Early Times Report
Jammu, Jan 18: Apni Party General Secretary and former MLC of Jammu and Kashmir, Vijay Bakaya, paid homage to the victims of violence and recalled the storm of hatred that uprooted the Kashmiri Pandit (KP) community from the Kashmir Valley during the 1990s.
In a statement to the press, Vijay Bakaya said that 36 years ago, a wave of hatred and violence struck the KP community, forcing them out of their homes in Kashmir, which had been theirs for centuries. Women, children, elderly people, writers, intellectuals, poets, and government employees were mercilessly killed solely for belonging to the Hindu faith.
Bakaya, who also served as Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir, said that over the last 36 years the KP community has lived in exile in Jammu and other parts of the country. They have survived in tents, tenements, and rented accommodations, living as refugees in their own land.
“Yet their heads have never bowed. They have endured the misery of displacement and have not allowed their spirit to be broken. However, their nostalgia for the paradise they once lived in continues to cause deep pain,” he said.
He added that successive governments at both the Centre and the State have failed to reassure the community that their return to their homes is a priority.
“Only lip service is offered day and night by claiming that Kashmir is incomplete without Kashmiri Pandits. Those dependent solely on relief have been pleading for its enhancement, but all such appeals have fallen on deaf ears,” he remarked.
“Today, Kashmiri Pandits, wherever they are, urge the government to take concrete steps in consultation with their representatives to rehabilitate them in the Valley in accordance with their wishes,” Bakaya said. |
