Author: Aditi/New Delhi
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 8, 2001
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/archives1/default12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story2%2Etxt&counter_img=2&phy_path_it=F%3A%5Cdailypioneer%5Carchives1%5Cjul801
In 1989, over 4,000 multi-storeyed
houses stood tall on the banks of river Vitasta (Jhelum) in the heart of
Srinagar. Bustling with life, all these belonged to Kashmiri Pandits. Today,
all that remains of them is burnt shells and rubble with overgrown vegetation,
while some have been occupied by Muslims.
Out of the 16,000 State employees
forced out of the Valley, over 9,500 have retired and 6,000 continue on
posts they held 12 years ago and get a consolidated salary with no benefits.
No fresh recruitment has been taken up for filling the retired posts in
the Valley. The 4,000 retirement cases cannot be settled as the State Government
denies having their service book.
The 95 per cent literacy level of
the community has fallen sharply to 60 per cent due to unwarranted dislocation.
From the comforts of a home in the
serene Valley to a pigeon-holed existence. That's the story of half a million
Kashmiri Pandits. Terrorised and killed. Their houses burnt and properties
looted. Uprooted from their homeland, they are forced and live a life of
refugees in their own country.
Chaman Lal once lived in a joint
family in a huge house in Srinagar; today he has a one-room set in Jammu.
For four years, he has been making rounds of the secretariat to settle
his pension. He draws only 80% pension and does not get GP fund and other
retirement benefits.
Seventy-year-old Gauri Kaul lived
in a sprawling house in a Pandit-dominated area of the Valley. Today, she
suffers from cirrhosis, exacerbated by the shock of leaving home and hearth.
In the past 12 years, she has had to shift as many times, as landlords
demanded lease and an increase in the rent.
R L Saraf was the sole distributor
of a pharmaceutical giant, a big house and a flourishing business. Today,
he lives hand to mouth.
Fourteen-year-old Rohini's eye is
permanently damaged as the terrorists hurled a bomb on their house in Anantnag.
She stays in the corner of a camp partitioned by bedsheets. Her eye is
yet to be treated.
"There has been an ethnic genocide
in Kashmir. Thousands have been killed barbarically, raped, plundered and
forced to live in hell. We continue to suffer as all have turned a Nelson's
eye towards us," says Nancy Kaul, of the Daughters of Vitasta, a Kashmiri
women's organisation. She asserts that the community's death rate has risen
sharply, while the birth rate has crashed.
Even as Musharraf demands a meeting
with the Hurriyat Conference, the separatist conglomeration, these half-a-million
people continue to be ignored. Is it because they are nationalistic and
stood by India?
"Newspapers and TV channels are
full of reports about President Musharraf and his peace overtures. It is
ironical that the issue of Kashmiri Pandits, who lost everything due to
Islamic terrorism in the Valley, finds no mention anywhere. If terrorism,
which Pakistan is supporting, is not on agenda and neither are we, then
what good are the talks?" asks Sanjla Kaul.
Sanjla was 18 when her father Lassa
Kaul, Doordarshan Director in Srinagar was killed in cold blood outside
his house in February 1990. She accuses the Indian Government of being
soft on the perpetrators of terrorism. "How can you talk on everything
else minus the problem. Hundreds of us have been killed by the very same
who call themselves oppressed. It is well known who all conspired to kill
my father, but 12 years have passed and the inquiry is still pending. What
about are our human rights? Where is justice?" asks Sanjla.
For 70-year-old D N Bhat and his
wife Sonabatni, it has been years since they have slept peacefully in there
unplastered one-room house in an unauthorised colony in New Delhi. Bhat's
29-year-old son Virji, an engineer in the State Irrigation Department,
was killed when he came to visit his parents for a day in Nagam village
in the Valley. "He went out to a nearby shop to get thread to repair some
clothes. In the meantime, we heard gunshots and ran out. A Gypsy came and
the men inside showered him with bullets. No one came forward to take him
to hospital," recalls Bhat. "Blood was gushing out and it took two hours
for the PCR to come. My son kept saying, 'they called me an Indian agent,
please take me to the military hospital, otherwise I will die'."
Mr Bhat wasn't allowed to accompany
Virji in the police vehicle, though his wife went. Doctors at the general
hospital said he would survive, but he died within hours. Sonabatni speaks
only through tears as she gently looks at a tattered photograph of her
son and laments, "They killed him. He said I am an Indian. They killed
him..."
Mr Bhat terms the summit futile
and the track two diplomacy a joke on the plight of Kashmiri Hindus. "Pakistan
can never be trusted. These people talk about Hurriyat and the plight faced
by the Kashmiri Muslims. Look, what they have done to us. Islamic terrorists
are responsible for our condition. Instead of talking about the victims,
you are talking of them. If India thinks opening the borders or the highway
linking the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir with Srinagar will bring peace, it
will not. Instead, India will repent."
Mr H K Kaul, president of the Kashmiri
Displaced Employees Forum, alleges discrimination at all levels and is
fighting a case in the National Human Rights Commission since 1993. "The
State employees are a tortured lot. They get just a fixed sum of money.
Although it is not so with those in the Valley. We get no promotions, no
allowances as stated in the rules, no rent, no loans and there's hardly
any recruitment from the community. We are dropped from seniority lists
and the case in the NHRC has been lingering since seven years. God knows
when justice will come my community's way."
In a corner of one of camps, separated
by sheets, lives Sunil, a 32-year-old post-graduate working in a private
firm. His maternal and paternal uncles were barbarically murdered. His
father C L Bhan recounts: "My brother Makhan Lal Bhan, a block Development
official, was abducted near Qazigund while on duty, way back in 1965. Even
though the engineer with him, Gulam Hassan, was let off, he remains missing
till date. In 1990, another brother along with my wife's brother were killed.
This has no meaning. We are not a vote bank, no one wants to hear us."
The Indo-Pak summit to them means
a weak India. "Which country will allow this. Musharraf says terrorism
will continue and we do not sternly tell him to stop," adds Mr Bhan. Even
as some of the Kashmiri Pandit organisations are planning to protest in
the coming days, Ms Nancy Kaul says, "I want the Indian Prime Minister
and the Government to answer why a pseudo-secularist policy is being practiced.
We have equal stakes in Kashmir. We were called Indian dogs and have died
for the country. If Musharraf has clearly said he will further terrorism
in J&K, why are we talking meekly of trade. Mr Prime Minister, Kashmir
is ours."
