Early Times Report
JAMMU, May 15: It was on that dark day, January 1990, that almost 4.5 lakh minority Hindus and thousands of Dogras and Punjabis quit Kashmir and become refugees in their own motherland. They didn't quit their original habitat on their own. They were forced to quit their homes and hearths and live like refugees in Jammu, Udhampur, Delhi and other places of the country. They had been given two-day notice to quit the Valley. They were forced to quit their homes and leave behind their houses, orchards, business establishments, jobs, holy shrines and temples and what not because they had refused to join the anti-India movement. They preferred exodus over their commitment to India.
Ever since then, the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus had been terming their exodus and murder of over 1000 community members, including women and children, "Kashmiri genocide" and had been urging the Government of India to recognize this reality, but with no result. Not one government in New Delhi, including the Vajpayee Government, appreciated their demand.
It was only the Narendra Modi Government, which for the first time catalogued the reasons which forced the miniscule minority of Kashmiri Hindus to quit their homes and hearths more than 29 years ago. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi reflected on the reasons behind their exodus and the Union Home Ministry also spoke on the circumstances leading to the migration of Hindus from Kashmir in 1990.
The Prime Minister has held the Congress directly responsible for the Hindu exodus from Kashmir. "Will the 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," the Prime Minister has repeatedly said during his election meetings across the nation.
As for the Union Home Ministry, it has held the JKLF responsible for the Hindu exodus from the Valley. "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," Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba has said.
All this suggests that the attitude of New Delhi is changing and that there are elements in the establishment who have been calling the problem by name. All this augers well for the nation, for J&K and for the Hindu refugees living in different parts of the country. |
