Virtual Homeland of Kashmiri Pandits

Kashmir News Network

Twelve years ago, we were awakened to blood-chilling cries from mosques across Kashmir Valley telling us “Kashmir main rehna hai to Allah-u-Akbar kehna hai” and “Yahan kya chalega, Nizam - e – Mustafa”. To make sure the message from these slogans sank in this was followed by a spate of gruesome murders of hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits, many in broad daylight; including, for example, the sawing of teacher Girija Tickoo in half with a carpenter’s saw after first being gang-raped by the Islamic terrorists and the torture and killing of poet Sarwanand Premi and his son. All this occurred long before the term ethnic cleansing had become a part of the popular lexicon; but surely if such a term applied anywhere, it applied to our community as it was hounded out of the Valley. And, as if the horror of what we went through was not harrowing enough, we were further subjected to taunts from callous fellow Hindus from other parts of India trying to make us out to be cowards for fleeing Kashmir (what did they want us to do, sit back without any weapons or means of protection and allow ourselves to be halaled by the Islamists?). There were even some who took perverse pleasure in our predicament by telling us that we Kashmiri Pandits deserved what happened to us for having misruled the country all these years. The irony is that the Kashmiri Pandit community has always been marginalized in Kashmiri despite the Kashmiri ancestry of Nehru and his daughter Mrs. Gandhi and her few Kashmiri Pandit advisors.

It has been 12 long years since those harrowing events; and, yet, in many ways the situation seems the same as far as our community is concerned. After all these years we are still fighting stereotypes about our community which is often viewed in many quarters of India with distrust; our patriotism continues to be questioned and our legitimate rights to our Kashmiri homeland is still the subject of debate. The mandarins in power may have changed guard over these 12 years, but the appeasement policy towards Kashmiri Muslims and the marginalization of Kashmiri Pandits remains the same as ever.

While looking back at these arduous 12 years since we left our maej (mother)-Kashmir, it is easy to feel cynical about the efforts made by our community activists, considering the fact that we have so few tangible results to show for these efforts. That would be quite unfortunate, because our struggle has really only just started and we have made some important progress in these 12 years. To begin with we need to pat ourselves on the back that given the small size and clout of our community, and the overwhelming odds arrayed against us, that over all these years we have refused to give up our fight for our rightful “homeland”. It would have been so easy for us to have seamlessly melded with the rest of our fellow Hindus in other parts of India, and to have given up on our dream. The mere fact that we have refused to do so is a testament to our willingness to fight for our rights. After all, what happened to us is not all that unique- non-KP Hindus have been, and continue to be, ethnically cleansed from other parts of the sub-continent (e.g. the Hindus in Pakistan during 1947 partition and present day Bangladeshi Hindus) and yet how often does one hear a cry from these groups for a return of their homeland?

Another positive for our community has been its efforts at making the rest of India (and the World at large) aware about what happened in Kashmir. Numerous seminars, press reports, web sites, publications and films made by our community members have helped highlight our story to the World. It should be remembered that in this we have had to battle not only the prejudices of the International press but also the anti-Hindu bias of our own Indian press, not to mention the petro-dollar funded disinformation campaign waged by the Muslim organizations across the world.

One of the most defining moments for our community, in my opinion, was the drafting of the Margdarshan resolution by Panun Kashmir, a resolution that gave voice to our aspirations and hopes. My suggestion to any KP going through phases of doubt and hopelessness, and I’m sure all of us go through such feelings occasionally, is to read (and reread) this resolution with the same reverence that we do our Gayatri Mantra… for, after all, it has as much to do with our feeling of wholeness and well-being as does the Gayatri Mantra.

