Kashmiri Pandits need justice, not Rs 40 lakh flats.

As I sat to write this piece, I received a WhatsApp message on my phone. It said Kashmiri Pandits would be given Rs 40,00,000 flats in Srinagar. The news item published in The Economic Times talked about how Kashmiri Pandits will be provided “quality flats”, which it said would be a far cry from the shabby two room accommodation provided to them in Jammu. The story also mentioned that 1,000 such flats would be made on a 20 acre plot of land in Srinagar city. The newspaper report sums up what exactly is wrong with the government’s thinking on the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits. That anyone in the government believes that Kashmiri Pandits would be lured by “quality flats” has either no knowledge of what led to the Pandit exodus from the Valley or is simply blind to the facts. No wonder most governments have been barking up the wrong tree.

On the onset of insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir in the year 1989-90 a small but significant ethnic minority called Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes. Though estimates vary on the number of those who were forced to leave Kashmir Valley in the winter of 1989-90, it is broadly believed, on the basis of various figures available with the government, that a total of 61,000 plus families were forced to seek refuge in the plains of India. The exodus which was preceded by a spate of killings, torture, massacres, rape apart from burning of Pandit houses, desecration and destruction of places of religious worship was described by the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) as “akin to genocide”.

There is a huge gap between what the problem is and how various governments have perceived the problem to be. The issue of rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits is not the same as that of the rehabilitation of let us say a populace who may have been displaced by a natural calamity. Rehabilitation forms just one component of the return policy. The government first of all needs to address the issue of sense of security (not security, Kashmiri Pandits understand that government can’t place a policeman outside every home) which is a prerequisite to any resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits back in Kashmir. For this it is imperative that the government first accepts that Kashmiri Pandits were ethnically cleansed out of their home. More than 500 Kashmiri Pandits have been killed by terrorists, though the official figure as per J&K Police is only 209. Whatever be the number of people killed there have been no convictions in the killings of Kashmiri Pandits. A self confessed killer of Kashmiri Pandits by the name Farooq Ahmed Dar alias Bitta Karate was freed for lack of evidence. That there has been no closure in any of the Pandit killings is the first stumbling block to return.

Government of India has many times in the past announced packages for “return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits”. The most ambitious of such packages was the one announced by Dr Manmohan Singh in 2008. The package envisaged a lump sum of Rs 7,50,000 for each family for reconstruction of house apart from providing transit accommodation during the time the house is reconstructed. Under the PM’s package 6,000 jobs for Kashmiri Pandits were also announced. The government was expecting a huge response to the package. However not even one Kashmiri Pandit family has gone back to Kashmir. Even the response to the jobs was lukewarm. Only 1,600 posts have been filled so far.

It shouldn’t have been difficult for anyone to figure out as to why even the poorest of the Kashmiri Pandits have not taken up the economic package. The reasons are simple. Kashmiri Pandits did not leave the Valley because they wanted a better life in the rest of the country. They did not leave because they did not have economic opportunities in Kashmir. Economic packages would be meaningless unless the basic question of justice and security of the small ethnic minority is addressed. First of all the nomenclature of the problem needs to be changed from “Resettlement and Rehabilitation” to “Justice, Resettlement and Rehabilitation”.

Kashmiri Pandits are wary of any proposals to settle them in their original places in Kashmir. They say this would mean living with the same neighbours who burnt their homes, encroached on their land and were overtly or covertly responsible for their exodus. Besides where do they go back to is a common refrain because most do not own the houses that once belonged to them. They were either gutted by the rioters belonging to the majority community or sold as distress sales or have been encroached upon. More than 450 shrines and temples of Kashmiri Pandits have been either partially or completed destroyed and sans a few most have been desecrated. Even cremation grounds have not been spared.

