Finally government admits that it was a genocide of Kashmiri Pandits

Government bans Yasin’s JKLF, blames it for 1989 genocide of Pandits

NEW DELHI: Continuing its crackdown on separatist elements in Jammu & Kashmir, the Government on Friday banned the  Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) led by Yasin Malik as an unlawful association for its extremist orientation and violence against the Hindu minority in the Valley.

The ban under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is on the grounds that JKLF had spearheaded separatist ideology in Kashmir and triggered the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits by murdering members of the minority community in the late eighties.

“Malik was the mastermind behind the purging of Kashmiri Pandits and is responsible for their genocide. The JKLF has many serious cases registered against it. This organisation is responsible for murder of four IAF personnel and kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed in the V P Singh government,” home secretary Union Rajiv Gauba said.

Read more at:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/68530029.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Listen to Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba

The Butcher of Kashmir - Yasin Malik.

Yasin Malik BBC Hard Talk Interview

Yasin Malik BBC Hard Talk Interview
Yasin Malik admitting to the killing of Indian Air Force Officers and others in an interview with Tim Sebastian of BBC on Hard Talk. The sympathizers of Yasin Malik had ensured that the video goes missing from You Tube and BBC archives. But they forgot that crime does not hide for long

When They Killed My Mom for being a Kashmiri Hindu

In 1990 Kashmir witnessed the Genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, the target killing of Kashmiri Hindus started in 1989 with the killing of ‘Tika Lal Taploo’ and continued till the massacre of 24 Kashmiri Hindus in Nadimarg. My ‘Maa’ ‘Teja Dhar’ was among those unfortunate Kashmiri Pandits who were killed in Kashmir because of only fault of their’s, for being ‘Kaffir’.

It was 30th June 1990 ‘Haar ashtami’ day, my mother and father had finished with their food. My father’s name is Roop Krishen Dhar and he was a Labour officer at that time. After having his meal he went for a stroll outside and went to his friends house. My mother along with our elderly neighbour was at home. Around 7:30-8:00 pm some persons came to our home and we’re looking for my father. They shouted for my father. My mom did not open the door instead she urged that she is alone at home and they could meet my father the next day. Instead of this they broke open our gate and came inside searching for my father. They searched him everywhere and made a mess of our place. When they were unable to find my father they went near our elderly neighbour and slapped him hard on his face thrice. My mom began shouting that “Buddha ha morukh”. (Old men has been beaten).

Meanwhile the terrorists began moving to our main door when one among them, who was hardly at a distance from my mom, shot her thrice. The bullets hit my mom’s abdomen And she started bleeding. After this the terrorist’s surrounded our entire mohalla so that they could harm my father also. But my fathers friend had heard this and did not allow my father to move out. Finally at almost 10 pm the terrorists moved from our place and my fathers friend and my father had a chance to come home. My father rushed to a hospital and asked for ambulance and the idiotic doctors told him to report the case first as it was a police case. My father then rushed to Mahrajgunj police station, lodged a FIR, and then with a help of ambulance rushed my mother to the state hospital. In between all this the time was simply running out and it was almost 12 am when my mother was shifted to hospital. She had lost so much of blood till that time. My father got busy with the hospital and police formalities and after some time he saw my mother was left behind unattended and doctors were just asking her the details of how she got shot and all. My father screamed at the doctors that till now they should have operated upon her instead of asking her the nasty questions.

The Doctors who were also sympathetic towards terrorists, gave lame excuses that they did not have blood etc. Then they shifted my mother to the OT wherein my father firmly believes that my mother was not operated. Till 8 in the morning my mom was fighting death. She wanted to see me. My father had sent me Jammu early as these terrorists used to kidnap young girls. I was her only child whom she longed to see. But she could not fight with the destiny and these morons (Doctors). She succumbed to her injuries at 8:00 am. My father with the help of army personnel’s performed her last rites there only. I could not see my mothers dead body. After the last rites my father was sent to some hotel, and once my mothers Asti visarjan was done my father left for Jammu where me and rest of the family members were mourning my mothers death.

I was just in 6th standard when they snatched my mother away from me. It is still hard for my family and me to believe that mom is not there. My Maasi (Aunty) is still in a state of shock. Many a times she asks my father that if really my mother has been killed.

http://theimmortalhimalayas.com/when-they-killed-my-mom-for-being-a-kashmiri-hindu/

A Mind Of Winter - Twenty-five years into exile, a Pandit selects memory props to remind him like shrapnel pain of the day his family looked its last upon Kashmir Valley

 

