K. N. Pandita
This has reference to the news item ‘New package for KPs’ published in this paper on November 2014. Actually, the Newspaper reproduced some excerpts from the speech of the Union Minister of State for Home he made in the Rajya Sabha.
The crux of Minister’s statement is that the State Government has submitted a proposal seeking enhancement of financial support for various components of the package announced by the former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2008. In his statement, the Minister of State went on to recount the details of assistance Centre has provided to the internally displaced Pandits of Kashmir after their exodus from Kashmir in 1990.
It is unfortunate that the Union Minister of State for Home has made only a superficial, if not irresponsible, statement on a sensitive issue which stands out prominently in BJP’s election manifesto. The issue merits serious and solemn consideration that would unfold the vision of the Union Government, if it has one, about a national issue whose ramifications touch on the very fundamentals of Indian State. He has circumvented the core issue as smartly as the author of the 2008 package Dr. Manmohan Singh had done in his turn.
Does recounting of 24 year-long story of quantum of assistance given to Kashmiri Pandit IDPs in any way help us in bringing the community anywhere close to the solution of their forced exile from their homeland? The kind and quantum of assistance given to them is not an obligation on them; it is the price that a Government with guilty conscience pays to absolve itself of crime against humanity.
NC-Congress combine ruled over the State in 1990 when armed insurgency broke out. Intelligence failed, security failed and administration collapsed. Those who ruled the roost till yesterday abandoned the defenceless KP minority community to the bullets, bombs while themselves ran away to Jammu along with families to enjoy secured life in unauthorized Government bungalows managing round the clock police protection. From these places they established secret liaison with the militant leadership. The Government in New Delhi raised not an eyebrow.
Should not have the Prime Minister’s so-called Package of 2008 raised the question of why and how this tragedy happened? Should not the Indian Supreme Court have taken up suo moto inquiry into this case of blatant ethnic cleansing of small religious minority in Kashmir? Instead of raising the issue on international fora, the Indian Government of the day, contrarily, took care to underplay massive violation of human rights in international fora, particularly at the UN Human Rights Commission (now Council). Why was the Prime Minister of India silent on that part of the story when he announced the package in 2008? Eyewash. Should Modi Government’s Minister of State for Home feel proud of invoking the 2008 package?
Days after the 2008 package was announced, JK Nationalist Movement issued a rejoinder under the title ‘PM’s Package – A Critique’ in which it explained how the package diluted entire issue of Pandit IDPs and maneuvered to identify four other valley-based groups as victims of militancy and made them partners in the package that was given media hype under dubious nomenclature of Package for the Kashmiri Pandits. Actually the share of the Pandits was only one-fifth of this amount.
The pamphlet said that the core issue was neither of quanta of aid, nor of their return and rehabilitation in Kashmir; it was about ground realities and functionality of secular democratic dispensation enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The core question is this: Is Indian State reconciled to (a) ethnic cleansing of the valley of its Hindu population, and (b) Wahhabization of Kashmir region under the fake slogan of secularism?
As against rupees 1000 (now Rs. 6000) per month per family of 4 members or more of KP displaced persons, Indian Government poured trillions of rupees into the Valley in last 24 years. Have the displaced persons a share in that?
Who are the beneficiaries of that enormous largesse? As against 1200 teachers and lower rank functionaries appointed under the 2008 package, the State Government on its own recruited no fewer than nine lakh youth in the Valley in Government vacancies during 24 years of turmoil. These questions come up as corollary to the core issue to which the Pandits had referred in the pamphlet.
Modi Government will be making a Himalayan blunder if it thinks it can hoodwink the Pandits by reviving the 2008 misnomer of a ‘package’ and sweet coat it with patent rhetoric. Reviving that package is a subtle way of circumventing the core issue. The core issue is that the Indian nation has to be convinced that the Hindu minority in the Valley is treated at par with the Muslim minority in any part of India and is provided other safeguards that would assure their participation in the process of nation building enterprise.
For a Kashmiri Pandit back in the Valley, it is not important whether he has got back his home, shop, orchard, land, and job etc. What is important and decisive for him is whether the India tricolour flutters anywhere around him on public or private buildings or a housetop? What concerns him is whether his school going kid begins his day with the recitation of the national anthem. What concerns him is whether he can freely and fearlessly see the 26 January Republic Day Parade or 15 August Independence Day festival without the gun fire cracked from militants Kalashnikov? What concerns him is whether in a public rally the local political leader speaks of secularism, minority rights, human rights and not hurls a volley of aspersions and abuses on Indian nation. What concerns him is whether or not the Indian State is reconciled to Kashmiris illuminating the valley on 14th August but going on strike and boycott and black out on 15th August. What will concern him is that why in return for thousands of crores of rupees which the Indian tax payer donates to Kashmir by way of flood relief, Kashmiris reciprocate by call for strike on the visit of the PM to the Valley for election campaign. Displaced Pandit wants to bask in the sun of true “Kashmiriyat” and refuses to become an inmate of Wahhabi/Salafi prison house called Kashmir.
I hope the Union Minister of State understands that this is not a matter to become angry about. There is the need of deep introspection. It will stand Modi Government in good stead to replace rhetoric with realism. Talking about return and rehabilitation of the crisis-ridden community is not important. What is important is to talk about implementing the 1994 unanimous resolution of the Indian Parliament on Kashmir. Return of the exiled community lies in the womb of that resolution.
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