The exile continues
Varad Sharma
16 March 2014
[Even 24 years after their exile, the questions of Kashmiri Pandits remain unanswered, their tragedy unaccounted, and the hope of their return to the Valley uncertain]
Twenty-four years ago, on January 19, 1990, the biggest ever exodus of people in India happened since the country’s partition on religious lines in 1947.
Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley leaving behind their homes and hearths so as to save themselves from persecution at the behest of Islamic extremists. Around four to five lakh Pandits were displaced due to militancy in the Valley.
Every year since that day, the Pandits commemorate January 19 as the Kashmiri Pandit Holocaust/Exodus Day, hoping to go back to their homes one day.
Terrorism in Kashmir started with the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Pandits in 1989-90. Ethnic cleansing refers to an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the expulsion or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.
The United Nations defines ethnic cleansing as rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area, persons of another ethnic or religious group.
The so-called freedom movement (azaadi) in Kashmir was joined by many (but not all) local Kashmiri Muslims. They opted for guns; if the majority community of the Valley had not supported the insurgency, there probably wouldn’t have been any exodus of the minority community.
Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the elimination of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the obliteration of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship. Death or displacement may also be involved in ethnic cleansing where a population is identified for removal from an area or a region.
With the rise of insurgency and Islamic extremism in Kashmir, houses of minority Hindus were burned and temples were destroyed. Also, notices were pasted on the walls of Kashmiri Pandits’ houses telling them to leave the Valley or else to die.
Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
On June 11, 1999, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in a ruling stated, “Against the stern definition of the Genocide Convention, the Commission is constrained to observe that while acts akin to genocide have occurred with respect to Kashmiri Pandits and that, indeed, in the minds and utterances of some of the militants a genocide-type design may exist, the crimes against the Kashmiri Pandits are near-Genocide and not Genocide.”
The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at the 60th Session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on April 7, 2004 said, “Wherever civilians are deliberately targeted because they belong to a particular community, we are in the presence of potential, if not actual, genocide.”
What happened in the 1990s in Kashmir was ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits marked with genocide. Kashmiri Hindus were killed by terrorists in 1989 and afterwards until they left the Valley. Prominent Kashmiri Pandits who were killed were Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo, poet Sarwanand Koul ‘Premi’ and his son advocate Prem Nath Bhat, and Lassa Koul (Director, Doordarshan Kendra — Srinagar).
Though the official figure of Kashmiri Pandit killings is 219, Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), a Valley-based organisation, suggests that 399 Pandits were killed and the list of Pandit killings is still incomplete.
A survey in 2008 and 2009 to find the precise number of Pandits killed revealed that 302 members of the community were killed in 1990 alone.
Armed insurgency was a movement to secede the State of Jammu and Kashmir from India and the Pandits were seen as living symbols representing India in Kashmir. They were seen as an obstacle in the path of azaadi from India. The Valley was cleansed of Pandits because they had a tilak on their forehead. It is worthy to mention that there were some good neighbours of the Pandits too who advised them to leave as they knew that the Valley wasn’t safe for Hindus anymore.
What has changed for the exiled Kashmiris in these 24 years? Have those responsible for rendering these people homeless been prosecuted in these years? Isn’t it ironic that there has not been a single judicial inquiry about the exodus and killings of the Pandits.
The Government of India has failed the Kashmiri Pandits as they are still living as refugees in their own country. Both the Centre and the State have not taken substantial measures till date for their return to the Valley. How long will the Government of India take to wake up from its deep slumber to address the issues concerning Kashmiri Pandit refugees?
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RELATED PLEASE :
Varad Sharma
16 March 2014
[Even 24 years after their exile, the questions of Kashmiri Pandits remain unanswered, their tragedy unaccounted, and the hope of their return to the Valley uncertain]
Twenty-four years ago, on January 19, 1990, the biggest ever exodus of people in India happened since the country’s partition on religious lines in 1947.
Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley leaving behind their homes and hearths so as to save themselves from persecution at the behest of Islamic extremists. Around four to five lakh Pandits were displaced due to militancy in the Valley.
Every year since that day, the Pandits commemorate January 19 as the Kashmiri Pandit Holocaust/Exodus Day, hoping to go back to their homes one day.
Terrorism in Kashmir started with the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Pandits in 1989-90. Ethnic cleansing refers to an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the expulsion or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.
The United Nations defines ethnic cleansing as rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area, persons of another ethnic or religious group.
The so-called freedom movement (azaadi) in Kashmir was joined by many (but not all) local Kashmiri Muslims. They opted for guns; if the majority community of the Valley had not supported the insurgency, there probably wouldn’t have been any exodus of the minority community.
Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the elimination of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the obliteration of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship. Death or displacement may also be involved in ethnic cleansing where a population is identified for removal from an area or a region.
With the rise of insurgency and Islamic extremism in Kashmir, houses of minority Hindus were burned and temples were destroyed. Also, notices were pasted on the walls of Kashmiri Pandits’ houses telling them to leave the Valley or else to die.
Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
On June 11, 1999, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in a ruling stated, “Against the stern definition of the Genocide Convention, the Commission is constrained to observe that while acts akin to genocide have occurred with respect to Kashmiri Pandits and that, indeed, in the minds and utterances of some of the militants a genocide-type design may exist, the crimes against the Kashmiri Pandits are near-Genocide and not Genocide.”
The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at the 60th Session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on April 7, 2004 said, “Wherever civilians are deliberately targeted because they belong to a particular community, we are in the presence of potential, if not actual, genocide.”
What happened in the 1990s in Kashmir was ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits marked with genocide. Kashmiri Hindus were killed by terrorists in 1989 and afterwards until they left the Valley. Prominent Kashmiri Pandits who were killed were Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, Justice Neel Kanth Ganjoo, poet Sarwanand Koul ‘Premi’ and his son advocate Prem Nath Bhat, and Lassa Koul (Director, Doordarshan Kendra — Srinagar).
Though the official figure of Kashmiri Pandit killings is 219, Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), a Valley-based organisation, suggests that 399 Pandits were killed and the list of Pandit killings is still incomplete.
A survey in 2008 and 2009 to find the precise number of Pandits killed revealed that 302 members of the community were killed in 1990 alone.
Armed insurgency was a movement to secede the State of Jammu and Kashmir from India and the Pandits were seen as living symbols representing India in Kashmir. They were seen as an obstacle in the path of azaadi from India. The Valley was cleansed of Pandits because they had a tilak on their forehead. It is worthy to mention that there were some good neighbours of the Pandits too who advised them to leave as they knew that the Valley wasn’t safe for Hindus anymore.
What has changed for the exiled Kashmiris in these 24 years? Have those responsible for rendering these people homeless been prosecuted in these years? Isn’t it ironic that there has not been a single judicial inquiry about the exodus and killings of the Pandits.
The Government of India has failed the Kashmiri Pandits as they are still living as refugees in their own country. Both the Centre and the State have not taken substantial measures till date for their return to the Valley. How long will the Government of India take to wake up from its deep slumber to address the issues concerning Kashmiri Pandit refugees?
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RELATED PLEASE :
Why the Return of Kashmiri Pandits Is Still a Distant Dream
RAHUL PANDITA
June 3, 2013
About 350,000 Pandits, including my family, were forced into exile after being brutalized on the streets of Kashmir and inside their homes. Hundreds were killed and many raped and maimed. Since the Pandits are an educated lot, most of them moved on, securing jobs and careers in India and abroad. But a small percentage continues to live in miserable conditions in refugee settlements like Jagti.
Most Pandits have gone through similar experiences and have no hope of returning to their homeland. “We visit Kashmir Valley in summer to escape the heat,” another Jagti resident, who did not wish to be identified, told me. “The former militants who killed Pandits in 1990 have turned politicians and keep on saying: ‘Kashmir is incomplete without the Pandits.’ But they don’t mean it.”
That is what a few hundred young men and women who returned to their erstwhile home under a central government job program, which has been operating since 2008, have experienced. In the valley, they stay in a few ghetto-like camps. But security is the least of their concerns. They have faced such harsh treatment and harassment from their Muslim colleagues that many of them have left their jobs and Kashmir Valley.
URL : http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/why-the-return-of-kashmiri-pandits-is-still-a-distant-dream/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
June 3, 2013
About 350,000 Pandits, including my family, were forced into exile after being brutalized on the streets of Kashmir and inside their homes. Hundreds were killed and many raped and maimed. Since the Pandits are an educated lot, most of them moved on, securing jobs and careers in India and abroad. But a small percentage continues to live in miserable conditions in refugee settlements like Jagti.
Most Pandits have gone through similar experiences and have no hope of returning to their homeland. “We visit Kashmir Valley in summer to escape the heat,” another Jagti resident, who did not wish to be identified, told me. “The former militants who killed Pandits in 1990 have turned politicians and keep on saying: ‘Kashmir is incomplete without the Pandits.’ But they don’t mean it.”
That is what a few hundred young men and women who returned to their erstwhile home under a central government job program, which has been operating since 2008, have experienced. In the valley, they stay in a few ghetto-like camps. But security is the least of their concerns. They have faced such harsh treatment and harassment from their Muslim colleagues that many of them have left their jobs and Kashmir Valley.
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