Today there are five transit camps in Kashmir for Kashmiri Pandits who took up jobs under the PM’s scheme. Except for the Sheikhpora camp in Badgam and the one inside the Kheer Bhavani temple complex the rest are prefabricated settlements. They are fenced by barbed wires and the Kashmiri Pandits living there are always vulnerable. The facilities in these transit camps are terrible to say the least. The last time India defeated Pakistan in a one-day match, the camp in Hall near Shopian received a volley of stones. Now what is the use of making another such camp even if the flats are going to be “high quality”? Only those in dire need of jobs will live in these camps because they have no other options of livelihood available to them. But such settlements would be coerced if not forced settlements.

Kashmiri Pandits have time and again told various governments that resettlement has to be en masse and not piece-meal. The various proposals submitted by Kashmiri Pandits organisations have talked of one enclave of Panun Kashmir or one satellite city for the Pandits. There is almost complete unanimity among Kashmiri Pandits on this issue. There could be a difference of opinion on whether this should be centrally administered area or a notified area or a cantonment board or a smart city. Kashmiri Pandits believe that only a separate enclave will give them a required sense of security. Till the time the government acquires land for this, they could re-open cases against killers of Kashmiri Pandits. The conviction of Bitta Karate alone would convince more people about the seriousness of the government’s rehabilitation policy than any “quality flats for Rs 40,00,000 each” would.

http://www.dailyo.in/opinion/kashmiri-pandits-need-justice-not-flats-in-jammu-and-kashmir/story/1/1300.html

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Roots in Kashmir

Yes the BJP made a mark in J&K but was it worth the compromise?

People of Jammu and Kashmir have given a fractured mandate. The emergence of BJP as a formidable force should ideally have been the biggest takeaway of this election because the PDP hasn’t done as well as it was supposed to. But the fractured mandate has thrown up more questions than this election was supposed to answer. Omar Abdullah ran a very spirited campaign although odds were heavily pitted against him, not just on account of poor governance but also because of his failure to provide succour to people during floods. The virtually non-existent Congress campaign wasn’t such a damp squib after all.

BJP’s Mission 44+ took off in Jammu but failed to cross the Jawahar Tunnel. They managed to get only less than two per cent of the vote in the Valley. This was despite the fact that they made all kinds of ideological compromises, some completely unnecessary. Their meetings with obscurantist Islamist figureheads like the Grand Mufti or Engineer Rashid (the MLA from Langate) was something they could have done without. They toned down their stated position on Article 370 to tailor their campaign to what they thought were the “aspirations” of Kashmiris (read Kashmiri Muslims). Credit was taken for punishing the army personnel “responsible” for killings of innocent Kashmiris, by no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. There was a passing reference to the settlement of Kashmiri Pandits and no word on the Temples Bill. Forget Vande Matram, the PM found it unnecessary even to say Jai Hind in his maiden rally in Srinagar. Its strident nationalist discourse in Jammu was, however, on course and observers were heard saying the BJP is a different party in Kashmir than the one in Jammu. Be that as it may, its ascendancy in J&K’s political scene is a watershed event.

The PDP did well in its traditional bastions of South Kashmir and also managed to edge out National Conference from Srinagar city apart from making some inroads into the hilly areas of Rajouri and Poonch. Needless to say its campaign was more targeted against the NC but acerbic against the “Hindu invasion” by BJP. Complacency however did it in. Somehow it believed that Omar’s poor governance meant people would queue up to vote for PDP, which definitely wasn’t the case. The losses in Pampore and Tral were unexpected and indicated how things had gone wrong.

The NC was the underdog in this election. They knew they were up against a wall especially after the flood. They tried convincing the Election Commission to postpone the election in order to buy some time and gain some goodwill. In the ten days that I spent in the State during the second and third phase of polling I saw the NC campaign at work. They were fighting this election as if it was their last. Their rallies were well attended, even the filing of nominations by their candidates were events by themselves. Despite massive erosion of goodwill, they still managed to win 17 seats (including two independents backed by it), a number they themselves would have been surprised with.

The only solace for the non-existent Congress campaign was their candidates, who won more on their individual goodwill rather than the name of the party.

