Author Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 27, 2007
Don't move forces out of orchards in J&K
Alarm bells are clanging all over the security
establishment over the UPA Government's reported move to relocate troops in
Jammu & Kashmir by getting them to vacate orchards and premises, many
of which belong to Pandits who have been forced out of the Valley by terrorists.
The move is part pandering to the demand of the PDP and part demonstration
of the present regime's inability to stand up to threats and political blackmail.
The Army has made it clear in no uncertain terms that any move to vacate its
present encampments would be tantamount to diluting its readiness to meet
any eventuality. With the onset of summer, the snow is melting and terrorists
are just about beginning their long trek across the border and Line of Control
to enter India. If the orchards and premises currently occupied by the security
forces are vacated now, it would amount to giving the terrorists free space.
Besides, the injustice that would be meted out to those Pandits who happen
to be the owners of many of these properties is incalculable. Driven out of
their homesteads after the most barbarous crimes were committed on them in
the early-1990s, at least four lakh members of India's most neglected community
today live in appalling conditions in refugee camps. The fact that the Army
and paramilitary forces, and not their former neighbours many of whom became
their tormentors in collusion with the Islamists, are currently occupying
their abandoned properties has been small comfort for the hapless Pandits.
If they were to lose their properties all over again, this time for good,
it would kill their dream of being able to return to their ancestral land
one day. That possibility cannot be ruled out; for evidence, look at mansions
with burnt façades in downtown Srinagar now inhabited by illegal owners.
If the Union Government were to persist with its plan to move security forces
out of their present encampments, apart from seriously endangering peace,
it would also signal that the Pandits are now, for all practical purposes,
banished forever from the Valley. The first indication of the Government's
thinking was provided by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when in October 2004
he declared his decision to move the Pandits living in refugee camps in Jammu
to one-room shanties instead of facilitating their return to their own homes.
