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*Dr. K L Chowdhury |
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ast week Kashmiri Pandits observed 13th July as a Black Day. It went almost unnoticed because several Pandit organizations held their independent small ineffectual rallies at different places very close to each other in Jammu but would not make it one big show. It seemed more a ritual performance (that is what our struggle is now reduced to) than a serious and sincere effort at sending a strong message across. Does that not still nudge us out of our mindsets? We date our present problems, including the exodus from Kashmir, to this day in 1931 when there was the first backlash on the Hindu minority. Since then we have seen no let up in our travails. A slow and invisible exodus was already in process since 1947 as a result of the harsh and discriminative polices of the valley- dominated leadership of the State of J&K and the overt and covert patronage by the government, the bureaucracy and other political and administrative structures to rising Islamic fundamentalism in the valley, creating conditions conducive to the emergence of an exclusivist Muslim state. The cacophony of this extremist ideology found loud and violent expression with the rise of militancy that led to the mass exodus of nearly the whole Pandit community. The rest is history. Nearly two decades down, and a generation later, we find ourselves still struggling for survival in a nomadic life that has given rise to a huge Diaspora. Wallowing in rootless-ness, we are trying to reclaim identity and to reassemble the fragments of a fractured existence to rebuild our socio-cultural edifices again and seek a political space. A generation, that grew up in the lap of motherland has passed away, a new generation has taken birth in exile in a totally different milieu and ignorant of their heritage, language, roots and history, and the remaining who have survived the beast of terrorism and the ravages of exile are hovering between the nostalgia of homeland and the harsh realities of exile. The struggle for the reclamation of homeland started the day Kashmiri Pandits were forced into exodus from their centuries-old habitation in the valley of Kashmir. Over the years various concepts and return modules were developed from time to time culminating in the Margdharshan resolution on 28th Dec 1991. In essence it called for the creation of a separate homeland for Pandits in the valley of Kashmir, northeast of river Jehlum where a free flow of Indian constitution would be guaranteed and the Pandits would have a self rule and be administered as a union territory. Right from the start there has been a stiff opposition to this bold concept from within and from outside. The State and Central governments scuttled all moves in the guise of different return packages from time to time with no sincerity or substance. The Prime Minister’s Roundtable conference on Kashmir and the recommendations of the various committees set up by him, to which our representatives were invited, completely ignored even our genuine demands for short- term rehabilitative measures what to speak of return to a homeland. For practical purposes we have been thrown out of all calculations in the context of Jammu and Kashmir, we do not exist in the State compass. Even the simple proposition of a Mandhir Prabhandk Committee on the lines of Auqaf, is being dilly dallied while encroachments and annexation of our temple properties goes on unabated by the government agencies. The mushrooming Pandit organizations, often working at cross purposes, are adding insult to injury, what with their demands of one sort or the other through numerous press releases and myriad representations/memoranda/open letters that have piled up at the offices of the State and Central Ministries, NHRC, the MCI, Relief commissioner, various visiting groups and commissions, and often fall flat on the ears of the powers to which they are addressed, no one taking them seriously. There have been feeble attempts at forging unity between the numerous organizations but the massages that emanate do not raise their esteem in their own or others’ eyes. Pandits are perceived as a fractured, disunited, disgruntled, and angry community, at war with itself and therefore not able to present a coherent and unified voice to the rest of the world. The discordant notes project a depressing scenario of the community and often make it the butt of ridicule from others. The impression gained is that Pandits are not interested in returning to the valley, that they have accepted the fact of exile, nay, even developed a vested interest in it because of the petty doles from the Govt. and the promise of a few more, like construction of two room flats at Jagati etc. Many KPs wax eloquent counting the blessings of exile, like admissions of their wards in engineering and technology and a few jobs here and there in multinationals. The impression of Pandits not wanting to return is further reinforced by their declarations ad nauseum that they will return at the time of their own choosing, when militancy has been wiped out and the last bullet fired, when all encroachments, annexations and losses are undone and when there is almost an utopia in the valley! We have to ask ourselves that big question which seems to evade us while we are busy striking deeper roots in exile, content with the deprivation, the alienation, the violation of our political, economic and territorial rights. Do we seriously, sincerely want to return? Do we have a burning desire to go back? Are we ready to move beyond the hypothetical position that whole of Kashmir is ours and therefore we will go back one day to our own hearths and homes? Are we ready to accept that Vitasta cannot be the dividing line between the homelands for KPs and Muslims, if only for the wide disparity in the populations of the two communities? Are we ready to