again, most of mosques blared the yells, ‘Zalimo Ae Kafiro Chor Do Kashmir Ko’. On January 19, 1990 the mass scale exodus of Kashmiri Pandits began. On January 19, since 1990, the Sanatanis, tagged as migrants, have been observing this day as the Holocaust Day—to mark the dark era of genocide.
National Human Rights Commission, constituted in pursuance of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, gave a detailed verdict, after hearing petitions and memorandum submitted by various KP organizations during 1995-96, that the killings of Kashmiri Pandits were akin to genocide.
On January 19, 2023, when Kashmiri Pandits were observing Holocaust Day across the world, Farooq Abdullah was hugging the Gandhi scion Rahul at Lakhanpur—ironically the same place where the then Jana Sangh ideologue Syama Prasad Mukherjee was arrested by Sheikh Abdullah government on May 11, 1953 for ‘illegally crossing the border. This is what happened in independent India.
Do Gandhi Abdullah Dynastic Limited Company want to bind India in 2023, which witnessed biggest breach and divide in 1990—courtsey the two families? This calls for a fact check.
Condemned in #Kashmir and vehemently respected in Jammu and elsewhere in the country, Governor Jagmohan had cautioned the then Prime Minister #RajivGandhi about worst coming in the Valley, which the later ignored because he didn’t want to upset his friend #FarooqAbdullah. The excerpts of #Jagmohan’s letter to Rajiv Gandhi reveal…” Need I remind you that from the beginning of 1988, I had started sending “Warning Signals” to you about the gathering storm in Kashmir? But you and the power wielders around you had neither the time, nor the inclination, nor the vision, to see these signals. They were so clear, so pointed, that to ignore them was to commit sins of true historical proportions.
To recapitulate and to serve as illustrations, I would refer to a few of these signals. In August 1988, after analysing the current and undercurrents, I had summed up the position thus: “The drum-beaters of parochialism and fundamentalism are working overtime. Subversion is on the increase. The shadows of events from across the border are lengthening. Lethal weapons have come in. More may be on the way …In April 1989 I had desperately pleaded for immediate action. I said: “The situation is fast deteriorating. It has almost reached a point of no return. For the last five days there has been large-scale violence, arson, firing, hartals, casualties and what not. Things have truly fallen apart. Talking of the Irish crisis, British Prime Minister Disraeli had said: “It is potatoes one day and Pope the next.” Similar is the present position in Kashmir. Yesterday, it was Maqbool Butt; today it is Satanic Verses; Tomorrow it will be repression day and the day after it will be something else. The Chief Minister stands isolated. He has already fallen-politically as well as administratively; perhaps, only constitutional rites remain to be performed. His clutches are too soiled and rickety to support him. Personal aberrations have also eroded his public standing. The situation calls for effective intervention. Today may be timely, tomorrow may be too late”.
Time now stands testimony to the prediction of Jagmohan—it was really too late. Ignoring the gubernatorial warnings was not the only willful lapse by the political executive in New Delhi and #Srinagar then but the ‘criminal connivance’ in releasing terrorists gave a dangerous dimension to radicalised Kashmir terror.
Blaming the Congress government at the Centre in 1989 for the rise of terrorism, the former Director General Police, J&K Dr Shesh Paul Vaid took to Twitter on March 16, 2022 saying that not many people in the country know the fact that the first batch of 70 terrorists trained by ISI was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police. The ill-thought political decision by the then Jammu and Kashmir government led by Farooq Abdullah had got these terrorists released, who went on to lead many terrorist organisations in the erstwhile state. Farooq was Chief Minister from 1987 to 1990. Pointing fingers at the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government at the centre, the former DGP asked, “Could this have been possible without the knowledge of the Union Government of 1989?”
The Rahul-Farooq bonhomie on the Kashmir Holocaust Day, therefore, is no more a coincidence or surprise.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