National / Essays MAGAZINE | JAN 26, 2015 Memory sharper The author is the boy with the toy gun ESSAY A Mind Of Winter Twenty-five years into exile, a Pandit selects memory props to remind him like shrapnel pain of the day his family looked its last upon Kashmir Valley RAHUL PANDITA I often think of a man I saw dead 30 years ago in Srinagar on the road outside the Silk Factory. The man had died after being hit by a truck; he lay face down, and the pieces of meat he was carrying in a newspaper sheet lay strewn all over him. The bus from which I saw him stopped for a moment and I remember trying to read the crumpled and stained newspaper. I wanted to read the printed matter so that it could serve as a prop to remember the dead man. I always needed a prop to remember things by. Six years after I saw that dead man, I was in a taxi, huddled with my parents, who like every Kashmiri Pandit at that time were desperate to see the light on the other end of the Jawahar tunnel. While crossing south Kashmir, we came across a man pushing a wheelbarrow on the road; he looked at us in disgust, pumped his fist in the air, and shouted: “Maryu, Batav, maryu! (Die, you Pandits, die!).” The man’s  wheelbarrow and his raised fist are among the many props reminding me of my exile. Anniversaries are also like props. January 19 this year, for example, will mark 25 years of our exodus from the Kashmir Valley. I don’t know whether this date means something to my father. I don’t think he will even remember it. His day will be the same: he will wake up, worry about what we will cook for lunch, ask me with remarkable sangfroid if I have plans to get married, recite mantras in front of a picture of our ancestral goddess. Later, he will ring up the grocer to order something, beginning with: “Hello, Mintuji, mein Uncle bol raha hun!” and then place his order. Earlier, I’d find it funny, since I thought Mintu must be dealing with 50 uncles like Father. But then I paid attention and realised Mintu never asks: “Which uncle?” The system worked perfectly for Father, the groceries always got delivered on time. That is how he operated back home in Kashmir; that is how it works for him in Gurgaon. But I know Father misses home. We never talk about it. Not even when he is watching DD Kashmir, when he is humming along with Tibet Bakal singing a Krishan Joo Razdan Leela, an ode to Shiva. Father has never returned to Kashmir since April 4, 1990. I don’t think he wants to. The Kashmir he left 25 years ago has changed. And he remembers every moment of the time that change occurred. So January 19, in his mind, is no different from all those days of fear and trauma in 1989-90. As Robert Frank writes in La memoire des Francais, “That which is sadly memorable is not co-memorable.” Somehow, in my head—and perhaps that is the way it is with every son and daughter—Father has always been ‘old’. But how old was he when we left home? He was 44. Forty-four! At that age, like thousands of other Kashmiri Pandit parents, he had to provide for the family in so uncertain times. At that age, he lost everything he had so lovingly built along with my mother: a home, its red-cemented corridor, its lawn, its kitchen garden, its windows with stained glass, its wardrobes, its false ceiling, its book-shelves. Everything my parents earned for years was diligently put into our home. And, suddenly, one day, your neighbours, your colleagues, your friends, your grocer and your milkman decide that you cannot live in a home that you built with your sweat and blood. They also decide that it is time for you to leave not only your home, but also the land where your ancestors lived for thousands of years. So they burst out on the streets on the night of January 19, 1990, and shout on loudspeakers from the mosques all over the Valley that they want Kashmir to become Pakistan, where only Pandit women (and no men) will be allowed. Oh, that night! How can I forget it! How can any Kashmiri Pandit forget it! But I am still searching for more and more props to remember that night. I want it to be like shrapnel pain. Here is one prop I acquired recently: on that night Doordarshan was playing a V. Shantaram film, Teen Batti, Chaar Raasta. Also, that night, along with frenzied cries for our annihilation, they played a song used in Afghanistan to inspire the anti-Soviet militia: Khoon-e-shahidan rang laaya, fatah ka parcham lehraya, jaago jaago subah hui (The blood of the martyrs has come true, the flag of victory has been unfurled, wake up, wake up, he dawn has appeared). It is now available on YouTube and, sometimes, when a few friends get silly drunk, we play it on and laugh as we imitate the singer’s nasal drone. This is what I believe Michael Taussig called the “normality of the abnormal” inNervous System, when he referred to the notion of “despair and macabre humour”. But I cannot play the song when Father is around. I cannot play it to a man who spent that entire night standing at his window, offering the solace of his presence to an old woman who was alone in the neighbouring house, as mobs outside were calling for the death of Pandits. I cannot play it to a woman, then a child, whose mouth was stuffed with Parle-G biscuits by her mother to prevent her from crying and attracting the attention of the mob outside her home. I cannot play it to the widow of Naveen Sapru, who at the age of 37 was waylaid by a mob outside a mosque and then shot. “Bus, be moodus wanye (Okay, I have died now),” he told his murderers, after which he was shot again and silenced forever. Naveen was on his way to collect his coat from a tailor. But he was killed before that. Two years ago, while in the US, I bought a coat from Macy’s and it reminded me of him. Did anyone collect his coat later? Twenty-five years is a long time. For a refugee, it indicates a sense of permanent exile. In exile, most of us are doing well for ourselves. But beneath our tiepins, our PowerPoint presentations, our single malts, our Harvard ‘five-foot shelf’ classics, we suffer from an acute sense of homelessness. In exile, our achievements are like pieces of meat over that man’s dead body. In exile, we are like Orwell’s Unhappy Bella, waiting for unknown fishermen to sing the sad song of our betrayal. We wait for the spring. But on January 19, twenty-five years later, the exile is winter. A mind of winter, as Wallace Stevens would have preferred to call it. (Rahul Pandita is the author of Our Moon Has Blood Clots (2013), a memoir of exile from Kashmir.) Click here to see the article in its standard web format

 

 

The Dhimmis of Kashmir

 

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. (Qur’an chapter 9 verse 29)

 

While I am a Kashmiri Pandit by birth, my initial education due to my dad’s nature of job happened outside Kashmir. When we finally went back to Kashmir (to be thrown out again few years later), the place was full of surprises and shocks. Kashmir was odd; it was a place where I was treated differently because of my religion. I as a kid always used to wonder why, and how did they figure out that I am a Kashmiri Pandit and not a Muslim boy. The mystery was soon solved, when I figured out that there was a clear-cut differentiation in the dress worn by Pandits and Muslims. Even the dresses which were common, there were distinctive features to identify the Kashmiri Pandit. The Islamic rulers had made changes in the designs of turbans and pherans (Long, commodious apron worn by Kashmiri men and women) and the same even continues till date. While caps replaced the turbans, the pherans are still very much used in Kashmir and Pandit Pherans have a distinct fold at the knees, identifying them as Pandits or should I say, Dhimmis.
 

During the course of time, I discovered something called Dhimmis, and while it shocked me, I could clearly see that we the Kashmiri Pandits were being treated as Dhimmis. What does Dhimmi mean? Dhimmis are non Islamic minorities in a Muslim majority state, living in a recognized subordinate legal status. If I put it simply, Dhimmis are second grade citizens.

The Islam prohibits the Dhimmis and minorities from:

1.      Wearing clothes that do not make them recognizable

 

2.    Constructing big houses or owning estates

3.      Marrying Muslim women

4.      Holding important public positions

5.      Practising their religion in public & constructing religious structures

 

Yes, with modernisation these restrictions have somewhat eased in rest of the world, but not in an important state of the Socialist, Secular Republic of India, the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The Kashmiri Pandits have been facing persecution for many centuries and have been treated as Dhimmis by both barbaric Islamic rulers and the elected representatives of Kashmir in free India.

Immediately after coming to power in 1947, Mohammed Sheikh Abdullah, the then Prime Minister and grandfather of the current CM immediately implemented the first principle of Dhimmi code. He confiscated the lands of Kashmiri Pandits and redistributed them for free to the Muslims of the state. This was done under the garb of ‘Land for Tiller act’ and surprisingly implemented with full vigour in the Kashmir Valley only, where the Hindus are in minority.