By the evening of December 23, the ideological barriers had crumbled. All “options are on the table” was the oft heard comment from spokespersons of all political parties. The courting was happening publicly, doors were kept open and none seemed to be untouchable except the Congress whom no one wanted to touch even with a barge pole. Sensing the mood of its erstwhile allies, the Congress spokespersons fell back upon how secularism needed to be protected in the sensitive state of J&K or how otherwise armies of rabid Hindutvavadis would convert the entire Valley via its Ghar Vapasi programme. They were joined by the die-hard political pundits who one after another told the PDP spokespersons how aligning with a communal BJP would amount to disrespecting the mandate of the Kashmiris. All those who vociferously supported PDP all through now were criticising it because it was seen as cozying up not just to its enemy but the enemy of the liberals.

There was a powerful rumour on the eve of counting day, that Mehbooba Mufti had supposedly met BJP leaders. The talk of an understanding between the PDP and the BJP had even surfaced during the General Elections as well. An alliance between the BJP and the PDP is always going to be difficult not because of ideological issues but regional issues. BJP has shown its ideological flexibility during the campaign itself. As for PDP, it understands the importance of being with a party which is in power in the Centre. By allying with the BJP, PDP would ensure that Omar is out of power for six years. This combination would perhaps be the only one representing the largest section of the population of J&K.

The NC is very keen to join hands with whoever takes its support and gives it crumbs of power. One would stretch the argument too far if one says Omar and NC wouldn’t survive without power for six years but one cannot deny that the NC is possibly at its lowest ebb today. Its fiercest supporters, the Gandhis, are themselves touching a new political low with every election and Omar knows his best chance lies with the BJP. How keen is the BJP for his support and what terms they set and whether those terms are acceptable to Omar remains to be seen. As I write this, Omar Abdullah is meeting “communal” BJP leaders in Delhi. In Srinagar he would do everything possible to keep communal forces at bay even if that means tying up with his arch rival the PDP. The PDP is keeping the offer of NC support on a slow burner.

The Azadi and the boycottwalas feel left out in the cold and are dubbing any alliance with the BJP as unholy. No doubt there are no good options for any political party in J&K right now, not even the BJP. There will be a lot of explaining to do if “soft separatism” ties a knot with "nationalism”. For now expect no progress on “contentious” issues like Article 370, self rule, rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits, delimitation and AFSPA. We will have six years to figure out whether all this is in the national interest or in the interest of the people of the State of J&K.

http://www.dailyo.in/opinion/yes-the-bjp-made-a-mark-in-jammu-and-kashmir-but-was-it-worth-the-compromise/story/1/1234.html

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author  and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Roots in Kashmir

ISIS FLAGS-WHAT SHOULD WORRY US

The frequency with which one is seeing ISIS flags being displayed in Kashmir these days has lead to heated debates. From “outright condemnation” to “they have no role in Kashmir” arguments we are losing sight of the bigger picture. To be fair to the separatists’ one has to accept that even the separatists themselves would hate to see the so called “freedom struggle” being hijacked by the ISIS. The presence of ISIS would mean shrinking of Petro and Paki money that separatists are so used to. It would also mean de-legitimization of whatever little legitimacy it may have in the eyes of OIC members since the world at large has already seen through the “freedom struggle” of “indigenous Kashmiris”.

Yet we are seeing young men displaying ISIS flags at regular intervals. The question is not whether ISIS has an organizational structure in Kashmir or not, or whether those displaying the flags owe their allegiance to ISIS or not. It is also not important whether the background checks on these “idiots” as Omar Abdullah would like to call them, revealed their links to any terrorist organization or not. What is important to know is what kind of people would display the flags of a barbaric, obscurantist, medieval mindset terrorist network.

Kashmir has experienced periods of extreme religious bigotry in the past as well. The armed insurgents both locals as well as foreigners used barbaric methods of killing and torture. From axing people on saw mills to chopping their genitals, from nailing the heads of infidels to gouging the eyes of their victims the terrorists have used every inhuman way of creating fear into those who disagreed with them. So in a way one can ask, how different or more barbaric is the ISIS when compared to let us say a JKLF or a Hizbul Mujahideen.

