Author: Sugita Katyal
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: September 1, 2002
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/020901/137/1unzj.html
Shakti Bhan Khanna will never forget
the night she fled her home in Kashmir 12 years ago.
"A screaming mob was at my door
in the middle of the night. I somehow slipped out of the back door, got
into my car and drove straight to Delhi, leaving all my belongings in my
house in Srinagar," she recalls.
Khanna is one of thousands of Kashmiri
Pandits or Hindus who fled Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state after
a bloody revolt against Indian rule broke out at the end of 1989.
It was one of the largest migrations
in India since its independence from Britain in 1947.
Disillusioned and bitter about living
like refugees in their own country, the Hindus say they will boycott elections
in the Himalayan state beginning later this month to express their anger
with the government.
"Why should we participate in these
elections again and again when the earlier ones have not changed our destiny
one bit?" asked Bushan Lal, a former businessman from Srinagar who now
lives in near poverty in Jammu.
Khanna, the spokeswoman of Panun
Kashmir, a group representing Kashmiri Pandits, agreed.
"If the elections had held the promise
of returning to our homeland we would have cared.
"But when we're living in exile
how can we vote for somebody in the (Kashmir) valley who is not going to
help?" wondered Khanna, whose group is campaigning for a separate area
for Pandits called Panun Kashmir or Our Kashmir.
DREAMING OF GOING HOME
Thousands like Khanna dream of going
home to the apple orchards and towering mountains they left behind but
foresee a grim future.
They are angry the Hindu-nationalist
led government in New Delhi has done little to help the Kashmiri Hindu
community, which has given India two prime ministers -- Jawaharlal Nehru
and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
The Indian government is hoping
the Kashmir polls will bolster the legitimacy of its rule in Jammu and
Kashmir state, which is at the heart of a military stand-off between Muslim
Pakistan and mainly Hindu India and the source of decades of mistrust between
the neighbours.
India accuses its neighbour of arming
and funding militants who are helping drive the revolt in Jammu and Kashmir
state. Pakistan denies this and has pledged to stop the militants crossing
into Indian-ruled Kashmir.
India sees the Himalayan territory
as an integral part of the country, while Pakistan wants Kashmiris to decide
their own future.
Kashmiri Hindus feel caught in the
middle and don't understand why they have been forgotten.
According to the National Human
Rights Commission, about 300,000 Pandits have been forced to leave Kashmir
because of the rebellion. Panun Kashmir's Khanna puts the number closer
to 500,000.
Officials say the exodus began at
the start of 1990 after a sudden rise in the killings of Hindus and attacks
on Pandit homes by Muslim militants.
While some Kashmiri Hindus have
made their way to Delhi and other parts of the country, about 200,000 Pandits
who left their homes are still languishing in Jammu, the state's winter
capital.
About 25,000 live in abysmal conditions
in Jammu with families of five to six people often packed into one room.
Living as refugees has taken its
toll. Their culture is dying, the incidence of health problems such as
insomnia, depression and hypertension has risen and the birth rate has
declined.
They say the election commission's
decision to make arrangements for Hindu migrants to vote from outside will
only institutionalise their migrant status.
"The move to allow migrant Hindu
Pandits to vote at their respective refugee camps only reinforces the mindset
that there are no chances for them to return to their homes, ever," said
Sunil Shakder, president of the Kashmiri Samiti, a social organisation
fighting for the rights of displaced Kashmiri Hindus.
Even for the Pandits who want to
vote, some doubt they will be able to cast their ballots.
"How is it possible that out of
over half a million population we have just 100,000 voters?" asks Agnishekhar,
president of Panun Kashmir.
Election commission officials said
the rolls were being updated and authorities were making adequate security
arrangements for the Pandits to vote.
"Earlier, a lot of votes were lost
because of the postal ballot system. But this time we are setting up electronic
voting machines to ensure that no votes are lost," deputy election commissioner
A.N. Jha told Reuters.
"TRULY INVISIBLE"
Despite years of distrust, Kashmiri
separatist leaders have travelled to New Delhi for the first time for public
discussions with a government-backed group.
On Friday, the head of the Jammu
and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party, Shabir Shah, said he was ready to
run in the polls if New Delhi promised talks on the future of the contested
region. He had earlier ruled out contesting the election.
India wants a large voter turnout
and widespread participation in what is only the second election since
a discredited poll in 1987 turned simmering resentment into outright rebellion
within two years.
For the Pandits, though, all that
matters is returning home and rebuilding their identity in a Muslim-dominated
homeland.
"In this huge land we have been
more than marginalised. We may not even form a part of the history of the
times because we have been denied a presence, a voice. We are truly invisible,"
says an unknown Pandit in a diary that was published recently.
"What about my fate? Will I survive
to tell what it has been like with me, and how I felt about it?" says the
anonymous Pandit in "Under the Shadow of Militancy: The Diary of an Unknown
Kashmiri."
(With additional reporting by Ashok
Pahalwan in Jammu)