The Kashmiri Pandits persecution qualifies Dhimmi treatment in every sense. The Pandits are not allowed to hold any important political post and for last few decades not even a single Kashmiri Pandit has been given election ticket by the Muslim dominated parties of Kashmir. The Kashmiri Pandits are not even nominated to the upper house of the legislature and making them a minister is not even a dream that can be seen.

I remember last year the CM of Kashmir, Omar Abdullah tried scoring political point by criticising Narendra Modi for not giving election ticket to any Muslim in his state. On being confronted, on how many Kashmiri Pandits were given tickets by Omar Abdullah’s party, the CM had no answer.

While I was in the valley, honestly I do not remember any Kashmiri Pandit boy marrying a Kashmiri Muslim girl. Yes, I knew many falling for each other but never marrying. The Kashmiri Pandit boy knew that if he dared to marry a Muslim girl, not only him but his entire family would be butchered. While on the contrary it was quite common to kidnap a Pandit girl and forcefully marry and convert her. In the famous Parmeshwari case, such was the open discrimination that even the state machinery ensured the parents do not meet the girl; alas the truth may come out.

The persecution of minorities reached to such an extent that the Muslim fanatics openly started killing the minorities and raping their women. By Jan 1990 almost every Pandit home in Kashmir was on the hit list of Islamic fanatics, and its prominent personalities were assassinated almost every day. The Dhimmis of Kashmir were warned to move out the valley or get killed. The common slogan of the Muslim fanatics was “we want Kashmir without Hindus but with their women”.

The Muslim majority govt of the valley turned a blind eye to these atrocities or pleaded helplessness. And by the first few weeks of 1990, the entire Kashmir valley was bereft of its only prominent minority, the Kashmiri Pandits.  The exodus of the Pandits saw the execution of the last principle of Dhimmi law, prohibition of minority religious practice and destruction of minority religious institutions. Slowly the temples are being desecrated and lands belonging to these temples are being forcefully taken over. Many prominent temples are in ruins and efforts to rebuild them are seeing resistance from the fanatic population of the valley. As usual, the Muslim controlled government of the valley is also ensuring that the lands are usurped by the Muslims land mafia and all the symbols of Hinduism are wiped out.

The Kashmiri Pandits now almost for a decade have been trying to push “Temple & Shrine Bill” to save their religious institutions. The bill just asks for an institution similar to Muslim Aukaf Trust, which allows Muslims to run their religious institutions in a better and safe way.

The mentality of not providing religious freedom has made the state government form innovate ways to block the bill. Constant request, appeals and protest have fallen to deaf ear. The mindset of denying the minority of their religious right can be gauged from the actions of Mustafa Kamal, the senior member of the ruling party and uncle of the current CM, Omar Abdullah. Mustafa Kamal wants an amendment to the bill, where he wants the amendment to include Muslims to be part of running and managing Hindu Temples. Now the bill has been send to a standing committee for further study, almost after 8 years of it being introduced in the legislature.

With such delaying tactics, the government of Kashmir has reconfirmed that few mind-sets just don’t change. And yes, even in a Hindu majority, secular nation like India, Dhimmis do exist.

 

 

 

 

Under Separatists Threatning, Kashmiri Pandits forced to leave Kashmir valley

Kashmiri Pandits living in exile stage protest, demand IDP status

Govt Ignored us, Kashmiri Pandits allege 

Protest on World Refugees Day


Ruchika Rai - The Times of India

New Delhi: On the occasion of World Refugees Day, members of Roots in Kashmir — a worldwide youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits — came together at Jantar Mantar to protest against the indifference of the Indian government to their plight. It has been over two decades since the Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their land, following the atrocities of Islamist terrorists. However, both the government and political parties have ‘‘ignored our cause because we are scattered and less in number, thus not fit to be an important votebank,’’ said Rashneek Kher, founder member of Roots in Kashmir.

     The protesters demanded the status of Internally Displaced Persons. ‘‘This will get us international access and aid. The government has turned a blind eye to the exodus of over five lakh Kashmiri Pandits. At least international agencies should be allowed to look into the matter and save our identity. A committee should be constituted to probe into the matter and bring out the true story,’’ said Kher.

     The agitators also urged the media to take up the issue with more vigour. ‘‘The media is full of stories about refugees from all over the world. Only we are ignored. This is a case of ethnic cleansing and the attack on Kashmiri Pandits was indeed an attack on the presence of India in Kashmir,’’ said an angry Lalit Ambardar, who has been pursuing the cause for many years.

     Payal, a banker by profession, was there to support her husband. ‘‘I am a Rajasthani but I can relate to my husband’s struggle to go back to his homeland. Even as a parent I want to make sure that my children have a sense of belonging to Kashmir. After all, that’s where they belong.’’

     And the issue is not only about those who were ousted from the place of their birth. People who were educated enough were able to find jobs in the cities and are living a near-normal life, but almost 50,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who did not have the resources, are still living a miserable life in the valley. ‘‘There is just one toilet for every 100 persons and the death to birth ratio is as high as 14:3. We need an answer to all this,’’ said Kher. 

A Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit attends a rally to mark the "World Refugee Day" in New Delhi June 20, 2010. Two decades after they were forced to flee Kashmir, thousands of Hindu Pandits seek to return to their ancestral homeland, their hopes lifted by a fall in Islamist rebel attacks against New Delhi's rule.

Photograph by Reuters

Displaced Kashmiri Pandits seek special status

IANS

Over 150 Kashmiri Pandits, along with members of civil society, held a silent protest at the Jantar Mantar here Sunday and demanded that the government recognise them as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The protesters, including children, students and professionals, were dressed in their traditional firhan attire and wore headbands. The children wore dresses with 'Born in exile' written on them.

'We wore white firhans which signified the death of this (Kashmiri Pandit) community and headbands on which was written 'Ignored'. This is how we feel, ignored and left out,' said Rashneek Kher, one of the organisers from Roots in Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits.

