- May 13, 2019, 4:06 pm
A Kashmiri Pandit offers prayers
during the annual Hindu festival at the Khirbhawani temple in the village of
Tullamulla, east of Srinagar.
Snapshot
· The Modi government is the only
hope for the rehabilitation and restoration of Kashmiri Pandit glory.
And it has begun well with the arrest of the genocide mastermind Yasin
Malik.
Who killed Cock Robin could be an apt
literary metaphor for the certain extinction that faces the Kashmiri Pandit
community today. If there is one beacon of hope, it is Prime Minister Modi.
Certain developments give some indications that if he is re-elected, it will be
with a mandate to address the burning issues of the Kashmiri Pandits,
specifically, and that of Kashmir generally.
The first noteworthy development
which went unnoticed by political analysts is that in 2014, the BJP manifesto
had merely stated that it would ‘facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits.’
This time, in 2019, the BJP manifesto states, ‘We will make all efforts to
ensure the safe return of Kashmiri Pandits.’ This certainly sets the bar for a
much higher level of accountability. By contrast, no other State party and even
for that matter national parties such as the Congress cared to even mention the
Kashmiri Pandit issue.
More interestingly is the
much-delayed government action to arrest Yasin Malik and put him on trial in
Jammu for cases against him and his murderous organisation, Jammu Kashmir
Liberation Front. In the words of the Union Home Secretary, Rajiv Gauba, on 22
March 2019, ‘Murders of Kashmiri Pandits by JKLF in 1989 triggered their exodus
from the Valley. Malik was the mastermind behind the purging of Kashmiri
Pandits from the Kashmir Valley and is responsible for their genocide.’ It is
good and long overdue that JKLF has been banned for being a terrorist
organisation.
On 12 August 2016, Prime Minister
Modi stated at an all-party meeting on Jammu and Kashmir, ‘It is also a fact
that Kashmiri Pandits have been displaced from their centuries-old ancestral
dwellings in Kashmir Valley. Such an atrocity against a particular community is
the misdeed of terrorists trained and armed with weapons by Pakistan, and their
sympathizers. These can never be the deeds of those who believe in “Kashmiriyat.”’
By 14 April 2019, the PM had upped
his ante. In Kathua, he threw out a public challenge, ‘Will Congress ever be
able to provide justice to Kashmiri Pandits? It is due to Congress' policies
that my Kashmiri Pandit brothers and sisters had to leave their homes? The
party and its allies witnessed the atrocities committed against Pandits but
they paid no heed,” he said.
He was addressing an election rally
in support of Union minister Jitendra Singh who was seeking re-election from
Udhampur parliamentary constituency. Modi said that even today, the Congress
was reluctant to speak on the issue of Pandits, but “this chowkidar is
promise-bound to resettle them on their land. This process has already
been started."
This is again a subtle but a
strategic shift. Till now, Kashmir-centric policies have been about managing
people towards predetermined outcomes through proxies who have commandeered
public resources for great personal gains. This has not only alienated the
people but also has not yielded the desired outcomes.
Managing processes is what a
democratically elected government is mandated to do. These governance processes
are the common ones dealing with security, stability and sustainability among
others. Processes are housed inside and are driven by institutions. This is
what has completely compromised and broken down in Kashmir.
The Prime Minister and his party seem
to have identified what change in management process they want to institute.
The first step in this process has to be to present it to the key stakeholders
so that they can line up behind it. At the very top of this list of
stakeholders is clearly the Kashmiri Pandit community. After all, it is their
lives, their livelihood, their future that is at stake here.
Who within the community is the right
party for the Prime Minister to engage with in a strategic dialogue? After all,
as the rhyme Who killed Cock Robin warns us, all have fished
in the troubled waters of Kashmir especially when it comes to the Kashmiri
Pandits? And Kashmiri Pandits have their share of saints and their sinners,
their collaborators and complicit compromisers.
Happily, there is a group that is
eminently qualified, ready, willing and able. The Global Kashmiri Pandit
Diaspora (GKPD) is a worldwide movement of Kashmiri Pandits which has been in
existence for the last 10 years. It has interacted with policy makers at the
highest level. Reflecting its own process culture, it conducted a grassroots campaign
in Summer of 2018 which resulted in 35 organisations, representing virtually
the entire community along with 15,000 signatories agreeing to a mandate.
The demands address the community’s
core needs in the area of return, rehabilitation and restitution. This mandate
was personally presented to Minister of Home Affairs, Rajnath Singh, in the
Fall of 2018. GKPD has the representative legitimacy to deal with the
Government of India on community matters and should be recognised as such.
Its members have a long track record
of philanthropic support for the community which gives them credibility to get
things done and, therefore, be seen as able to demonstrate their capacity to
execute. GKPD’s operating style, based on transparency, contribution and collaboration,
has made GKPD a trustworthy brand within the global Kashmiri Pandit community.
With one stroke of recognition of
GKPD as representing the one voice, one demand of the community, Prime Minister
Modi can signal his intent to get down to serious business.
The next step is to recognise that
for the Government of India to negotiate with GKPD as the community’s
representatives is the wrong way to proceed forward. Any people-centric
approach will also create a people-centric reaction. There will be fierce
opposition by those who would want the Kashmiri Pandits to become extinct.
Again, it is the process driven framework that is the best practice answer
here.
