Onus On Kashmiri Pandits To Return, No One Will Beg Them: Farooq Abdullah

[dadeechi]

Onus On Kashmiri Pandits To Return, No One Will Beg Them: Farooq Abdullah


Video Link:

'Onus On Kashmiri Pandits To Return, No One Will Beg Them': Farooq Abdullah

Farooq Abdullah speaking to NDTV's Barkha Dutt at the launch of a book of first person accounts by two Kashmiri Pandit authors, A Long Dream of Home.

New Delhi: 26 years ago on the 19th of January began the forced exodus of lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits from their homeland. Pushed out by militant violence and direct threats, Pandits were forced to become people without a state in their own country, with families pushed into migrant camps and one-room tenements. Over the years, every party has paid lip service to the return of Pandits, but more than two decades later, there has been virtually no progress on creating an environment that would enable their homecoming.

Now, as the Pandit community commemorates this day as the #KPExodusDay on Social Media, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah has stirred a major controversy by saying that the "onus is on the Pandits" to make a comeback. "They (the Pandits) have to realize one thing- nobody is going to come with a begging bowl and say 'come and stay with us' , they have to make the move, " Mr Abdullah said to NDTV's Barkha Dutt.

He went on to argue that he had made several attempts over the decades to try and get Pandits to return to the Valley, but many of them had sold their homes and were not willing to come and live in Kashmir any longer. "When (J&K) government made a move that the officers and doctors who are settled here (Delhi) should come back, they came to see me and said 'look, our children are in schools here, our parents are ill and they need medical care...we can't take them back, so for God's sake, let us live here." Asked directly by NDTV if he was suggesting that the onus was on the Pandits to come back, he said "Absolutely."

Mr Abdullah's comments were made at the launch of a book of first-person accounts by two Kashmiri Pandit authors.

The remarks provoked a spate of sharp and angry protests from the audience and other panelists present. Neeru Kaul, a Kashmir Pandit and writer, argued with the National Conference leader, asking him, "Are we, the Pandits, like cattle for you?" Author Siddharth Giggoo told the politician, "I dont just want a house in Kashmir, I want a home."

Also present were Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and retired General Syed Ata Hasnain who both disagreed with what Mr Abdullah had said. General Hasnain, who has served in the Kashmir Valley as the General Officer Commanding of 15 Corps, said , "You (Farooq) are the symbol of the best value of integration in Kashmir. Why can't you today take (the) initiative?"

But Mr Abdullah stuck to his controversial statements. "I met them as a Chief Minister and even after that also. It's not only me, but even Hurriyat leaders have come to you (Pandits) and said 'please come back'." Militancy has declined, he argued, adding " It is hard, but they will have to make the first move now."
Story First Published: January 19, 2016 14:12 IST

Onus On Kashmiri Pandits To Return, No One Will Beg Them: Farooq Abdullah

 

[dadeechi]

Exodus Day: Kashmiri Pandits revisit massacre site
This was the first visit by migrant community leaders to the Pandit settlement in Nadimarg, national spokesperson of All Parties Migrants Coordination Committee (APMCC) King C Bharti said.
Written by Arun Sharma
Jammu Published:Jan 20, 2016, 2:53
Written by Arun Sharma | Jammu | Published:January 20, 2016 2:53 am
Observing ‘Exodus Day’, when thousands of Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley under terrorist threat 26 years ago, a group of Pandits Tuesday visited Nadimarg village near Shopian to pay homage to 24 people killed by terrorists in March 2003.
This was the first visit by migrant community leaders to the Pandit settlement in Nadimarg, national spokesperson of All Parties Migrants Coordination Committee (APMCC) King C Bharti said. Nearly two dozen members of APMCC led by the organisation’s chairman, Vinod Pandit, visited the settlement. The settlement now looks like a haunted place amid burnt and damaged houses, Bharti said.
Visiting the village under tight security cover, Vinod Pandit also laid the foundation of a memorial for those killed by militants in the last 26 years across J&K. He said names of all the victims, in both the Valley and in Jammu, will be engraved on it.
[realted post]
January 19 is observed as the Exodus Day — some call it “Holocaust Day” — by Kashmiri Pandits to mark their migration from the Valley in 1990. Between 3 lakh and 4 lakh Pandits are said to have fled Kashmir since 1989, when pro-separatist militancy was nearing its peak. But despite announcement of packages by successive central and state governments to ensure their return and rehabilitation in the Valley, not many have gone back.
To make it viable, the state government has proposed to increase the relief amount for construction of houses in the Valley from the present Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. The proposal is pending before the Centre.
The visiting Pandits said they were prepared to return home, but want political, social and economic safeguards.
Members of Panun Kashmir and All-State Kashmiri Pandit Conference, meanwhile, protested outside Raj Bhavan to demand a judicial probe into the killing of Pandits in the Valley.