The group demanded that they be recognised not as migrants but as IDP's citing the fact that they were forced to leave their homes and did not come to Delhi or other cities willingly.

'The IDP recognition will help us get international attention and our rehabilitation and relief work will then be taken care by the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and not the government of India, which has not done much for us since the last 21 years of our forced exile,' added Kher.

'We want to be identified,' was written on many placards amongst others held by the protesters.

Amal Magazine, a protester, said that by terming them migrants, the Indian government was robbing them of their identity.

'We are refugees not migrants. Give us that identity. If the prime minister can ask the Sri Lankan government to give the Tamils in the island country IDP status, then why not us? We were thrown out of our own homes just because we called ourselves Indians,' Magazine told IANS.

'I am very worried about the new generation. Using guns to do the talking is not a part of our culture. The impression that the young get now is that our silent protests is of no use. When there is violence, people wake up. If the government doesn't pay attention to us, there may be serious repercussions,' said Veerji Wangoo, another protester.

There are around 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits in the Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

'According to government figures, there were approximately 4.5 lakh who were displaced during the exodus in the early 1990s from the Valley. Some were not registered, so I asume there are more,' said Kher.

The protesters also demanded setting up of a commission to probe the exodus, its reasons and the exact number of 'refugees'.

Kashmiri pandits stage protest demanding IDP status

PTI
New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) Kashmiri Pandits today staged a demonstration here to demand status of Internally Displaced People (IDP) claiming that they were forced to flee the Kashmir Valley in 1990s in the aftermath of insurgency.
Clad in white firhans and sporting head bands, over 100 Kashmiri Pandits staged a protest march here against the"treatment meted out"to them by the Government."Today being the World Refugees Day, a lot of attention will be paid to plight of refugees in the country. Our main aim is to bring to public focus the circumstances Kashmiri Pandits live in today,"said Rashneek Kher, the founder member of Roots In Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, that spear-headed the protest march.

He said that among other things, his team sought to push the government to grant IDP status. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley in the 1990s when insurgency was at its peak."In 1989, about 14,000 Pandits were in government job in the state and today their number is only 1500. These figures reflect the sad state of the community,"said Rashneek.

The protesters expressed their disappointment over the Government's"apathy"to their cause."We are still classified as migrants by the Government which is a gross violation of the UN Charter for Refugees,"alleged Amal Magazine, a Pandit residing in Faridabad.

"A migrant is someone who has willingly come out of a place but the truth is that we have been pushed out of the state. The administration should show a little more consideration,"he added.

Many of the protestors also pointed to"disparity in the differential treatment"by the Government to the refugees in the country."Sri Lankan Tamils were given refugee status within six months, while we are being ignored for the last two decades. It was the Government's duty to protect the Pandits in Kashmir. Since they failed to do that, the least they can do is grant us the refugee status,"said Sincad Kachroo, a member of Roots In Kashmir.

Plight of the Pandits; Silence of the Pundits by Chidanand Rajghatta(TOI)

The World Refugees Day is coming up again on June 20 and Lalit Koul is
making the rounds of Washington DC wonks and writers, lawmakers and
legislative aides, just as he did before World Human Rights Day on December
10 and the Kashmiri Pandits’ Exodus Day on January 19. In a city where every
cause has a proponent, every émigré and exile has an advocate, “we are
nobody’s children,” he complains. He can’t even rustle up a decent
demonstration on the Hill or in front of the White House. The best he can do
is drum up an occasional letter of support from a Congressman or schedule
the screening of a documentary to highlight his community’s plight. It has
an eloquent title: “...And the world remained silent.”

Some two decades after nearly half a million Kashmiri Pandits were
expelled from what were their homes for millennia, Koul and a small band of
his activist colleagues are fighting to keep world attention alive to their
cause. It’s hard; seemingly hopeless. In a city where Palestinians, Kurds,
Tibetans, Armenians, Burmese and dozens of other ethnic nationalities and
sub-nationalities are fighting for attention, the Pandit cause is just
another blip on the human rights radar. “We don’t have the backing of
Pakistan nor the funding of petrodollars,” says Koul, an info-tech
professional who heads the Indian-American Kashmir Forum, referring
obliquely to the support Kashmiri Muslims get from Islamabad and elsewhere,
“We are just falling through the cracks.”

Indeed, for the 1,500-strong Pandit community scattered across the
United States, it’s not so galling that they have no traction in America as
much as the neglect they say they suffer in India. When India itself is not
moved by half a million Pandits expelled from their homes and turns its back
on 50,000 lodged in refugee camps in the capital, why blame America — or
expats here, they say. It’s like Bhopal: when the people of

India, and their political and judicial representatives, sold them cheap,
why blame others? They rage against Indian civil society, which they say is
all a-bleeding about Kashmiri Muslims, but is unmoved by the plight of the
Pandits. And they note with more than a hint of bitterness that the
government of the day is pressing for rehabilitation of Tamil refugees in
Sri Lanka while concern for Pandits fades.

Their one hope is that like Palestine and Bhopal, the issue will
re-ignite somehow, catch world attention, and activists will pick up their
cause with renewed energy. The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits happened before
the internet age or instant 24/7 television. There were no TV cameras when
the judges and academics were murdered by Islamic militants with the stark
message — get out of Kashmir. There was no Facebook and Twitter and no viral
messaging.

Now technologies and techniques are available, but they lack benefactors
and big name support. The 1,500 Pandits in the US came mostly as students
and professionals, not as political refugees, and so lacked the voice and
the drama that asylum seekers bring. Most of them are too busy making a
career and home to spare time and bandwidth for their homeland.

In fact, some years back there was a poignant situation when a certain
Vikram Pandit became the top honcho of Citibank. Initial joy that finally
one of their own had risen to top of the corporate ladder and might be the
benefactor (in terms of face and voice if not with finance) they were
looking for was followed by dismay when they discovered that he was not from
Kashmir, but from Nagpur; “a Pandit by name, not by blood.”