In the last two and half decades Kashmir has been radicalized to a degree that was unknown in its history. The entire countryside is teeming with a group which calls itself “Allahwalles” or The People of God. They are ubiquitous. This is one radicalization that I must admit hasn’t come from Pakistan but from mainland India. They have sown the seeds of puritanical Islam in the vast swathes of Kashmir. The Kashmiri countryside is hugely influenced by their thought. Then there are other ideologies like Ahl-e-Hadees who indoctrinate their followers in Wahhabism a thought that stands in complete contrast to the local born Sufis of Kashmir. As a young boy living in the countryside I have seen women of my village wearing colourful pherans with Salwars and a Headgear, while now, girls as young as seven are completely draped. More men sport “Islamic” beards than ever before. The issuance of a fatwa to an all girls music band by Grand Mufti was an ominous sign. This tells us how far religion has travelled in Kashmir in the recent years. The Dargahs of the Sufi saints have seen less attendance and the numbers are falling every year. In the past one would see huge gatherings at the Dargahs of Kashmiri Poets like Ahmed Batwari or a Shamas Faqir but as time passes by, there is a question being asked by the young in Kashmir,Is it Islamic to bow there ?

It is in the light of such retrograde developments that one needs to see the “appearance” of ISIS Flags. It may be true that only a handful young men support the idea of ISIS, it may equally be true that the philosophy of ISIS may not have many takers in Kashmir but then the very fact that radicalization has reached a stage where even if a handful have empathy towards the ISIS and its methods is a matter of grave concern. It is undoubtedly a failure of the administration that people are waving these flags but what should worry us more is that the ones waving the flags today would be the gun runners of ISIS tomorrow. We would be ignoring the issue at our own peril.

Medical Camp for flood victims of Kashmir

Roots in Kashmir organised a 3 day medical Camp (28-30th Sep, 2014) at Srinagar for flood hit victims. They were provided with free medicines and vaccinated against Hepatitis, Typhoid and Tetanus.

The camps were organised at the following places:
1. Zyestha Devi Temple
2. Durganag Temple
3. Ganpatyar Temple
4. Karfalli Mohalla

Our heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Pawan Zuthsi, Dr. Anil Dhar and Dr. A P Singh, who flew from Delhi to attend to these patients.

 

A case in favour of Haider

2 years ago i had read a book titled ” We wish to inform you, we will be killed with our families”, based on ethnic cleansing of one certain sect in Africa, Rwanda. The title of the book stringed by heart and i knew i had to read it. Page by page the story unfolded incidents about how minority sect was murdered by majority. I, being the naive reader of history of Africa, read faster than i could consume, to get to the underlying cause, the reason for ethnic cleansing of the minority tribe. Apparently, i could not find one logical reason why Hutu , the majority, killed 75% population of minority sect, Tutsi. The book is a memoir of the genocide. Unknown number of Hutus participated in killing and arson against minority Tutsi. The survivor interviews make it known that neighbors , friends and co workers , with whom they shared land, lanes and boundaries of homes, were part of mob that attacked and killed them.  The hate Hutus had for Tutsi, could not be attributed to any know or stated cause in the book by author. A similar hate was reserved for one particular community during time when Hitler ruled Germany. A fictional movie based during events of that time, related Jews to mouse, justifying that despite it being harmless, men have certain repulsive emotion for it. Jews, it meant, were mouse meant to be chase and killed.

Narratives are important, from both sides in fact, victim and his persecutor, for a victim cannot falsify history if his persecutor does not speak . History, alas, is often written by victor, because propaganda does become a substantial part, as it gets inked , unlike stories of victims which remain oral  and hence diluted with time. Propaganda does not end with justification, its meant to project persecutor as victim and victim as his initial oppressor. There is some romance is showing how victims rose and rebelled against his oppressor.  Same way like Jews were said to dominate the German civil society and hence all hatred was justified. But fortunately for Jews, world and their own kind, told their stories and inked their history. Also, fortunately for Jews,  they ended up being on side of victors after the war ended.

