NEW DELHI: As the Kashmiri Pandits observed ’31st Holocaust’ this year, Brigadier Veteran Anil Gupta and BJP Spokesperson Sardar RP Singh have written a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah requesting him to constitute an enquiry into the mass killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandit community from Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s.
Strongly condemning National Conference (NC) Supremo Farooq Abdullah, the authors of the letter cited a series of events of the genocide and stated that NC-Congress coalition government resigned “under the pressure of militants” and Abdullah who was then chief minister “went to London to play golf” while “his dismissed colleagues in the council of ministers hid their heads in Jammu where they illegally occupied government bungalows and some of them entered into secret liasons with the Kashmiri insurgency leadership”.
‘Only Pakistan responsible for holocaust?’
“Is it only Pakistan responsible for the holocaust? Certainly not. The dubious role played by the political establishment of the time led by Dr Farooq Abdullah and his political outfit National Conference has been spoken off in murmers but not brought under a proper scanner exposing the duplicitous role played by the politico-religious establishment of that period,” the letter read while stating the political silence towards the pogroms that compelled the Kashmiri Pandits to flee from Kashmir.
The letter also cited National Human Rights Commission’s admission of “systematic/planned ethnic cleansing inflicted on Kashmiri Pandits by the terrorists. The letter called for urgent action such as setting up an inquiry commission to investigte the domestic forces behind the genocide, while contending that the eyewitness may not be available after a few years due to which the first hand accounts of the henious masacre and exodus may be lost due to further delay.
This year on January 19, the Kashmiri Pandit community observed the 31st Holocaust Day as it was on this day in 1991 the exodus took place. January 19 is particularly observed as the “black day” for Kashmiri Pandits as lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes in the Valley or convert to Islam, under threat of being killed by terrorists. Several Kashmiri Pandits were inhumanly masacred by the radical islamists. At that time, the radicals had given the Kashmiri Pandits only two options if not for leaving: either to convert to Islam or suffer their wrath. As of 2016, only 2,000 to 3,000 Kashmiri Pandits remain in the Kashmir Valley compared to approximately 300,000 to 600,000 in 1990. Having been scattered to different parts of the country and world since then, the community now hopes to return to the place where their roots lie.
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