Indeed, there is a sense of irony that even as the Pandit issue is
fading from the world’s conscience, the term Pandit is more in use than ever
before in the US — where it is spelt “Pundit”. If Koul and his fellow
activists could collect a dollar for every time the term was bandied about,
they would be lolling in lolly. TV talking heads and op-ed columnists are
now routinely referred to as Pundits, and there is a whole new media
subculture of Punditocracy, a term used to describe a group of powerful and
influential political commentators. From a book titled Sound and Fury: The
Making of Punditocracy to the website punditicracywatch.com, it is a much
overused term. Not a day passes without the tribe pontificating on issues
ranging from Obama and the BP oil spill to the Gores’ divorce to World Cup
soccer. Everything, except the plight of the people who gave them the word.
•
chidanand.rajgha...@timesgroup.com

June 20- World Refugee Day

It is ironical that when the Srilankan President came to India recently everyone right from the Prime Minister to the local Tamil politicians stressed on him to ensure rehabiliation of seventy odd thousand Tamil refugees who had to flee Jafna when Srilankan army annihilated the LTTE.Yet when it comes to its own refugess who are numerically much higher than those of Tamils and have been living as refugees now for more than two decades the same milk of human kindness seems to have dried completely.
We the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley are now in the 21st year of our being refugees in our nation.Pity we dont even get the lip service that the Tamils of a different nation get from our Prime Minister and our politicians.
20th June marks the World Refugee Day and brings to focus the plight of refugees across the globe.On that day newspapers in our country would be full of heart rending stories of people who are refugees from Waziristan,Serbia,Iraq and even Albanians but alas there will be no mention of us.

The silence that marks our being refugees actually is an iconvenient truth that our politicians our media and our secular polity are unable to come to terms with hence they push it under the carpet.
Let us all on this day register our being refugees in our own land,the forgotten refugees,the inconvienent truth and the shame of our nation.

Roots in Kashmir requests you to be there at Jantar Mantar on 20th June,2010,Sunday at 4 PM.

Be there...let this nation know we exist.

-
Sinead Kachroo- 9717058747
Sanjay Peshin - 9910394999

The Exiles Dreaming of a return to Kashmir-Andrew Buncombe(in THE INDEPENDENT-UK)

The exiles dreaming of a return to Kashmir

The 400,000 Hindus driven out by Muslim extremists 20 years ago hope talks beginning this week will bring them a step closer to going home. But does it suit the Indian government to prolong their misery?

By Andrew Buncombe

Like all the others, Mharaj Kak remembers the date and he remembers the threat that changed their lives forever. He had been living with his extended family in Srinagar, their city-centre home, a five-storey wooden house in the centre of the city built by his great-grandfather.


"It was the night of 19 January 1990 when the mullahs told us all to leave the valley," he said. "We had to leave everything. There was a mass exodus. From all the mosques, there was this message sent throughout the valley that the Kashmiri Pandits had to leave immediately, or we would be killed."

So the Hindus of Kashmir, better known as the Kashmiri Pandits, were forced to flee the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountains in which their families had lived for centuries, driven out by Muslim extremists, and sometimes the Muslim neighbours they had lived alongside for generations. In just three months, more than 400,000 Hindus were scattered across India and beyond. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed, and only about 60,000 stayed behind.

Two decades later, the government of India says it is determined to help those who want to return to the homes they were forced to leave. But the Pandits say the government does little but talk. It has provided no security, no homes, no livelihoods and put in place none of the confidence-building measures vital for them to feel able to make the journey back to Kashmir, they say. Even now, many are still enduring lives of quiet misery in inadequate refugee camps.

They believe that while the plight of the Muslim population of Kashmir, living in one of the most heavily militarised places on earth, continues to garner international attention, they have become the forgotten, overlooked people of history. Some even believe the Indian government has deliberately kept them impoverished to allow it to claim it is not just Muslims who have suffered in the struggle over Kashmir.

Ramesh Kumarana hung on until October 1990. By then, the threats and violence by militant groups such as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen came almost daily. One of his brothers was killed. He and his family had no alternative but to flee south. Today, the college-trained pharmacist who once ran his own business in Srinagar is among the Pandits who run tiny clothes-shops at a scruffy market in the centre of Delhi. To supplement his income, he sells bags of Kashmiri walnuts. He shrugs helplessly as he points to the way in which he is now forced to support his wife and two children.

"I am ready to go back to Kashmir, my heart is there," he said, standing next to his shop with his smiling 12-year-old son, Mohit. "It is my birthplace and I want to go back there. But my son was born in Delhi, it's my responsibility to take care of him. I visited Kashmir in 2003. They said, 'You can come but you are a tourist and you must then go back to India'. They called us 'Indian dogs'."

More than 60 years after Partition, the issue of Kashmir still burns like spilt acid, an enduring irritant to peace inside India and beyond. In 1947, Kashmir's Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, surprised most observers when he decided that his Muslim-majority state should join the Hindu-majority India rather than the new state of Pakistan. And still the competing claims on the region continue to pull at the geopolitical fabric of South Asia. When Indian and Pakistani officials meet this week for resumption of talks halted after the Mumbai attacks of 2008, Kashmir will be among the first subjects raised.

Yet the issue that has largely dominated talk of Kashmir for the past two decades, since the Indian government responded to the militancy with one of the largest counter-insurgency operations in history, has been what sort of autonomy the valley could be afforded. During two decades of violence that has claimed at least 70,000 lives and created a population that suffers from record levels of anxiety and mental health problems, little thought appears to have been given to how the Pandits might fit in. Even now, much of the energy of the authorities appears to be taken up by an amnesty plan to allow militants who have crossed the de facto border, the Line of Control (LoC), into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to return to their families.

The Indian authorities, which pay grants of about £50 a month to those forced to leave, insist they are working to help the Pandits. A spokesman for the federal Home Minister, P Chidambaram, said he was too busy to speak on the issue, but last November, while visiting new flats built for Pandit refugees in Jammu, he vowed: "Kashmiri Pandit migrants will be consulted on every issue regarding their return to the valley."

The attitude of the state government, headed by an energetic Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, may be more forward-leaning. In an interview, he outlined several steps already taken to help Pandits return; 3,000 government jobs had been set aside and temporary accommodation built at two locations in the valley.

"I don't think my administration sees this issue any differently than the rest of the right-thinking people in the valley," he said. "We think the valley is incomplete without the Hindu Kashmiris. It has been the endeavour of governments since 1996 to create the circumstances to bring them back."