Exodus Day: Kashmiri Pandits revisit massacre site | The Indian Express

 

[JanjaWeed]

Kudos to Farooq Abdullah for being honest & speaking his mind. Enough of this crocodile tears for Kashmiri Pundits. Majority in Kashmir doesn't want them back there...only way to bring justice is to do away with that idiotic article 370 & flood the place with non Kashmiris.

 

[dadeechi]

Why India won't remember the day Kashmiri Pandits were left to die
Not one person has been convicted, leave alone punished for the massacre of more than a thousand Hindus of the Valley.

January 19, 1990, a date etched in our collective memory, a date that is hard to forget no matter how hard one tries to erase the memories of that night, they come back to haunt you again and again.
But then January 19, 1990 did not happen in a day.
For years, Pakistan kept training and indoctrinating many young Kashmiri Muslims to wage a jihad against India in Kashmir. Training camps were being operated in Azad Kashmir and many Kashmiri Muslim boys were being trained to fight the infidels. Armed with Kalashnikovs and the ideology of hate these terrorists came back to Kashmir to kill, maim and separate Kashmir from India. It wasn’t as if the state government or the central government did not know that all this was happening, but almost as if in a tacit understanding with the terrorists it did nothing to tackle the surge of terrorism. On the contrary, the NC government kept releasing dreaded terrorists - almost 70 of them between July to November 1989. During all this time, the writ of the terrorists went unchallenged. The National Conference government had run away and abdicated all its responsibilities. There was no administration at all.
The Kashmiri Pandits were sitting ducks waiting to be murdered.
Already the diktat of militants ran in vast swathes of Kashmir valley. Strange diktats started appearing on the walls. Everything Indian was the new untouchable. Terrorists would put out hit lists of people to be killed for being pro-India or “anti-movement”.
Prominent Kashmiri Pandits were already being targeted and killed. BJP leader and prominent social activist Tika Lal Taploo was killed in broad day light in down town Sringar...Justice Nilakanth Ganjoo was gunned down and it took hours for his body to be picked up from the road. Advocate Prem Nath Bhat was brutally killed in Anantnag area of South Kashmir. Many more not so well known were killed. The message was loud and clear. Kashmiri Pandits were targets and no one could save them. It seemed nobody cared about whether they lived, died or perished. It still wasn’t January, 1990. But Kashmiri Pandits hoped against hope that the powerful Indian nation would come to their rescue. They stayed put in the only place they knew as home.
On January 4, 1990, Aftab published a press release of Hizbul Mujahideen asking all Hindus to leave. Another newspaper Al-Safa published the same press release. Soon notices to leave were pasted on the doors of Pandits.
Yet all that happened so far would now pale into insignificance compared to what was to happen on the fateful night of January 19, 1990. It wasn’t as if one gali or one mohalla or one road was to erupt in a forceful orgy to scare and drive away Pandits.
As the darkness of the night overtook the feeble sunlight of the day the forces of evil had taken over entire Kashmir. From the bylanes of downtown Habbakadal to the nooks and corners of Rainawari, from the apple towns of Sopore and Shopian, from the bustling upscale Srinagar to sleepy hamlets of Kupwara and Handwara, there was just one cry. The one to drive away Pandits.
Thousands, nay lacs of adrenalin pumped Kashmiris, marched into the streets of the Valley shouting slogans never heard before. Mosques all over Kashmir blared out loud that Kashmir was to become Pakistan. Songs eulogising the Mujahideen were played over and over again.
Jago Jago Subah Huyee; Rus ne Baazi Haari Hain, Hind par larzaan tare hain, Ab Kashmir ki baaree hain
(Wake up, Russia has fallen and India eyes defeat, It is the turn of Kashmir to be freed.)
This song was played for a long duration, many times over and as soon as it ended, it gave way to sloganeering of a different kind, the kind that did not just target the establishment of India, but one which targeted the Pandits directly.
The slogans that were now filling the air left us in no doubt that we were about to be defiled or killed.