It is important to understand the context written above. 2 examples , set in different continents, different zones. Yet, the cause for hate towards the victims is unknown, rather unjustified. Kashmir set in 85-89 was the same Germany and the same Rwanda. Yes, the stats where different in terms of dead’s of victims but the soul of anarchy was the same. A minority community, less that 5% of population was targeted. What happened and who did, is truth that is told by many, far more accomplished people than me.  Haider, sets a narrative, that is different from truth and history of Kashmir. But my case is not against it, as  freedom of speech is imperative for me and my kind, who struggled 25 years to find a voice in media , to tell our story. Haider can never and will never take away the fact, nor alter it, neither defeat it. When 20 years of media propaganda of masquerading persecutor as victim couldn’t box the facts, one film , a motion movie, can not change it. Haider, is just another reason, a reminder and a provocation for victims to fight harder, speak louder to tell their stories. In fact movies like Haider define why heart aches happen to KP men and women. It ensures that strings get plucked that have been dusted in last 25 years. I have not seen Haider nor do i intent to watch it. Haider again gives me a reason to raise my voice , in fact i have been raising my voice since 25 years, but ears get concerned only when i speak against Haiders and its kind. So lets thank the makers in their attempt to trample with facts and put blanket blindness to the exodus, genocide and continuous victimization of a minority sect. For good is always in comparison to a evil.

Speaking of evil as the makers converted, one of only two , sun temples in India, into a place of devil ( Martand Sun temple ) for a song sequence  , a certain Muslim king of Kashmir, Sikander Butshikan would be happy in his grave. For he tried for one complete year to burn the temple down , yet its ruins stood the test.  Its another case and fact that maker was informed and told story of KPs by people who thought, hopefully, he is making a fact based movie and not churning another mythical oppressor is victim propaganda.  He chose to ignore it but we should make him remember it each time, every time.

PS : Have you ever thought where exilees and refugee’s kids go on summer breaks?

Author: Akshay Ambardar. Twitter: @AkshayAmbardar

Can this flood wash away a painful past?

Can this flood wash away a painful past? http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/can-this-flood-wash-away-a-painful-past/article6438991.ece

A natural disaster in Kashmir has brought Hindus and Muslims closer. But the wounds run very deep

Jammu and Kashmir is currently facing a severe flood crisis. In Kashmir Valley, the ferocity of the waters has led to several deaths and large-scale destruction of property. While many groups and individuals are involved in rescue and relief operations, the Indian Army has so far been the biggest saviour.

Many are now hoping that this leads to the Kashmiris looking at the Indian military personnel in a different light. Given Kashmir and its embittered history of the last 25 years, that will take much more than a rescue operation.

But the flood has seemingly achieved something else. It has brought the Kashmiri Muslims and their erstwhile neighbours, the exiled Hindu community, closer. In 1990, Islamist extremism forced Kashmiri Pandits out of a land where their ancestors had lived for thousands of years.

The Pandits, constituting less than 5 per cent of the Valley’s population in 1990, were driven out in a violent ethnic cleansing. More than 700 of them were brutally done to death.

Ignored by the state

Today, out of more than 3,50,000 Pandits, only around 3,000 remain in Kashmir Valley. The Indian state has displayed lack of strength or even unwillingness to intervene in pogroms or other forms of violence perpetrated against its various communities. This arc of injustice includes the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom, and the 1993 and 2002 communal riots in Mumbai and Gujarat. Similarly, the state has repeatedly ignored the plight of its tribal communities in both central India and the Northeast, and has remained almost indifferent to injustices meted out to the Dalit community.

