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| Now its the Sikhs turn, separatists’ shedding crocodile tears | | |
STARK REALITY–I
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, July 30: “My humble request to you (Mahatma Gandhi), therefore, is that taking all things into consideration, should we (Kashmiri Hindus) adopt a national programme and give up communalism altogether? If so, won’t we be risking our culture, life and property, at the hands of Pan-Islamists? I have so far tried to be nationalist, while serving on the grievances Enquiry Commission (1931) and the Constitutional Reforms Council, as a non-official member, representing Kashmiri Pandits. I tried to redress all the legislative grievances of the Muslims and voted for a representative Assembly, even though the Muslims (the majority community) had persisted in their communal demands. A section of Kashmiri Pandits rebuked me for this attitude and, curiously enough, that section has collared a majority of my community. I was subsequently hooted, dubbed as a traitor and thrown into background, after much harassment. I do not know what to do and, therefore, seek your kind advice.” – Prem Nath Bajaj, May 5, 1934
“I have gone through your (Prem Nath Bajaj’s) papers. We are reaping as we have sown. Seeing that Kashmmir is predominantly Mussalman, it is bound one day to become a Mussalman State.” --- Mahatma Gandhi, May 15, 1945 (Saxena, H.L., The Tragedy of Kashmir, PP. 335-336)
The secessionist violence on an unprecedented scale erupted in Kashmir in 1989, It was engineered by the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence saboteurs and the ardent believers in the concept of “Nizam-e-Mustafa” (Islamic rule). It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that one of their immediate targets was the miniscule minority of Kashmiri Hindus, popularly called Pandits.
The main organizations which launched a crusade against the Kashmiri Hindus were Jama’at-e-Islami, Jama’at-ul-Tulba, People’s League and Muslim United Front (MUF). The entire vernacular Press and the Muslim clergy plus certain elements in the administration gave their unstinted support to the separatists’ and fundamentalists’ plan designed to evict the entire Hindu community from the Valley and Islamize everything. Some of the militant and fundamentalist outfits did try to involve the Kashmiri Hindus in their anti-India and pro-Nizam-e-Mustafa struggle by holding out a promise that they would be given protection as a minority in the Muslim state to be governed in accordance with the Islamic tenets. Some of them even asked them to abandon their religion and culture and embrace Islam.
Those who unleashed a no-holds-barred campaign of hatred and vilification against the Kashmiri Hindus with a view to forcing the latter to quit the Valley and those who urged upon the Hindus to renounce their religion and culture and join the movement aimed at liberating Kashmir from the “Indian yoke” were, as a matter of fact, two sides of one and the same coin. The former in order to achieve “Nizam-e-Mustafa” took to terrorism and the latter to achieve the same objective took to subtle methods. The roads, though diverged from each other, led towards the same destination: Annihilation of the Indian culture and Islamization of everything in Kashmir.
Determined as they were to preserve their 5,000-year-old identity and culture, the Kashmiri Hindus resisted the “Islamic onslaught” for some time. In the process, they suffered humiliations at the hands of the “zealots” who strove to the hilt to denigrate their history and culture. Their business establishments, temples and residential quarters were attacked and ransacked. Their women were “raped and dishonoured.” Several hundred of them were brutally tortured and murdered. In fact, the terrorists and Islamic zealots perpetrated all kinds of brutalities and committed all kinds of crimes. Torture deaths were brought about by inhuman practices, which included “stiching the lips of the victim before killing and nailing the chest and feet of the poor man till he bled to death, strangulation by using steel wires, hanging, impaling, branding with hot irons, burning alive, lynching, gouging of eyes before assassination, slicing, dismemberment of limbs, drowning, dragging to death, draining of blood and slaughter” (Jha, Himansu Shekhar, “Uprooted Pandits living in misery”, The Hindustan Times, August 15, 1995; Teng, M.K., “White Paper on Kashmir”, P. 87).
The victims of militancy did wait and wait for the government to come to their rescue and perform its legitimate duty. But the authorities remained totally indifferent. Unable to withstand the April 14, 1990 terrorists’ threat to “leave the Valley within 48 hours or face death’, the minority ultimately decided to quit the Valley, leaving behind property and everything worth millions of crores. It is, however, a different matter that the Leftists, the secularists and the human rights activists started a misinformation campaign almost immediately to cover the frightful face of communalism and to mislead the world opinion holding the then state governor, Jagmohan, squarely responsible for the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley.
That Jagmohan did not encourage the Kashmiri Hindus’ flight is evident from the conversation between the late Srinagar-based renowned editor of the Srinagar Times, Ghulam Mohammad Sofi, and The Times of India correspondent, Omkar Razdan. Sofi told Razdan in November 1997: “It is a total lie. It is a part of systematic propaganda. The Pandits’ flight from the Valley was the sequel to a plan hatched well in advance from outside the state. It had nothing to do with Jagmohan. The situation was too bad when Jagmohan assumed office. Rajiv Gandhi (he was not Prime Minister then) came for an overnight visit. I was present in Centaur Hotel in Dal Lake when Rajiv Gandhi said Kashmir is slipping away” (The Times of India, Nov 19, 1997). (To be continued)
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