• • Hum Kya Chahte Azadi… (We want freedom)
  • Azzadi Ka Matlab Kya, La Illah Il lallah (Freedom means La Illah Il Laalh)
  • Agar Kashmir Main Rehna Hoga, Allah-u-Akbar Kehna Hoga (If you want to live in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-u-Akbar)
  • Ae Zalimo Ae Kafiro, Kashmir Hamara (Chod Do Oh Cruel people, you the Kafirs, Leave our Kashmir)
  • Yahan kya Chalega Nizam-e-Mustafa...

The rule of the Prophet will reign here... was still resounding in our ears when we started hearing:

• • We want Kashmir to become Pakistan without Pandit men but with their women.

It was this last slogan that terrified Kashmiri Pandits more than the fear of imminent death. Most families hid their womenfolk in attics or store rooms and gave them clear instructions to kill them just in case the crowd barged in. This was the night of doom and gloom one that refused to end. The darkness hid faces of people who were our friends and neighbours, our classmates and teammates, ones we had grown up with, yet those who were baying for our blood or wanting to rape our daughters and sisters.
The message was loud and clear. Raliv Galiv ya Chaliv - Join us, Die or Flee.
There wasn’t one village, one street, one locality, one society where these slogans weren’t shouted. The pre-planned and well orchestrated mobs that had descended on the streets of Kashmir left no one in doubt about the fate that awaited Kashmiri Pandits. As usual the administration or police was nowhere to be seen or heard of. It was an era when there was no social media and no mobile phones, and telephone density in Kashmir was next to nil. The unthinkable was to be done. Most Kashmiri Pandits started packing whatever little they could under the given circumstances and started fleeing to save their honour and lives. People fled in whatever they could. They hid under canvas covers of trucks, left in buses, hired taxis. The exodus had started. The government, intelligentsia, the seculars, the conscience keepers of this nation - all had gone to sleep. No one even talked about it.
The days that followed the night of January 19, 1990 saw Kashmiri Pandits being killed in scores every day. Atrocities against KPs had become the order of the day. From Budgam to Brijbehara, from Kupwara to Kanikadal there was hardly a day when Kashmiri Pandits weren’t been killed. Most brutal forms of torture from gouging out of eyes, to cutting genitals, to burning bodies with cigarette butts and even chopping off body parts were used to kill Pandits. Sarwanand Kaul Premi, a noted scholar had nails were hammered in place of his tilak. BK Ganjoo was killed in his home and his wife was asked to eat the rice soaked in his blood. Sarla Bhat a nurse was gangraped before being killed and her naked body was thrown on the street. The killers of Ravinder Pandita of Mattan danced over his body. The bodies of Brijlal and Choti were tied to a jeep in Shopian and dragged for 10 km.
Girja Tikoo, a school teacher in Bandipora, was gangraped before being killed. There are hundreds of such stories. One can almost write a book on the people who suffered at the hands of the terrorists while the meek and feeble Indian state looked the other way. A notorious terrorist named Bitta Karate alone killed more than 20 Pandits and had no shame accepting the same. JKLF was responsible for almost all the killings in 1990. More than a thousand Pandits were killed, tortured and raped.
The exodus meanwhile carried on.
By 1991, most Pandits had fled the valley. They were housed in huge inhospitable torn tented camps on the fringes of Jammu city. More than 50,000 families had fled and were living in camps which were bereft of even basic facilities like toilets. Each family was allotted a tent, sometimes more than 10 members shared a ramshackle tent where privacy was literally non-existent. In these camps, deaths were reported because of disease, more because of snakebites and, as the summer came, hundreds died of sun stroke and heat. No one seemed to bother. Neither the state administration nor the champions of human rights. No international aid agencies came to their rescue, neither did the government of India. The Kashmiri Pandits were left to die.
No more than 20,000 Pandits were living in Kashmir now. The process of ethnic cleansing continued in Kashmir with terrorists and a lot of Kashmiri Muslim population burning and desecrating shrines and temples of Hindu worship. Looting and arson took place in abandon. Thousands of Pandit homes, hundreds of temples were burnt and razed to ground. The land was later encroached upon. All this was happening in a multicultural, secular India but the secularists did not seem bothered.
But the Pakistan backed terrorists weren’t done yet. Their insatiable appetite for killings wasn’t satiated yet. More Pandits were to be killed. Seven massacres were inflicted on the hapless community. The terrorists did not even spare two-month old kids. Entire villages of Pandits were wiped off. Yet not a tear was shed, not an award returned, no protest marches taken out, no press statements came from film stars condemning the killing of an entire race.
As we stand today, not one person has been convicted, leave alone punished for the killing of more than a thousand Kashmiri Pandits. No commission of enquiry on the lines of 1984 anti Sikh riots or 2002 post Godhra riots has ever been commissioned to go into the cause of killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. No government has bothered to go after the murderers of Kashmiri Pandits. As our homes lie deserted, encroached and our temples in ruins, we stand at the verge of extinction, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue bothering either our political parties or the so called human rights activists.
#Jammu and Kashmir, #Kashmiri Pandits

