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
"Roots In Kashmir" is an initiative launched by us, the Kashmiri Pandit Youth, to reclaim our Roots that identify us. Even though we have been hounded out of our homes and hearths in the Kashmir valley, our "Roots" are very much anchored in the Vitasta Valley. This is an initiative to protest and raise the general awareness of public to a level where our "fight for our roots" is felt, heard and acted upon. rootsinkashmir@outlook.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
‘Amnesty International’ a Jihadi Collaborator: Kashmiri Pandits
May 25th 2010
New Delhi: Roots in Kashmir, a frontline initiative of Kashmiri Pandits in exile came down heavily upon the Government of India today to allow a tainted organization and a known Jihadi collaborator for ignoring the plight of half a million Kashmiri Pandits living in forced exile due to their human rights violation at the hands of the very people who Amnesty International met on their six-day visit to Kashmir.
The recent visit of a two member team of Amnesty International to "assess human rights situation" in
While there is definitely a need to assess human rights situation in
“And if they really did want to know about human rights of Kashmiris why did they not meet Kashmiri Pandit leadership or for that matter visit camps of Kashmiri Pandits in
“Such attitude where only Pak backed Muslim separatist leadership is attended to simply goes on to show which side of Amnesty International's bread is buttered” said an angry Mr. Piyush Kaul of the group. To escape persecution, more than 500,000 Kashmiri Pandits had to leave their home and hearths back in the Valley of which more than 50,000 refugees are still languishing in uninhabitable refugee camps in
It simply doesn’t matter what report they give because as an organization its credibility is already eroded but the very fact that government allows such kite flying missions makes light of what is a very important matter.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Praznath Launch: A Review
Praznath: a discourse on Kashmiri identity and culture , an effort at dispelling the myths prevalent about Kashmir and its history in a form of quarterly cultural magazine was formally launched on March 18th 2010 at Gulmohar hall, IHC. A dire need to challenge and question the hegemonic discourse regarding Kashmir provided the necessary impetus for starting this magazine. The launch was marked by a panel discussion on the topic ‘Identifying Identity in Kashmir ’ which broadly looked into the grave issues of identity politics.
The tempo for the event was set by a photo exhibition by Veer Munshi’s latest photographs of Kashmiri Pandit houses in Kashmir . The blown up and sensitively photographed shots were displayed strategically juxtaposing the majestic and grand mansions with vacated, burnt down ruins of what once were imposing houses and institutions. The powerful visuals narrated a sad story of oppression and loss. One could see people reacting to certain images, identifying certain houses and not without a gloomy look in their eyes.
The curtain raiser too was a video shot by Munshi in 2009 in Kashmir . The screen here was divided into two frames. On the left hand side one could see a KP house in flames and on the right hand side the artist walking towards an unknown destination, crushing chinar leaves under his feet and leaving the random foot prints on snow. The endless walk again a metaphor used for the deep longing to go back was harshly interrupted by the shrill bullet shots and screams one could hear from the burning house.
On this melancholy note started the program. Mr.Sushil Pandit, a senior member of Praznath welcomed the audience and gave a brief introduction to Praznath which was followed by a key note address by Radhika Kaul, the youngest member of the team. In her short and effective address Radhika hinted upon extremely important points on identity especially from a point of view of someone who was born after exodus. She ended on an optimistic note that our silence has found appropriate voice in Praznath, a view that all of us at Praznath share. With this she recited the fiery and powerful poem by Dr. Shashi Shekhar Toshkhani ‘Phelega Phelega hamara maun’ which drew huge applause from the audience.
After the panelists were duly felicitated, Dr Toshkhani ,the editor of the magazine gave a broader insight into Praznath and the objectives it aims to achieve. He focussed on the issue of deliberate misrepresentation of historical facts and in particular talked about the efforts being made to see Kashmir as an integral part of Central Asian cultural belt with no ties with India
The discussion continued with Sir Mark Tully, an eminent journalist, drawing attention on the need to preserve the culture for a community in Diaspora. The necessity to understand and highlight the links that Kashmir had with India Kashmir . However he also stressed on the fact that any debate on Kashmiri identity cannot neglect Kashmiri Muslims(KM) as they are now an integral part of Kashmir . He went on to categorize Islam in Kashmir as purely Sufi as opposed to Wahabi Islam.What one could gather from the brief talk was that he deliberated on the idea of a utopian culture where KP’s and KM’s would live happily and peacefully , the notion that did not go well with the audience, and the resentment could be felt in the next speaker Dr. Kshama Kaul’s emotionally charged speech.