Asked whether the security existed for them to return, he added: "The proof of the pie is in the eating. There are still Kashmiri Pandits who never migrated and who have lived alongside the majority population."

Indeed, the antagonism between the Hindu and Muslim population that forced the Pandits to flee did not always exist, and few could have imagined the nature of the violence that erupted after the summer of 1989. Certainly, the two communities did not inter-marry, but they shared customs and traditions and were largely tolerant of each other.

The British writer, Justine Hardy, notes in her recent memoir on Kashmir's descent into violence, In the Valley of Mist: "The poetry of the valley's past is that it was heaven on earth, a place of such gentleness that those who lived there did so in harmony, most particularly the Muslims and Hindus, the doors of their homes open to each other, their festivals shared, some of their saints interchangeable."

Today, if it ever thus existed, such a relationship has been destroyed. But there are positive signs: in recent months, several long-closed Hindu temples have been restored and reopened, with the help of the Muslim community, and a key Hindu festival was celebrated in Srinagar for the first time 20 years. A Pandit organisation in the city hopes to reopen 60 more temples in the valley this year. Muslim leaders admit more needs to be done, both in providing homes and jobs and in building sufficient trust to persuade Hindus to return.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, leader of a coalition of separatist organisations, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, said: "The issue of the return of the Pandits is very important. We cannot deny that they had to leave the valley in very difficult circumstances at a time when there was a lot of chaos."

Yet Mr Farooq rejected the idea made by some Pandits that a specially designated area for Hindus ought to be created. "[This is not] a religious issue," he said. "It's not Hindu India versus Muslim Kashmir. And their return to the valley should not be linked to the resolution of the broader issue of Kashmir's future."

Yet for the Pandits, a return to the valley is inextricably linked to the future of Kashmir. Why, they ask, would they return if they felt the future of Kashmir was not safe? SK Dudha, a leading member of the Pandit community in Delhi, said: "The changes have to be made. How else will people go back. There has to be the political will on the part of the government."

In the apparent stalemate, the Pandits feel lost, dreaming of the Kashmir they left and juggling with the challenges of the new lives they have made elsewhere. One of the toughest, they say, is to maintain their culture and language. Their children may be encouraged to speak Kashmiri in the home, but elsewhere they are bombarded with other tongues, other dialects. Already the diaspora has had to forgo its tradition of marrying only within the Pandit caste, such was the concern about the threat to the future of the community.

Occasions at which the community comes together include the religious festivals it has traditionally marked. On a recent afternoon in the Lajpat Nagar neighbourhood of Delhi, scores of Kashmiri Hindus gathered to celebrate perhaps the most important, Shivatri, or the "long night of Shiva". In the centre of the temple, a fire had been built and prayers were said as people placed offerings of rice, barley, walnuts and butter into the flames. Amid the heat and the smoke was Mharaj Kak, the businessman who had pushed his family into a taxi and fled from Kashmir 20 years earlier.

In all that time, he had never returned to Kashmir, to the home his great-grandfather had built which had been taken from him. "What I miss the most," he said, "is that old house and all the memories associated with it".

A valley divided

*For hundreds of years the Kashmiri Pandits lived peacefully as a minority in the Kashmir valley alongside the Muslim majority. Often well-educated, they were regarded as the elite of the region – the name "Pandit" means learned person and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, was one of them.


*However, in 1989 Muslim extremists intensified their armed struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir and violence broke out against the Hindu Pandits. As a result the vast majority of the Pandit population in the area were forced to flee, with hundreds killed in the conflict. In a space of three months, 400,000 were displaced and many ended up in refugee camps around Jammu.


*Only about 60,000 Kashmiri Pandits stayed behind in the region, and many of them have been the victims of violence. In 1998, 23 were massacred by militants in the village of Wanhama, north of Srinagar, and 24 Pandits were killed in their village in 2006 by gunmen disguised as members of the Indian army.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-exiles-dreaming-of-a-return-to-kashmir-1906503.html

Times have Changed, Issues are Different by Tavleen Singh(in Sentinel Assam)

There was a time when it seemed as if a solution in Kashmir could bring peace with Pakistan. That time has gone. The Taliban now have a grander plan for the subcontinent
ON THE SPOT
Link - http://www.sentinelassam.com/editorial/story.php?sec=3&subsec=0&id=26854&dtP=2009-11-16&ppr=1

T he average Indian is so bored with Kashmir these days that I always hesitate to raise the subject in a column. If I do this week it is because a meeting took place in Delhi that has to go down as one of the most extraordinary in recent times. It was organized by social activist Madhu Kishwar under the auspices of the Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies, on November 7, and I went along because she invited a glittering array of politicians from Kashmir. I have not been to Srinagar in more than five years and thought the meeting could be a good way to revive my interest in a subject I once wrote a book on.
Among those who came to the meeting in the library of the Nehru Memorial were Mehbooba Mufti, Muzzafar Baig who was Deputy Chief Minister in the last government, Mohammad Sufi Uri from the National Conference, Professor Abdul Ghani Butt from the Hurriyat and Yasin Malik from the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). The meeting was chaired by Ram Jethmalani and attended by journalists, academics, Kashmir activists and sundry others. It was a full house.

Madhu, an eager beaver peacenik as ever was, began the day’s discussions by emphasizing loudly and often that we were gathered together to find solutions. Despite this, things got off to an interminably dull start because Mr Uri from the National Conference made a long, boring speech that was full of historical grievances that everyone present was more than familiar with. Muzaffar Baig took over from him and was more interesting because he offered a solution. He said that Kashmir’s borders needed to be made irrelevant as Dr Manmohan Singh has himself often promised. Instead of redrawing maps there should be a softening of the borders so that Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians could come and go freely and there should be ‘‘dual currency’’. In view of what is happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this suggestion seemed so naively oblivious of geo-political realities that I went up to him when he finished speaking and asked if he had heard of the Taliban. Was he aware that this group of Islamist jihadis was close to threatening the existence of Pakistan and Afghanistan? How long would it take the Taliban to conquer Kashmir if Indian troops were withdrawn? He laughed sheepishly.

