Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 14; A 170-page book titled Kashmiri Pandits through Fire and Brimstone and authored jointly by renowned scholar Padamshree Kashinath Pandita and Pyare Lal Kaul Budgami and published by Akshaya Prakashan, New Delhi is now on the stands.
This is a compact volume giving the travail through which the religious minority of Kashmir has gone during several centuries in the past. Introducing the book, Dr. Pandita writes,” On August 15, 1947 India attained independence but the Hindus of the State, particularly those in the Valley lose it for two reasons. One was the Pakistan sponsored tribal attack on October 22, 1947, and the second was the incorporation of a clause of Special Status for J&K in the Indian Constitution. Incorporation of this clause was tantamount to writing the death warrant of the miniscule Kashmiri Hindu (Pandit) religious minority of the Valley.
Pandita further writes that New Delhi snatched away J&K from the hands of a benign secular ruler and gave it into the hands of a rabid despot, who through dubious manoeuvering and machinations established his dynastic rule over J&K with the patronage of the contemporary Sultans of Delhi……”
This book is a sordid saga of atrocities discriminations, blackmail and repression unleashed by fanatical and fundamentalist Kashmir valley leadership moving about wearing a mask of “secular democracy” for seven long decades, of course with the sadistic patronage of New Delhi rulers. Few religious minority communities in the world have suffered what the Kashmiri Pandits suffered viz. discrimination, suppression, ethnic cleansing, genocide and exile. They are refugees in their own country. And what is more, 73 years have gone by and no State or Central Government, no Human Rights Organization, no NGO and no International organization ever demanded an impartial inquiry into this genocide.
Pandita said the contents of this volume will make one understand what religious bigotry and persecution mean. The authors have been an eye witness to the entire saga. They have been part of the victims of this sordid narrative and as such nothing can be more authentic than what they have recorded.
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