Dr.Kaul’s invocation of ‘Pratibigya Darshan’and a need to realize ones hidden powers had immense depth and actually was more than enough to illustrate her point. The emotional outpourings accompanying the talk though somewhere diluted the strength of her statements drew a great round of applause from audience. Her personal first hand experience, honesty and point blankness came across very vividly in her talk. She out rightly rejected the notion of KM’s and KP’s living together in peace and harmony stressing on a fact that a culture that takes refuge in violence has nothing to do with Kashmir.
The next speaker Dr.Swapan Dasgupta,right in the outset talked about the counter productiveness of an emotional approach and advised KP’s to be purely strategic in their approach. Moreover he stressed on ‘memory’ as an important aspect of retaining a culture. He raised an important point by suggesting that a culture or a community can easily slip away from people’s memory and hence there should a constant effort to keep the memory of the culture alive. He also talked about how issues of KP’s had become an embarrassment to be shoved under the carpet for the Govt.. He boldly used the term’ Ethnic Cleansing’ with respect to the exodus of 1990 and implored the KP’s to fight for their identity with passion and a strategy at hand.
With this came the panel discussion to an end and the session was closed by a mellifluous recital of vakhs of Rupa Bhavani, a 17th century saint poetess from Kashmir by Mr.Dalip Langoo.Dalip left the audiences mesmerized with his recital and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that his voice reverberated in our subconscious much like the eternal meaning of Rupa Bhavani’s vakhs.
The vote of thanks was given by Mr. Pandit.Gradually the over filled hall started to vacate with people forming groups and discussing the events.Once outside you could see a decent queue at subscription counter and people going through their copies of Praznath.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Launch of Praznath-A quarterly literary-cultural magazine
Roots in Kashmir invites all our readers to the launch of the first literary-cultural magazine on Kashmir.
Praznath is the idiom of the discourse, a reflection of the self in the mirror of conscious.Together we shall write, rewrite, delve, learn, unlearn, work, enrich ourselves and the world around us with our focus on Art, Culture and Thought of and from Kashmir and Kashmiris. This shall be "the forum" for interactions and one day shall be the reference archive for anyone wanting to know Kashmir
We request your presence at the launch of the quarterly - PRAZNATH at India Habitat Centre. Praznath will document Kashmiri art, culture, literature, tradition and history.
A panel discussion on - IDENTIFYING IDENTITY IN KASHMIR - will mark the occasion. The PANELISTS are:
Dr. Kapila Vatsayan (Eminent Scholar)
MP, Rajya Sabha & Member, Amarnath Shrine Board
Sir Mark Tully (Eminent Journalist)
Padma Bhushan, formerly BBC Correspondent in India
Dr. Swapan Dasgupta (Eminent Columnist)
Mr. Francois Gautier (Founder, FACT India)
Editor-in-Chief, La Revue de l’Inde
Dr. Khema Kaul (Eminent Writer)
Awarded ‘Hindi Writers Award’ by the President of India, 1997.
Her published works include Samay ke Baad, Baadalon Mein Aag (poetry) and Dardpur (novel).
Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Location: India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
Monday, February 22, 2010
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
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
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Aman Ki Asha - Do we need a reality check ?
Talks will serve little purpose
G Parthasarathy
New Delhi’s India International Centre has a reputation of being a location for quiet dialogue and discussions. Yet, in a widely publicised conference on India-Pakistan relations at the IIC from January 10 to 12, raw emotions got the better of reasoned dialogue. The police had to be called in as people who had been forced to flee their homes in the Kashmir Valley by terrorist organisations, which were allegedly led by some of those participating in the programme, gave vent to their emotions and disrupted proceedings. Sentimentalism in sections of our media about ‘Aman ki Asha’, disregards prevailing realities about public anguish and anger at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
New Delhi’s India International Centre has a reputation of being a location for quiet dialogue and discussions. Yet, in a widely publicised conference on India-Pakistan relations at the IIC from January 10 to 12, raw emotions got the better of reasoned dialogue. The police had to be called in as people who had been forced to flee their homes in the Kashmir Valley by terrorist organisations, which were allegedly led by some of those participating in the programme, gave vent to their emotions and disrupted proceedings. Sentimentalism in sections of our media about ‘Aman ki Asha’, disregards prevailing realities about public anguish and anger at Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
India’s Chief of Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor recently revealed that some 700 militants from Pakistan were waiting to infiltrate across the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. General Kapoor added: “The terror infrastructure across the LoC is very much intact and all-out efforts are being made to push inside as many infiltrators as possible.” On January 12, India’s otherwise soft spoken Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, told an audience of American and Indian academics in Delhi: “We have to face hostile forces across our borders with Pakistan.” She added that groups which directed attacks against India, continued to receive the “patronage of powerful forces and institutions in Pakistan.” She asserted, “It is vital this support must stop at once. Any viable process of dialogue with Pakistan is essentially dependent on this requirement, since it is unrealistic to think otherwise.”