The same Margdarshan resolution also explained why a homeland for Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley is important, not only for the well being of the KP community, but for the whole of India as well. The slogan coined then was “Save Kashmir to Save India”; and the idea was that providing a homeland for Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir Valley allowed India to gain some sort of foothold over Kashmir which otherwise risked being completely and irreversibly Islamized. It was Kashmiri Pandits who realized, and warned India more than 15 years back that the Islamic thrust spearheaded by Pakistan was not aimed just at Kashmir, but at India as a whole, and, for that matter, the World at large. Historical events within the last few years have, indeed, borne out the truth of this. Kashmir no longer remains an obscure place of unrest in the World, it has taken center stage (along with Palestine) as the cause celebre within the Islamic world.

Given all the events that have taken place to bring Kashmir to the forefront of World attention, it is a useful exercise to try to take stock of our situation and determine what we need to do to make our dream of “homeland” a reality. Here are some of my views:

• We have to realize (and make others realize as well) that our fight for “homeland” is inexorably tied to the very survival of India. While Kashmir may be the front on which Pakistani terrorists are waging their war, the final goal of the terrorists is not just Kashmir but the whole of India.
• Additionally, it has to be recognized that the driving force behind Pakistani terrorism is the Islamic ideology on which it is based. Whether Islam has been hijacked by Islamic extremists (as some Islam apologists suggest) or Islam is inherently extremist (as any study of Islamic history makes abundantly clear) the fact remains that our current plight is derived from that hateful ideology. It is the same ideology that resulted in the division of our country at its very birth with the creation of a Pakistan as an Islamic State. The two countries, India and Pakistan, are poles apart in their ideology and as our post-partition history shows there is simply no way we can live at peace with each other. One or the other has to eventually give way. Unfortunately, the majority of Hindus in India live in a make-believe World of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” when it comes to dealing with the Islamic threat. In this they are joined by the Leftists, the Christian missionaries and all the Macaulite Hindus. Making things worse is the fact that this section of Indian society has completely hijacked the Indian media which seems blissfully oblivious of the Islamic threat that threatens to tear apart our country but is animatedly in arms against the propped-up paper tiger of “Hindu fundamentalism” whatever that may be.
• It is time all of us Hindus woke up and smelled the coffee… before it is too late. In the past, Hindu civilization has been brought to its knees by its petty infighting and its refusal to unite together against a common enemy. We are presently in a similar situation. Hindus can ill afford to think in petty terms, such as ‘us pandits’ vs. ‘them dogras’, when we are all facing the same grave threat to our common survival. It is common for us to bemoan the lack of support from fellow Hindus across India; but we need to remember how often do we ourselves support the pain and suffering of other Hindus; e.g. the Bangladeshi Hindus, who are facing a situation not too unlike ours.
• We will have to recognize that our struggle is going to be a long-term one. Like the Jews who never gave up their struggle over the centuries to return to their lands, we too must never give up hope and must maintain our traditions. We must also join hands with other Hindus who claim Kashmiri ancestry (e.g. Saraswat Brahmins) and who were driven out of Kashmir during previous ages of Islamic persecution.
• We also need to become more savvy when it comes to World politics. Many Indians assumed, for example, that once the terrorist nature of Pakistan was exposed, the World would naturally sway in favor of us. The events after the 9-11 bombings in the USA have clearly shown that political expediency is not limited to India alone, it is alive and kicking in the USA too. We will have to fight our own battles and not expect others to necessarily come to our help.
• Finally, much has been made about the disunity within our ranks; for example the splintering of the Panun Kashmir organization. One has to recognize that such splits and disagreements are quite natural within the lifetime of any organization. What is important is not to let these splits come in the way of our common goals and aspirations.

Our struggle is, no doubt, going to be long and painful, but rather than look upon what happened to us as over the last 12 years as a terrible calamity, we need to remind ourselves that this too as a blessing from our divine mother… it was a unique wake-up call for our community which was otherwise dying a slow death anyway. As we fight for our eventual “homeland” we are likely to meet with many more failures and perhaps even more harrowing and painful events. The key, however, is not to give up our “homeland” goal and to keep picking ourselves up and learning from our failures.