PLIGHT OF THE PUNDITS ... 4

PLIGHT OF THE PUNDITS ... 4

The apathy of the administration to address issues of gross violation of Hindu rights is tantamount to appeasement of pernicious elements in our society with the sole aim of securing popular mandate in a perverse way as has become the wont of perfidious politicians these days. The Hindu remains marginalised in Muslim-majority Kashmir and it is a sorry state that they thus find themselves in, for after all, Pakistan was created to make room for the malefic elements within the Indian Muslim population who would not subscribe to the 'abhorrent' condition of co-existence with the Hindu in independent India.

A separate landmass was allotted to such seditious separatists by the debilitated leadership of the day and the poison State of Pakistan was born, the seed of all future trouble for India and the world, the hot-bed of jihad and all that is pernicious in theocratic politics.

The Hindu Pandits of Kashmir have been driven out of the Valley in a massive murderous eviction of them in 1990, a staggering number of them totalling no less than 450,000 and perhaps more, losing home and hearth and honour overnight, in a carefully orchestrated Islamic fundamentalist manoeuvre. Successive governments of Jammu and Kashmir and at the Centre have been mute spectators to this genocide of the Hindus in Kashmir and their subsequent horrendous refugee-status in Jammu for over 29 years now. If such apathy is not appeasement politics, then what is it?

Have the Hindus no rights in their own land? Are we living in a civilised democracy where hundreds of thousands of Hindus suffer such persecution and neither the offenders are brought to book nor the victims restored to their rightful status? Is not India a free country where all her citizens have equal rights? Then why this step-motherly treatment to the Kashmiri Pandits whose sole offence to deserve eviction from their homeland by the extremist Muslims of Kashmir is their being Hindus, infidels and what not? Why is the Government of India not expediting the process of rehabilitating the displaced Pandits in their homeland? That the situation in the Kashmir Valley is too hot for the Hindus to resettle is not a worthwhile argument, for these Hindus have belonged to Kashmir since time immemorial, even before Islam had been born and a single Muslim had breathed in the holy air of this paradise on earth. The population of Kashmir then was purely Hindu and to attempt to appropriate the territory today in the name of Islam, aided and abetted by perfidious Pakistan, that foul foster-son of India, is blasphemous.

Kashmir is an integral part of India and must subscribe to the laws of the land. The political problems in Kashmir will have an Indian solution and not a Pakistani one, and what better a way to initiate the process than to begin the resettlement of the Hindu Pandits in their homeland? Appeasement of evil is vile and must not ever be resorted to, although political expediency of sorts must be the watchword to avoid a second genocide. The proposed colony of the Pundits where they will live together in a massive block is the only pragmatic solution to the problem and must be adhered to despite protestations from Islamic opponents to the project. Only thus may the Hindus be able to defend themselves in case of any assault as in 1990 and not otherwise. Hindus must unite the world over to reclaim their lost rights in their own country and prevent the sell-out of their motherland to noxious Islamic elements as in the Valley of Kashmir.

In conclusion let us invoke the syncretic spirit of India and dedicate ourselves to the working out of our nationhood along the lines laid down by Swami Vivekananda who had succinctly summed up the future of renascent India as having the universality of the Vedanta and the solidarity of Islam in his celebrated pronouncement, ''For our motherland, a conjunction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam --- Vedanta brain and Islam body is the only hope.'' Jai Hind!

Written by Sugata Bose