Sir,
This is with reference to the write-up “The Clamour for Return”. The writer Khosa is the President of Kashmiri Pandit Sabha, Ambphalla and a leading light of the KP community. Very few Kashmiri Pandit social workers are more intensively informed of the problems of the community than Mr Khosa, especially when the valley was ethnically cleansed of Hindus population in 1990.
The piece he has scripted for the DE is perhaps the most seamless expression of the issue of the return and restitution of the exiled community as it deals lucidly and flawlessly with all the nuances of the return and rehabilitation of the exiled community. He has underlined the improving security conditions in the valley and the changing socio-political dynamics of the Kashmirian society. The most significant and perhaps the most pragmatic observation he has made is about the need of a tolerant and peaceful coexistence of communities to ensure peace in the disturbed valley.
I fully agree with him that politicians are not able to solve the tangle of Pandit return. Therefore, the people of two communities should take the initiative of entering into a meaningful dialogue. In this context he has referred to the Friday congregational sermon of Mir Waiz Farooq at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar. I wonder why the national press and national mainstream political parties have not carried fulsome discussion on Mir Waiz’s advice to the congregation because it touches upon the very spirit of Indian civilizational assets. Mir Waiz said that the Mir Waiz house has always been strongly supportive of peaceful coexistence among the two major communities of Kashmir adding that it is not a political or religious but human issue.
He has indirectly appealed to all stakeholders to shun religious and political approach to the problem and come out with pragmatic suggestions. Mr Khosa has said many important things but in a subtle way hoping that the people will not only understand but also acknowledge the ground reality in Kahmir. We may briefly elaborate it. The ultimate purpose of armed insurgency around 1989-90 was to separate Kashmir from India. That did not happen nor shall it happen at any time in future. Pakistan was profiled as a country where streams of milk and honey flowed freely. The Kashmir majority community has seen what Pakistan and particularly POJK is. Therefore, the right and the only path is of secularism and democracy meaning tolerance and adjustability.
The writer has a very positive advice to the KP community. The return, rehabilitation and perpetuation of the Pandits is possible only with the support and assurance of the majority community. It must understand its weakness in socio-political parameters and accordingly contribute to a composite living. Mir Waiz has very rightly said that old wound should not be opened and the positive factors of common cultural heritage should be given their full value. His suggestion that the people of both communities should take the initiative and not depend on politicians who are become prisoners of vote bank philosophy and distanced miles from human relationship.
Mr Khosa has raised genuine questions about where will the KPs live in Kashmir as more than 80 per cent of them have sold their properties under compulsion, this is a fundamental question which all Governments have been circumventing for fear of loosing their vote banks. Well, the solution of this problem, meaning where the returning KPs would live, is a question which the KPs must put to Mirwaiz in very gentle words. Let us see how he and his associates would sensibly and sympathetically address the issue. He does not need any assurance on the part of the Pandits that they will play the game under the rules because he himself said that his house has always been careworn of Kashmiri Hindu minority.
It does not mean that the Government either at the centre or in the state has no role in rehabilitating the exiled community back in t he valley. The centre has the largest and crucial role to perform although it is a different story that during his one and more than an hour-long speech in Srinagar to a mammoth crowd of 2 lac people, Prime Minister Modi touched almost all aspects of Kashmir issue but not a word nor a syllable about Kashmiri Pandits. From such a mindset no Kashmir Pandit can expect a pragmatic and just solution.
I would appeal the KP community to constitute a delegation of broad-minded thinkers led by Khosa the president of Kashmir Sabha Ambphalla Jammu to enter into communication with Mirwaiz Maulana Omar Farooq to take up the thread of Pandit rehabilitation in the valley a subject on which he candidly expressed himself in a congregational sermon.
Kashinath Pandita
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel