Er P L Khushu
With the new threat warnings to Kashmiri Pandits serving in Kashmir by the ‘Resistance Front (TRF)’, as also the refusal of the Supreme Court of India to give some relief to the KPs in the issues of their genocide and mass exodus from Kashmir for its legal probe and the culprits identified, the Kashmiri Pandits are caught in a piquant situation, for their existence after about 33 years of their forced displacement from Kashmir, under the wield of the guns of the Islamic fundamentals working as terror outfits in Kashmir. After passing a protracted turmoil of almost more than three decades, the displaced Kashmiri Pandits are presently facing a piquant situation like ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ for them. Kashmir Fight blog, the mouthpiece of The Resistance Front (TRF), Pakistan’s new terror outfit , established in Kashmir and an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, has issued threats and released a ‘hit-list’ with the names of 57 Kashmiri Pandits, who are working as government employees, under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package in the Kashmir Valley. In an open letter, the Islamic terror organization pledged to continue targeting Kashmir’s Hindus. They ranted about how the non-locals and Kashmiri Hindus were stealing employment and land from Kashmir. The terror group further stated that Delhi is imposing a ‘fascist’ Hindutva ideology on Kashmir and Kashmiris, which they will not tolerate. TRF also vowed to continue attacking Hindus who are ‘maligning the atmosphere of the valley.’ ‘We once again want to warn such elements not to become pawns of Delhi Regime and don’t become the carriers of their filthy and fascist agenda,’ read the threat letter.
A similar situation is being created which has almost fully synonymous with the terrorist’s acts against the Kashmiri Pandits in the year 1989-1990. It is a ploy to again ensure that KPs should not come back to the Kashmir valley when there are often some plans coming in various news corridors from the government in this regard. The employment package programs, being issued by the government for the appointment of Kashmiri Pandits on various government jobs in Kashmir to pave a way for the honorable return of the Kashmiri Pandits en mass to valley is presently the big eye sore with these terror out fits to ensure that no such employment program for Kashmiri Pandits or any proposal of the speculated return of the displaced Kashmiri Pandits back to valley gets executed. It has been seen in the immediate recent past that so many Kashmiri Pandit employees, working in the valley were killed in cold blood. Instances are there when some Kashmiri Pandits other than government employees working in valley, who had migrated back to the original places of their hearths and homes in Kashmir, too were killed brutally in broad day lights. Is it a handy work of the terrorist’s organizations across the border alone? No? The terrorist organizations operating in Kashmir are now the established flock of local young people helped and abetted by the local population and the local politicians for their vote bank politics. While as Islamization and the fanning of crude Islamic fundamentalism has been the core operational intent of the terrorism in Kashmir, there are other vital factors also which are weighing prominently with the local Muslim population in this regard. The bullets of the terrorists who are being used as tools by the over ground forces, which include most of the civilian population for their personal and individual interests. Some amongst them do not want KP employees back so that their booty in the administration is shared by anyone else other than these silent abettors to such acts of terror and murders. It is the case with the other sections of such people, who have grabbed KPs lands and properties at tiny and shoddy prices and are under a dormant fear that they shall have to return these properties along with penalties, if KPs return to Kashmir. Some of these persons have now become so much fanatic not to tolerate a ‘KP’, considering him as an enemy of Islam. Unfortunately the concept of Islam phobia was always a ring desire of almost each and every Muslim of Kashmir right from the day when the power got transferred to National Conference in 1947, after the same was snatched away from Maharaja Hari Singh under the well-planned conspiracy hatched by the prominent leaders of ‘Quite-Kashmir-Movement’, with the sorrowful blessings of most of the then congress leadership of India which was led by Nehru, except Sardar Patel. Kashmiri Pandit has thus been an eye sore in Kashmir ever since the emergence of so-called ‘Naya-Kashmir’ under the partisan leadership of Sheikh Mohamed Abdullah. It was disgraceful to witness political leaders like Farooq Abdullah saying openly that such killings of Kashmiri Pandits, will continue unless justice is not done. What does he mean by saying that Justice has to be done? Same is true about the other political leaders too who uttering such poisonous words against the Kashmiri Pandits. Are they showering their sympathies with the separatist’s, particularly the terrorists with guns?
