PLIGHT OF THE PUNDITS ... 3

Television anchors must stop harping on lies persistently that there was religious harmony in Kashmir till 1990 despite knowing the truth about Muslim atrocities on Kashmiri Hindus for centuries. This is pretentious and false journalism and potently injurious to the cause of seeking justice for the displaced Kashmiri Pundits. Misrepresentation of facts misleads the wider national audience into being gullible enough to believing that, after all, all was well in Kashmir till the other day and that religious intolerance and persecution of Hindus has been only a recent phenomenon. But that is not the case. Historically, Hindus have been persecuted brutally by the Muslim rulers of Kashmir over centuries and they have for large periods of time, barring those times when Hindu or Sikh rulers ruled over Kashmir, borne atrocities in their own homeland just because they were the minority community. The latest genocide of the Kashmiri Pundits in 1990 following which occurred their mass exodus, is but the final humiliation of the Hindus there by the fanatical Muslims who thus aim to make Kashmir a 100% Muslim inhabited State in their malicious bid to secede from India. Thus, it is imperative that the television channels make it their policy not to allow anchors to misreport on Kashmir by falsely affirming the erstwhile existence of communal harmony there. Such naivete does none any good but, surely, harms the cause of the Kashmiri Pundits as they struggle to bring to national focus their plight and seek redress thereof. Intelligent and mature journalism precludes the fundamental feature of journalistic honesty based on fact and not dubious suppression of it or concoction of ideas to suit mischievous ends. Information well-given will go a long way to solving much of the problems that beset our nation for truth ever invigorates, not falsehood. Keeping this in mind, television anchors ought to manifest a little more of character to help the national cause and, in this, no less the cause of the Kashmiri Pundits.