The Kashmiri Pandits situation fits
all of the criteria governing Internally Displaced Persons (IDP). That is the
framework which has to be customised to the situation here. This framework
ensures that the KP issue does not become a political football but is dealt
with in a manner that has legitimacy under international law. There is no need
to reinvent the wheel when the global community has already come up with best
practices dealing with such a tragedy and to which India is an official
signatory.
Within the IDP framework, the number
one priority is to work jointly on an imaginative confidence-building measure
which is focused on rehabilitation measures. These cannot be token handouts
which lead to second-class citizen status within J&K state and are not
sustainable in the long term. Kashmiri Pandits are not lacking in courage or
desire. For example, the news media has today covered the story of Roshanlal
Mawa who was hit by four bullets in 1990 while returning to Kashmir.
But his attackers are still at large.
In addition to a zero-tolerance policy against terrorists, there has to be a
punitive policy against those who are threats to the miniscule Kashmiri Pandit
minority in the Valley. This must be the foundation over which other measures
can be overlaid. Kashmiri Pandits can be the poster children of a state
empowering displaced people through skill training so that they can take their
rightful place in society.
Again, GKPD has been running
programmes in this sphere with infrastructure in place. The government need
only provide the scale-up resources. A point of note is that the first and
largest skilling university in India is run by a Kashmiri Pandit activist who
can be co-opted in this mission.
The end game of the Kashmiri Pandits
is to live in a secure, smart, sustainable area within their homeland in the
Valley. A glide path can be formulated with milestones so that there is an
understanding on how it will be affected. When this is initiated, then and only
then can the Government of India take comfort that it has discharged its
responsibility to its citizens in the state. Responsibility carries both components
of responsiveness and ability within it. Prime Minister Modi can, therefore,
demonstrate that what was lacking to date on both fronts has been rectified
suitably.
When this goal is achieved, the
Kashmiri Pandits can become stakeholders and partners in solving the Kashmir
problem. After all, we have lived with it for 700 years and know the contours
and the inside out of it. One way to understand the Kashmir problem is to once
again examine the learnings from similar situations.
The most applicable is the famous
Stanley Milgram experiments which were conducted at Yale University. The
shocking results which defied what expert psychologists expected were that
ordinary people would commit violent acts not because they were sadists or evil
but because they were loath to disobey an authority figure’s directives.
People follow those who are perceived
as having moral or legal authority. This response is ingrained in them in
school, in the family and in political groups. Miller’s article on The
Perils of Obedience laid out how people will go to any extremity from
an autonomous state to an agentic state based on authoritative triggers and
commit horrific acts.
What this suggests is that the Indian
state has got it completely wrong. The milieu that needs to be created is that
the cabal of religious political leaders in the state needs to be severely
curbed even as the common man is given more freedom. This will take the oxygen
out of the terrorists who today are glorified by Valley society. In a liberal
democracy such as India, this has been difficult to execute but a way has to be
found which is legal.
The panchayat empowerment initiative
is a step in the right direction and no wonder the separatists hate it. Removal
of Article 35-A should be an immediate priority. In my article in Swarajya on
14 August 2017 titled, “Explained – How The ‘Article 35-A Lawsuit’ Can Right
a Historic Wrong in Jammu and Kashmir” I stated, ‘It will let new
leaders with a liberating vision take the place of old Sheikhs, injecting fresh
development within the state.’
Finally, the Government of India
should examine the merits and demerits of the Kashmiri Pandit community’s
desire to take Pakistan to task in international venues for being the key
instigator of the genocide of Pandits. Rhetoric by Prime Minister Modi on
naming and shaming Pakistan is necessary but not sufficient. While Prime
Minister Modi should be commended for his firm stance and eventual success in
getting Masood Azhar declared a global terrorist, the difficulties in doing so
highlight the challenges in applying the terrorist framework to reform
Pakistan. And there will be no shortage of Masood Azhars as history shows.
By contrast, a judgement against
Pakistan for aiding and abetting the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits will have
teeth and claws to it. The Government of India can cooperate with the Kashmiri
Pandit diaspora in providing the information that will nail Pakistan’s
complicity. The Government of India has nothing to fear here. It does not
violate its dictum that India does not want international interference. It is
the civil community which will act.
When one looks at ethnic cleansing
data, the genocide conclusion is inescapable. The Kashmiri Pandits were given
48 hours’ notice to leave the Valley. The community was completely cleansed,
450,000 had to flee under enormous duress with loss of life, limb and assets.
As many as 1,397 Kashmiri Pandits and other non-Muslims who were killed have
been identified to the individual level and more names are being added, a
painstaking and painful exercise.
Srinagar was the number one locality
but Varahamulla and Anantnag and Kupwara followed in their count. What is
shocking is that the number of locations they were killed in which is in the
hundreds, demonstrating the reach and spread of the theofascist command and
control system that is in place. There were 1,403 Hindu religious places, 975
temples and 428 cremation grounds. Out of these, 347 have been desecrated or
destroyed, and 217 dharmshalas destroyed. Others have been taken over or the
land encroached. All revenue records have been suppressed or falsified.
The Kashmiri Pandits know their
truth. It has served them well and they will never compromise on it. This truth
cannot be subverted and is only growing stronger with time as the community
spreads its wings around the globe.
Their hand of partnership is extended
to Prime Minister Modi to craft win-win outcomes based on robust processes
which are instituted by him. A predecessor BJP leader at the very top of the governance
hierarchy told me a decade ago in New York, ‘Mr. Kaul, what happens to Kashmiri
Pandits will be the litmus test of the idea of India.’
The idea of India should be an
inspiring India where every Indian stands tall. As a winner and not a victim.
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