accept that we are up against a fiercely minority leaning ‘secular’ India and an aggressively Islam hungry Kashmir that have succeeded in trashing our struggle of two decades to the extent that the world does not know, and does not care, that we have lost a five thousand years habitation in the valley? If yes, then we have to move fast in order to face the challenges of the rapidly changing political climate when the LOC and international borders are being rendered almost irrelevant and equation between Kashmir and India now reduced to one between Self Rule and Full autonomy. We have to take a proactive stand before we are completely forgotten as a community. We have to realize that in politics frozen attitudes lead to frozen situations. We have to come out of the stalemate created by some hard nosed leaders and vested interests and perpetuated by the State and Central governments, or we will continue to languish in exile and the administrative mechanisms will continue working zealously to ostracize and eliminate Pandits, forcing us into irreversible exile. Now is the time to move beyond rhetoric and to come out of the maze of hazy perceptions about return and rehabilitation While reiterating our faith and commitment to our political, territorial, economic and socio-cultural rights, we have to realize that homeland is an evolving concept and we have ourselves to give it a practical shape. The undoing of the exodus will largely depend on our will and practical imagination, not merely dreaming about it. Therefore there is an urgent need to advance a concrete, practical and realistic vision of return to the valley. As that first step towards the realization of our goals, a City-State model comprising a huge township in the valley, with a full infrastructure for residential and institutional requirements, initially for a population of 3 hundred thousand, with schools, colleges, university, technology park, industrial units, banking sectors, and tourist, cultural and religious centers and everything required for the growth and development of a community, has to be given a final shape. This was mooted by us in the Feb 2006 PK convention held in Jammu and needs to be revived and also taken up by AIKS, the apex body that has so far shied away from a definite political vision. It is time to revive the vision and co-opt the services of a large team comprising sociologists, demographers, geologists, health and education professionals, economists, town planners, entrepreneurs, agriculturists, and experts in security related issues and present the module to the State and Central Governments. The development of contiguous satellite towns for accommodating the total population of more than seven hundred thousand Kashmiri Pandits will have to follow the township and include agricultural, horticultural and forest land to accommodate all sections of the exiled community. We have to persuade and pressurize the governments of the day to start on this ambitious project rather than wasting effort, time and money with the ridiculous clusters of a few apartments here and there. We are not asking for the moon. The recommendations of the UNHC on Internally Displaced Peoples are well known to all that of rehabilitating them in compact and secure environment back in their homeland where they enjoy full political and economic rights. This is very much possible and doable within the vision of a city state module. This does not involve any constitutional amendments which are mandatory for the creation of a separate state/union territory etc. We must now press our claim for a remodeling of the Prime Minister’s Package to dovetail it with the City-state module, since every KP organization has of late been clamoring for its implementation after having rejected it in the beginning. If the government has the will it will find the wherewithal. We have the example of that grandiose rehabilitation project which saw the re-creation of a whole town of Chraresharif after Mastgul and his merry men torched the holy shrine of Nund Resh. We witnessed the mammoth operation of rehabilitation and reconstruction of Uri and neighboring villages in the shortest possible time in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. Last month we watched the massive exodus from the Swat valley in Pakistan during the war against Taliban and within weeks a gargantuan operation is in place to send back this displaced human mass of 12 lac people to their homes and hearths!. What about us, the victims of the worst man-made calamity in post-independent India? Alas there is no one looking or listening? Who is to blame, we have to ask ourselves. It is for us to project our burning desire to go back, it is for us to project a united voice, it is for us to move out of our cozy cocoons in exile and reverse the most tragic exodus in modern times. |
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*Dr. K L Chowdhury retired as a Professor of Medicine, Medical College, Srinagar. Presently he is the Director of a charitable institution, Shriya Bhatt Mission Hospital and Research Center, Durga Nagar, Jammu. He is a physician and neurologist, a medical researcher, poet, social activist. He writes on diverse subjects medical, literary, social and political and has numerous research papers to his credit, his pioneering work being “The Health Trauma in a Displaced Population” which was presented at national and international conferences. He was declared Shehjar's 'Kashmiri Person of the year' for 2007. |
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The million dollar question here to ponder upon is whether the community is ready to return to rot again under the whims and frolics of the majority community and the biased administration now gone from bad to worse where a Hindu youth is brutally murdered in a police station for the fault of marrying a Kashmir Muslim girl. The KPs need to learn a lesson from the episode.
Added By J L Bhat