In any case the meeting carried on peacefully and in a dull sort of way until the late afternoon when it came to Yasin Malik’s turn to speak. I had not seen him in many years and was impressed to see him look dapper and elegant in a black, velvet jacket and a black and white polka-dotted shirt instead of the drab, Kashmiri clothes he usually wears. He looked more like an urbane Srinagar businessman than the terrorist he once was, but he was not allowed to forget his past. No sooner did he rise to speak than the meeting deteriorated into chaos. The hall was filled with insults hurled at him by a group of young Kashmir Pandits who till then had sat silent and unnoticed.

‘‘We will not allow this monster to speak,’’ they yelled, ‘‘ask him who raped and killed Sarla Bhatt? Ask him how many Hindus he has killed? He is a terrorist. He has no right to be here.’’ They said other things as well, angry, ugly things, and they made so much noise as they stood up and shouted their abuse that the meeting was totally disrupted for several minutes. Yasin Malik was infuriated and ready to leave. It was only after many entreaties from Madhu and Mr Jethmalani that he agreed to speak. But then Mr Jethmalani put his foot into it by saying that he himself loved Pakistan more than Pakistanis loved Pakistan and that all Indians should develop a similar love for Pakistan. Then he added there would have been no militancy in Kashmir at all if the 1987 elections had not been rigged to coincide unfortunately with a large number of mujahideen in Afghanistan suddenly becoming ‘‘unemployed’’ because the Soviet Union withdrew its troops.

Yasin Malik decided to pick this up as the starting point of his speech. He said, ‘‘I was shocked to hear Jethmalani Sahib say what he did. I was the one who started the armed struggle in Kashmir and I was neither Afghan nor unemployed. I picked up the gun because it seemed there was nothing else to do. We had tried peaceful means to achieve azaadi and failed.’’

He then gave details of how the JKLF was among the groups that had set up the Muslim United Front to contest the Assembly elections in 1987. ‘‘We contested the elections because we thought that if we won we would declare Kashmir independent through a resolution in the Assembly but they were not prepared to give us our basic democratic rights. So we had no recourse but to pick up the gun.’’ He added that he had given up violence because he was persuaded by the ‘‘Indian civil society’’ that solutions could come peacefully. He felt betrayed, he said, because he now knew that all the Indian civil society could do was talk.

The Kashmiri Pundits were not going to take that lying down even if the panelists were, and they started yelling that the armed struggle had never ended. What about the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen? Who were they? And who were the other militant groups that continued to kill innocent people in Kashmir?

In the end there was more rancour and rage than debate, and the solution to our Kashmir problem remained as elusive as ever. Sitting next to me at one point was General Lakhvinder Singh, a hero of the Kargil war, and I asked him if he thought that there was any chance of reducing the deployment of Indian troops in Kashmir. He said, ‘‘We’ve tried it. And wherever we have reduced deployment we have seen an immediate increase in militant activities. It is not as easy as these politicians make it sound.’’

It is not easy at all because it is clear to many of us who have followed the Kashmir story carefully for many, many years that the problem has changed. There was a time when it seemed as if a solution in Kashmir could bring peace with Pakistan. That time has gone. Kashmir’s struggle for so-called azaadi has been subsumed by the worldwide jihad. The Taliban have a grander plan for the Indian subcontinent. They want to conquer Islamabad, and when that is done they want the flag of Islam to fly over India.

Tavleen Singh

CSDS Seminar on “Multi-Party dialogue on Political Future of Jammu & Kashmir”

I have a Maths test on Wednesday but I just can’t study. My mind refuses to concentrate. Two years ago, when Rashneek bhaiya made me write a speech for World Refugee Day, he said that Kashmiri Pandits were viewed as ‘collateral damage’ of the Kashmir issue by ‘intellectuals’. I understood what he meant but never really faced this harsh reality head on. Yesterday, as I listened to leader after leader talk, I understood how  insignificant we actually were to the ‘main issue’.

(Click to enlarge - Report in Punjab Kesri)

Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat from Moderate Hurriyat Conference looking towards Yasin Malik.

I came to Teen Murti in time only for the post-lunch session. I can only give you a brief summary of the first session (garnered from various sources). Abdul Ghani Bhat talked the usual about dialogue between India, Pakistan and Kashmir for peace and reconciliation. Muzzafar Baig accepted that Kashmiri leaders had time and again sold their conscience to India and Pakistan to remain in power. On the subject of Kashmiri Pandits, he said that all Kashmiri leaders wanted the safe return of KPs to Kashmir. He also said that his mother still cried, on remembering their KP friends and neighbors. Shafi Uri of NC talked about the NC’s willingness to negotiate with PDP and other parties on the autonomy document presented by NC in July 2000. Balbir Punj and Tarun Vijay demanded the removal of Article 370. 

CSDS fellow and seminar organiser Madhu Kishwar seen here defending Yasin Malik.

The post-lunch session started with Madhu Kishwar of CSDS calling everybody for a group photo with Yasin Malik; Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir was the only person who refused to be part of the photo. Kishwar then announced that Ram Jethmalani had to attend a press conference at his residence and so would absent himself for some time. Jethmalani started the parting message by holding Yasin Malik’s hand (YM had come straight from the Jammu TADA court, where his presence was needed in the Rubbaiya Sayeed kidnapping case, and was seated beside him) and welcoming his ‘dear friend and honored guest’. Importantly, he mentioned that the problem in Kashmir started due to the coincidence of two events happening together. First, the Russians left Afghanistan and the terrorists in Kabul became ‘unemployed’, and second, India started rigging elections in Kashmir. He also said that it was the highest virtue of an Indian to love Pakistan, and that the entire discussion should be in the spirit of ‘love and affection’. After he left, Ellora Puri from Jammu talked of how it had always been ignored that the state was actually made of three geographically and culturally distinct regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. She proposed a federal system within the state, with the three regions having three separate ‘councils’.

JKLF Terrorist and Rapist Yasin Malik at the seminar.

 Protesting Civil Society members in the seminar. 

 

Panun Kashmir's Ramesh Manwati at the seminar.

Ram Jethmalani at the seminar.