This reminds the Kashmiri Pandits of their genocide years like 1989-1990, when similar long lists of Kashmir Pandits were issued, with strong warnings and threats to the KPs, to leave the valley immediately or otherwise face death. Its originators in letter and spirit executed these threat letters as warrants of death against Kashmiri Pandits, when huge number of innocent Kashmiri Pandits was killed in cold blood for no fault of theirs. These death warrant letters issued by terror out fits of that time, made the other Kashmiri Pandits of the valley to flee from Kashmir almost naked and bear footed under the fear of death, leaving there ancestral places and aborigine homes for a simple fault that they were true Indians living in Kashmir. With the advent of terrorism the KPs became the specific targets, when on score of KPs were brutally killed. The worst carnages of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits occurred in March 1997, when terrorists dragged out seven Kashmiri Pandits from their houses in Sangrampora village and gunned them down. It was followed by killing about 23 Kashmiri Pandits, including women and children, in 1998, when they were shot in cold blood in Wandhama village. Again, In March 2003, about 24 Kashmiri Pandits, including infants, brutally shot dead in Nadimarg Village. This happened in the times of the national conference rule headed by Dr Farooq Abdullah, when Congress was ruling the Central Government.
Another set back to the safe existence of the Kashmiri Pandits as the loyal citizens of this country and as the principle residents of Kashmir, within the safe boundaries of India, has emerged with the dismissal of their curative petition by the Supreme Court of India recently. Supreme Court of India dismissed recently a curative petition seeking legally based probe into Kashmiri Pandit exodus and mass killings in 1989-90 at the hands of the Islamic terrorists. ‘We have gone through the Curative Petition and the connected documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court’, as per the judgment in this regard. Besides seeking other directions, it had also sought transfer of investigation of all the FIRs and cases of murder and other allied crimes against Kashmiri Pandits in the years 1989-90, 1997 and 1998 to some independent investigating agency like the CBI or the NIA or any other agency appointed by the top court. The organization had said in its plea that the Jammu and Kashmir Police had failed to make any progress in hundreds of FIRs pending with them. However, all these pleas were dismissed. Without commenting on this judgment of the Supreme Court of India, does it mean that the law of the land through the prevalent legal jurisprudence system in India has refused the Kashmiri Pandits, ‘the sons of the soil’, a final hope for a probe in to the genocide of KPs in 1989-90, which was perpetrated at the hands of the Islamic terrorists, when they deserved it. With the dismissal of the curative petition filed by the NGO ‘Roots in Kashmir’, which made an attempt to get the perpetrators of terror to be brought to book, responsible for the mass genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits, hopes of the displaced KPs, who are the victims of the worst kind of genocide in their own home land have been shattered, to get settled back in their lost homes and hearths in Kashmir. It sounds like that KPs have been refused an entry back in Kashmir to their lost paradise of centuries, when they are the aboriginals of Kashmir bearing allegiance to the roots of ‘Kashyap-Rishi’ who killed the ‘Demons’ of doom in Kashmir to make Kashmir a spiritual paradise on earth.
The NGO had initially filed a writ petition in this regard in the top court some time in 2017, seeking investigation and prosecution of several persons in connection with killing of Kashmiri Pandits during 1989-90, 1997 and 1998. This writ petition was dismissed on 24 July 2017. Again a review petition filed against this dismissal of the writ petition and this review petition was also dismissed by the Supreme Court of India, somewhere in October 2017. It is repeatedly being observed by the Supreme Court of India in its judgments in this regard that the issue lies with the executive and not with the judiciary. It is being said through various judgments in this regard that Kashmiri Pandits should approach the government for such a probe.