In post-flood Kashmir, at least, moderate voices are hoping that the “shared fate” (of losing home) will now result in an empathetic view of “each other” and that the Pandits and Muslims will come to some sort of understanding on how to normalise relations. Is there a possibility of justice and reconciliation in Kashmir on the lines of South Africa or Rwanda? Can the Kashmiri Pandits return to their homes, especially given that the new government at the Centre has listed it as a priority?

While most of the houses in the Valley belonging to the Pandits have been sold for a pittance under extreme duress, the return under such circumstances also involves re-establishing the neighbourly trust.

However, as Ivana Macek writes about Sarajevo, such a process is a painstaking emotional and social endeavour, something that cannot be regulated from “the above” by political agreements or well-meaning but often poorly informed outsiders.

Even if the Kashmiri Pandits were to be housed in a separate settlement, the scars of 1990 will not go. It will be difficult to forget how, in several cases, their former neighbours, friends or colleagues were directly or indirectly involved in the murder of their loved ones (and in other brutalities such as rape).

The phenomenon of personalised violence, according to the scholar Cornelia Sorabji, acquires a particular importance since “brutality is aimed at humiliating, terrorising, and killing the ‘enemy’ population in order to remove it from the territory, but also at transforming the assumptions held by both victims and perpetrators about the very nature of identity groups and boundaries in order to prevent any future return of the exiled population”.

Absolute denial

So, how can the Pandits be expected to return without getting justice? And justice, as Victoria M Esses and Richard A Venon argue, does not only mean a formal legal system but also “people’s beliefs about the fairness of a particular situation”. The unfairness of the Pandit exile is a permanent denial by their erstwhile neighbours of being responsible for or complicit in crimes committed against them, or even an acknowledgement that the exile was forced upon them. There is absolute denial, forget public remorse or asking for forgiveness.

Various Pandit narratives have also recorded passiveschadenfreude by their neighbours and friends, like compelling many exiled Pandits to sell their houses during the peak of the conflict for a pittance and at a time when they were under extreme financial stress.

The process of reconciliation and justice can only begin once the two communities try and understand each other’s pain. The counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir have been deeply unpleasant. Around 17,000 civilians have died, roughly one-fourth of them at the hands of the Indian security forces. More than 8,000 persons have disappeared, and many of them are believed to have been killed by security forces as well. For many years, Kashmiris in the Valley had to suffer the humiliation of crackdowns and identification parades.

Justice denied

Over the last 25 years, instead of accepting the brutalisation of 1990, a majority of Muslims created the myth of Jagmohan, the then Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, who they claim encouraged the Pandits to leave. Myths, as Pal Kolsto, reminds us, “do not function or ‘act’ in one way or another of and by themselves: it is people who employ myths, in more or less harmful ways”.

That is why in the midst of this injustice, the Pandits’ call for justice corresponds to (as argued by Isabella Delpla): (a) a staunch denunciation of impunity; (b) a personal attempt to forgive (or both, since, according to Delpla, the two stances can be compatible); and (c) a personal refusal to use violence (but saying things like “God will take care of them” or “God has taken revenge through the flood”).

For 25 years, the Indian state has hardly shown any interest in providing justice to Kashmiri Pandits while a majority of India’s intellectuals have denied them agency. This long apathy has ensured that most of the documentary evidence of the crimes committed against them is lost. But like Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, eye-witness testimony can lead to what the French historian Annette Wieviorka calls the “social recognition” of their suffering.

This commemoration from below (where the focus is on the subjective and psychological needs of victims) has to be the first step in bridging the gorge between the two communities. And then justice, in a legal sense, can follow. As Kavitha Kalvakuntla, the MP from Telangana, recently demanded in the Lok Sabha, this must include putting on trial terrorists such as Farooq Ahmed Dar aka Bitta Karate, who is responsible for killing at least 20 people, most of them Pandits.

Only then can the gorge of 1990 be bridged.

The writer is senior editor of The Hindu and author of Our Moon Has Blood Clots. He is a CASI visiting fellow. This article is by special arrangement with the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania

(This article was published on September 23, 2014)