After her, Sanjay Tickoo of Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (representing KPs who were still living in Kashmir for these 20 years) spoke. He first wanted to discount the notion that KPs fled because the then Governor Jagmohan told them to do so, quoting that in 1998, there were 19,000 KPs in Kashmir, whereas in 2008, there were only about 3000. This proved that conditions in Kashmir were far from being conducive to their return. He also demanded a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to be set up by the Indian Parliament where the different stake-holders could voice their grievances and demands. Ramesh Manwati of Panun Kashmir showed a report published in a national daily in which the government had placed “Relief and Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits” under the topic of Animal Husbandry. That aside, he talked a little about the concept of Panun Kashmir. He also talked about how 150 temples that had been desecrated and demolished in 1990 and blamed the media, civil society and HR groups for turning a blind eye to the plight of KPs. I personally thought that both speakers could not manage to convey either the past or the future in the right perspective, but it is pertinent to note that Madhu Kishwar interrupted both their speeches about 2-3 times, chiding them like recalcitrant children whenever they even mentioned 1990. We were expected to forget everything and start afresh. There really wasn’t any time for telling reality to the world. We were asked to make “tall demands” of the future. I know that rationally we should do that, and to an extent, we did do that too. What infuriated me was that only we were admonished for speaking about the old truth. Mehbooba Mufti went on and on about Kashmir being a “chota Iran” and how Accession to India had isolated Kashmir from the rest of Central Asia and West Asia. (The main point of her talk was more like propagating PDP’s agenda – she kept asking if India was ready to trust Kashmiris and uniting the 'two Kashmirs' - PoK and IK). There was a Mr. Tahir Khurshid Raina (Mr. Three-In-One – Rajouri and Poonch representative cum PDP member cum Yasin Malik supporter) who talked about how war had ravaged Rajouri and Poonch and how all these years they had few basic facilities. Yasin Malik went on to give the entire history (read: justification) behind his proud taking up of arms (reiterating that it was not an unemployment issue at all). But no, Madhu Kishwar did not have the guts or the rather the inclination to stop them and ask them to talk about the future. Only we were supposed to listen and digest.

I know we haven’t been the only sufferers – far from it. But I believe that if you remove KPs from the context of the Kashmir problem – it becomes a clear case for YM’s ‘freedom struggle’. I don’t pretend to know much about the workings of Kashmiri politics but to an outsider, ignorant of the ethnic cleansing in 1989-90, there would be little wrong in YM’s story (which he skillfully recited yesterday) of 3rd degree torture from Indian authorities, leading to ‘armed struggle’, leading to jail and finally “Gandhian enlightenment”. He was ‘forced’ to pick up arms and then by the strength of his character and the overwhelming sentiment of ‘azadi’ in Kashmir, he chose to become non-violent (despite seeing ‘600’ of his ‘friends and followers’ dead after coming out from jail). The intellectuals present yesterday knew both of our displacement and the ‘armed struggle’ but chose, peacefully, to keep them separate. They didn’t, of course, have any explanation for the former. It just happened. And now Kashmiri Pandits needed to go back to Kashmir to reverse history and show that everything was normal. As simple as that. As moral, just and enlightened citizens they needed to support the Kashmiris’ right to independence, even if it meant listening to YM saying that he had defeated India militarily, mentally, culturally and spiritually. When Madhu Kishwar showed some sense by asking YM how practical his notion of azadi was, Ram Jethmalani cut her short and said that he found no problem whatsoever with YM’s proposal.

When YM was announced as a speaker, I had thought that we would pounce on him during or after his speech with questions. Then Sushilji got up to protest his presence, as a murderer and a rapist. Once it started, we didn’t back off. The astounding part was how everybody in the room thought that we were irrational liars. They welcomed and pleaded him to continue while admonishing us for not listening to him. He talked about how the problem between KPs and KMs was essentially a “power struggle”, not a communal one. The educated Pandits got insecure of the increasing power with the poor, uneducated Muslims and hence the trouble. He said that he had visited refugee camps in Jammu, and commiserated with the old ladies there; he had the guts to quote a “sher” from Lal Ded. Better still, he said that in KPs, India had found a “weeping boy” for Geneva. Madhu Kishwar and Ram Jethmalani said nothing at all on this and instead scolded the PK representative who raised an objection. I asked YM to shut up on this topic at least; he didn’t have the right to talk about Kashmiri Pandits from his bloody mouth. When Sushilji asked for permission to ask a question, Jethmalani said that he could ask only if he promised to speak in the spirit of “love and affection”. Love and affection to your killers! Of the two questions Sushilji asked, only one was permitted – that of how YM could say that all KMs had left arms when Let and Hizbul Mujahideen continued to operate. The second and more important one, about just how YM could compare himself with Gandhi when he and JKLF had killed so many unarmed, innocent women and children was promptly and completely ignored. We were largely seen as deranged communalists shouting at a hero for no good reason.

When Mehbooba Mufti and Yasin Malik were speaking I really felt like we were banging our heads against stone walls who would never listen. It was suffocating. They had thrown us out of Kashmir and consequently we were left with no say in the ‘current problem’ of Kashmir. We were an ugly face of history that nobody wanted to recall, because we just didn’t fit in. Today, as I scoured newspapers, both online and paper, to see if anybody had reported us, I was shown the raw truth. The news people had got their quotes from YM, Abdul Ghani Bhat, Baig, Mehbooba Mufti and Jethmalani. We had given pamphlets to people explaining why we were protesting against YM but still we were only mentioned in one-liners as disrupters of YM’s speech. Nothing else. Regardless of the cries of rehabilitation and relief – succor for the past in the future – there was after all nothing in the present. Nobody wanted to talk about collateral damage. In the end, Muzaffar Baig, the man who ignited the Amarnath agitation by talking of “demographic” changes in Kashmir due to settlements for Amarnath pilgrims, showed why he was a successful politician. He talked about things I thought only we could understand – he talked about Kashmiri Pandits as a unique unit of civilization; he talked about how individual successes aside, the loss of homeland would always be irreparable.

The program ended there. Baig had said the right things; Madhu Kishwar volunteered to hold a signature campaign for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and also arrange for a private conference between Baig and KPs.

Words…

I only hope that we ‘heckled’ YM enough for the time being.

- Radhika Koul