It is worthwhile to mention here that a bench of Supreme Court of India, headed by the then CJI Justice Deepak Misra, on January 11th 2018, appointed a special investigation team (SIT), headed by a retired Delhi High Court Judge, Justice S N Dhingra to carry on the further probe in the 1984 anti- Sikh riots case after a lapse of about 34 years, ignoring its ‘ unlikely situation to get evidence at this late juncture’, the yard stick applied to the case of the writ petition of the genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits, which resulted in the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir. Why not such a decision of the Supreme Court of India could be applied to the issues of genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in 1989-90 too, when the situation is synonymous with that of the mass killings of Sikhs in 1984, called as ‘anti-Sikh Riots’.
Supreme Court of India has consistently refused to entertain the petitions of the KPs. The NGO ‘Roots in Kashmir’, has done so on different occasions. A similar petition was filed by another NGO, ‘We the Citizen’s’, seeking probe to fix the accountability on officers and politicians for their inaction during the genocide of KPs between the years 1989-2003. This was also dismissed with the observations that ‘issues raised by you are purely in the domain of the executive. You should approach the government’. It asked the representatives to file the representations in this behalf with the government. The same bench remained consistent with its stand, taken earlier and refused to entertain a plea in this regard, by one Ashutosh Taploo, whose father Tika Lal Taploo, was a prominent Kashmiri Pandit who was gunned down by the terrorist in September 1990. It is an unfortunate situation for KPs.
Where is ‘Hindutva’ about us? Do we not belong to the big race of the Hindus of this great ‘Bharat’. It is now very much unfortunate for us to seek refuge under this cover of Hinduism as the enormous and enough drum beating of the secular credentials of the nations commitment to the Constitution has failed to protect us from our extinction from the mini map of Kashmir and the bigger map of our great India. We are shrinking in numbers. It is a million dollar question. It has to be replied by the present government and lip sympathies will hardly work in this regard. After all Kashmir is a part of our blood and flesh, why to refuse it to us. Let the nation as a whole now rise to the occasion and remind the governance of the day to perform their fundamental duty of getting the heinous acts of genocide and mass exodus of the KPs probed by a judicial body to be named by the government immediately for giving a fair justice to the Kashmiri Pandits and heal their bleeding wounds in this regard to some extent and have the culprits punished. KPs are the aboriginals of Kashmir. Kashmir became a death trap for them due to the spurt of terrorism backed by Islamic fundamentalism sponsored across the border, when each one of them were caught unawares for no fault of theirs. The dark night of January 19, 1990, shivering with cold, is remembered by all of them, as it was the worst nightmare for the Kashmiri Pandits living in the valley. Screaming from loud speakers and crowded streets was a message for KPs living in Kashmir, which said, Ralive, Tsaliv, Neti- Galiv. (It meant that either convert to Islam or leave Kashmir and in the alternative face death). Even after about 31 years, Kashmiri Pandits shiver remembering the night which forced them into exodus and a life of exile within their own country. Jehadi cum communal speeches from mosques were put on loud speakers meant for ‘Azan & Nimaz’, which would say (‘Yeti- Bani Pakistan, Bhatov Bhegeer the Bhatenen-San’), meaning there in that the Kashmir will become a Pakistan without male Kashmiri Pandits, but including women folk of Kashmiri Pandits.
Why was not it got investigated by an impartial legal forum, by various governments from 1989 till date. Where lays the roadblock? Yes, the biggest road block is that KPs are not vote bank mulching cows, as they are scattered and are very little in number as compared to the majority Muslim population of Kashmir. No political party including the so-called liberal ‘Hinduvita’ party BJP, wants to antagonize the majority population of Muslims both in Kashmir and the other Muslims in India. Tall slogans and claims of normalcy is a virtual dream to fulfill the false egos of government for public consumption when the situation on ground is different. Let the government act and save the innocent KPs as pigeons before cats. It is a situation like ‘Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire’, for the Kashmiri Pandits now. Who comes to their rescue is a million dollar question.
(The author is a retired Chartered Civil Engineer as also a displaced Kashmiri Pandit, who loves his Motherland the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir).