Why India won't remember the day Kashmiri Pandits were left to die

 

[kasper95]

and who will ensure their safety.

 

[dadeechi]

Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits: What happened on January 19, 26 years ago?
26 years ago on this day, Kashmiri Pandits had witnessed a hysteric, macabre night in the form of blaring threats and slogans, asking them to flee their homeland, convert or die.

IndiaToday.in
desk-itgd@intoday.com
New Delhi, January 19, 2016 | Edited by Shreya Biswas | UPDATED 17:43 IST
A +A -

Photo: Reuters
The cold, dark night of January 19, 1990, had stirred into life the worst nightmares of Kashmiri Pandits living in the valley. Screaming from loud speakers and crowded streets was a message for the Sikhs and Hindus living in Kashmir -

Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (either convert to Islam, leave the land, or die).

The threats had been coming in for a long time, but the night of January 19 is said to have seen a demented assault of a different level. Even 26 years later, Kashmiri Pandits shiver remembering the night that forced them into exodus.

Several authors have penned down accounts and personal experiences of the exodus over the years. What remains common in these descriptions is the fright that gripped this particular night.


Here's an excerpt of Col Tej Kumar Tikoo's book, Kashmir: Its Aborigines and Their Exodus, describing the fateful night:

"As the night fell, the microscopic community became panic-stricken when the Valley began reverberating with the war-cries of Islamists, who had stage-managed the whole event with great care; choosing its timing and the slogans to be used. A host of highly provocative, communal and threatening slogans, interspersed with martial songs, incited the Muslims to come out on the streets and break the chains of 'slavery'. These exhortations urged the faithful to give a final push to the Kafir in order to ring in the true Islamic order. These slogans were mixed with precise and unambiguous threats to Pandits.They were presented with three choices - Ralive, Tsaliv ya Galive (convert to Islam, leave the place or perish). Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims poured into the streets of the Valley, shouting 'death to India' and death to Kafirs...
... The Pandits could see the writing on the wall. If they were lucky enough to see the night through, they would have to vacate the place before they met the same fate as Tikka Lal Taploo and many others. The Seventh Exodus was surely staring them in the face. By morning, it became apparent to Pandits that Kashmiri Muslims had decided to throw them out from the Valley. Broadcasting vicious Jehadi sermons and revolutionary songs, interspersed with blood curdling shouts and shrieks, threatening Kashmiri Pandits with dire consequences, became a routine 'Mantra' of the Muslims of the Valley, to force them to flee from Kashmir..."