While the Foreign Secretary was spelling out the prerequisites for a “viable dialogue process”, talks have continued between the two countries at the highest levels. Over the past two years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari twice, at New York and Yekaterinburg, and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani on three occasions. The Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad, New Delhi and New York. While India has continued to engage and talk to Pakistan, a resumption of the composite dialogue process will be counter-productive. Pakistan has used the composite dialogue process to divert attention from its promotion of terrorism within India, by expressing dissatisfaction with India’s approach to issues ranging from Jammu & Kashmir to Siachen, and differences over demarcation of the international boundary in the Sir Creek area.
The composite dialogue process resumed in January 2004, only after then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf assured then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that territory under Pakistan’s control would not be allowed to be used for terrorism against India. Despite this clear linkage between an end to terrorism and the resumption of the composite dialogue process, Pakistan was emboldened to promote terror activities against India by the ill-advised statement of Prime Minister Singh that the composite dialogue process was “irreversible” and would not be affected by acts of terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. At the Havana Non-Aligned Summit in 2006, some others even acted as apologists for Pakistan by suggesting that cross-border terrorism was really the work of ‘non-state actors’.
While our policies should seek to build constituencies for peace within Pakistan, the reality is that policies on India are decided in Pakistan not by the democratically elected rulers in Islamabad but by the military establishment led by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Rawalpindi. The longest meeting that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had in Pakistan during her latest visit to that country was with General Kayani and ISI Chief Shuja Pasha and not with the country’s elected leaders. General Kayani has long-standing links with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba from his days as the Commander of the 12th Infantry Division in Murree over a decade ago. He is recorded to have described Afghan Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who masterminded two terrorist attacks on our Embassy in Kabul, as a “strategic asset”.
Thus, little purpose will be served by talking to Pakistan’s civilian leadership on issues of cross-border terrorism, over which they have no control. What is needed is unpublicised backchannel dialogue with Pakistan’s real rulers — its military establishment including the ISI — who should be left in doubt about the consequences of continuing on the path they have chosen.
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram is scheduled to visit Pakistan for a SAARC conference. His visit comes just after an astonishing statement by Mr Gilani, a long time protégé of and apologist for his country’s military establishment, that his Government cannot guarantee that there will not be further terrorist attacks on India, emanating from Pakistani territory. As this would be a violation of the assurances given by General Musharraf on January 6, 2004, which led to the resumption of the composite dialogue process, Mr Chidambaram could remind his hosts of the assurances which constituted the basis for talks.
India has also demanded that Pakistan would have to dismantle its infrastructure of terrorism before the dialogue process can be resumed. What precisely we should tell Pakistan is the minimum we expect Pakistan to do — establish its sincerity. The first step would be for Pakistan to stop living in denial and agree to extradite Dawood Ibrahim, the mastermind of the 1993 Mumbai bombings. As American author Gretchen Peters has noted, Ibrahim has the dubious distinction of being the only person Washington has designated both as a ‘Global Terrorist Supporter’ and a ‘Foreign Narcotics Kingpin’.
Second, Pakistan’s former Railways Minister and former Director-General of ISI, Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, stated in Pakistan’s Senate on March 10, 2004: “We must not be afraid of admitting that the Jaish-e-Mohammed was involved in the deaths of thousands of Kashmiris, the bombing of the Indian Parliament, in Daniel Pearl’s murder and in attempts on President Pervez Musharraf’s life.” In these circumstances, one can surely demand that Pakistan extradite Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar, or try him for abetment of murder and terrorism.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LeT chief, publicly acknowledged in January 2001 that he had organised the attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi. Articles in journals published by him give details of LeT members who have been ‘martyred’ in encounters in Jammu & Kashmir. If, as Pakistan claims, it does not have evidence to nail Hafiz Saeed for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he could surely be incarcerated and tried for all that he has admitted publicly over the past decade.
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