Different accounts give different statistics of the total number of Kashmiri Pandits who fled their homes for their life in the 1990s. While some say around 1,00,000 of them had left the valley, others suggest figures as high as 1,50,000 to 1,90,000.
A report by the Jammu and Kashmir government says as many as 219 people from this community were killed in the region between 1989 and 2004.
In his book, Our Moon Has Blood Clots, author and journalist Rahul Pandita gives a timeline of the events that brought about the exodus. In this, Pandita writes about the murder of political activist Tika Lal Taploo in September 1989 and goes on list many more horrid memories.

Here's an excerpt of this timeline:

'September 1989
Pandit political activist, Tika Lal Taploo is shot dead by armed men outside his residence.
January 1990
Massive crowds assemble in mosques across valley, shouting anti-india, anti-pandit slogans. The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits begins. In the next few months, hundreds of innocent Pandits are tortured, killed and raped. By the year-end, about 350,000 Pandits have escaped from the Valley and taken refuge in Jammy and elsewhere. Only a handful of them stay back.
March 1997
Terrorists drag out seven Kashmiri Pandits from their houses in Sangrampora village and gun them down.
January 1998
23 Kashmiri Pandits, including women and children, shot in cold blood in Wandhama Village.
March 2003
24 Kashmiri Pandits, including infants, brutally shot dead in Nadimarg Village.
2012
Thousands of Pandits still languish in refugee settlements of 8 x 8. After more than two decades, the Kashmiri Pandit community has still not been able to return to their ancestral land. They are dispersed all over from Jammu to Johannesburg."
India has seen several changes ever since that fateful night in 1990. New governments have come and gone, multiple developments have come forth nationwide, but scores of Kashmiri Pandits who were chased out of their homes have still not been able to find a way back.
When will they be able to return home?


Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits: What happened on January 19, 26 years ago? : FYI, News - India Today

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

Secular kashmiris backed by Peaceful religion state Pakistan.

Why does it matter? Pakistan will only care if the person is a muslim.

I am for Israel type Ghettos in Kashmir.

 

[Indian_Devil]

would not beg for their return but then drove them out again from their lands voilently while killing them and dishonouring their daughters......
great people, great credo...

 

[srshkmr]

TIme for Bihar and UP to make a second colony in Kashmir

 

[LaBong]

Honest question - did Narendra Modi say anything about Kashmiri Pandits after 2014?

 

[vayuputhra]

All the Indian govts have failed hindus, Hindus can no more trust that the govt will save us, kashmiri pandiths instead of crying they should make those cry who brought them to this stage.

 

[Tshering22]

Secular kashmiris backed by Peaceful religion state Pakistan.

Why does it matter? Pakistan will only care if the person is a muslim.

I am for Israel type Ghettos in Kashmir.

Defence News, Maritime Democratic Powers like India and Japan should forge alliances to checkmate China

Looks like our Hindu brothers and sisters are also fed up of nonsense.

Honest question - did Narendra Modi say anything about Kashmiri Pandits after 2014?

It is being done by Dr Swamy. PM Modi's role is different.

I was seeing AAP KI ADALAT of Rajat Sharma. He said it along with the ancient Hindu temple issue.

would not beg for their return but then drove them out again from their lands voilently while killing them and dishonouring their daughters......
great people, great credo...

That is secularism.

Kattar Soch Nahi, Yuva Josh.

They don't think radical; they DO it with youthful force.

 

[LaBong]

It is being done by Dr Swamy. PM Modi's role is different.

Lol, you guys surely have different standard for different PMs.

 

[Tshering22]

Lol, you guys surely have different standard for different PMs.

Nice bait. You want PM Modi to storm into Kashmir so that you can say how communal he is.

Try that with someone else. And try it after you have the guts to speak out against what the pandits, us and sikhs suffered here.

Or your words don't hold any water.

 

[LaBong]

Nice bait. You want PM Modi to storm into Kashmir so that you can say how communal he is.

Try that with someone else. And try it after you have the guts to speak out against what the pandits, us and sikhs suffered here.

Or your words don't hold any water.

Lol okay ...