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| Jammu’s response to Shopian episode | | |
YASH BHASIN
The appeal made by Majlis-e-Mashawarat Shopian (MMS) to displaced Kashmiri Pandits living outside the valley and the people of Jammu to join its struggle for identifying and arresting the culprits responsible for rape and murder of teenager Aashya and her pregnant sister-in-law Neelofar of Shopian, on May 29 raises many pertinent questions.
Let us be candid enough to admit that the battered KPs, who have been hounded out of their homes and hearths by the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and the people of Jammu, mainly Hindus, reeling under perpetual discriminations and raw deal at the hands of Kashmiri politicians and who are opposed tooth and nail to any move by Kashmiri politicians to dismember J&K from India, are not only insensitive to the genuine suffering of Kashmiri Muslims but even relish and feel bizarre jubilation over their humiliation and occasionally excesses committed against them by the administration and some sections of the security forces personnel. Having suffered injustices and affront to their dignity and self respect at the hands of Kashmir centric rulers, the people of Jammu in general get sadist pleasure over what they believe as poetic justice being meted out to common Kashmiris, who have hardly ever protested against the atrocities committed by the terrorists on the common man, indulging in merciless killing of the innocent and committing rape and arson on women belonging to Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities.
The Kashmiri Pandits whose holocaust and virtual genocide between 1989 and 1992, with honour of their women folk plundered by the fanatics and who have hardly received any sympathy from even well meaning, liberal and secular Muslims in Kashmir, who failed to raise a voice of protest against the same, do feel a sense of negative satisfaction over the honour of Muslim women being plundered, either by the militants, towards whom most of the Kashmiris are sympathetic or by some security personnel and excesses committed against them. The other reason for overall insensitiveness and lack of concern, rather negative response among the Jammu people over the wrong done to Kashmiri Muslims has been the element of secession introduced in the protest lodged by the Kashmiris and the demonstration getting manifestation of anti India tirade, assuming separatist overtones, with slogans of “Aazadi” and demand for “Occupying forces of India” to leave the valley as well as for holding of plebiscite etc.
Yet on these accounts insensitiveness and total non concern of the people of Jammu, particularly the Jammu Hindus and migrant Kashmiri Pandits as well as the people in other parts of the country towards trauma undergone by the common Kashmiri over sexual assaults on their women folk is least justified. An innocent man in street should not be made to pay of the anti national and even violent acts committed by some others. Neelofar and Aashya had hardly any link with the terrorists nor are they responsible for the mass exodus of Hindus from Kashmir as well as perpetual injustices hurled on the Jammu people. Even their men folk are not believed to be involved in anti country activities. Hence the inhuman treatment and indignity meted out to them is a dastardly act which deserves severest condemnation from all the right thinking people. Such heinous acts on the part of some criminal minded security personnel bring blot on the fair name of Indian security forces and the country as a whole. These also strengthen the hands of terrorists and secessionists, who exploit the victims and make them fodder in the cannons of their nefarious agenda and machinations.
The nationalist and patriotic people of Jammu and in the rest of the country have the more reason to feel shocked and anguished over such heinous acts. Unfortunately no statement of condemnation of the inhuman and dastardly act has come from any BJP leader or leader of any other Jammu centric political party, even after the commission of rape and murder of women in question has been established and prima fascia men in uniform are proved to be responsible for the crime. However with the needle of suspicion pointing towards men in the state police, precisely SoG of State police the demand for withdrawal of central para military forces and army from civilian areas in Kashmir and their replacement by the state police gets blunted.
The insensitiveness and lack of concern by the Hindus of Jammu and Kashmiri pundits as well as the enlightened people in the civil society in the rest of the country makes the victims of such human acts vulnerable to the poisonous anti India propaganda of the secessionist, as the former fall easy pray to the latter’s machinations. While the victims of heinous acts and atrocities in Kashmir and their genuine supporters should delink their grievance and resentment from the secessionist and anti India agenda of the separatist outfits, the nationalist people of Jammu and the country, opposed to the agenda of the former to dismember J&K from India should distinguish between the protest lodged by common Kashmiri over some real injustice and atrocity committed against them and the occasional political stunts indulged into by the separatists. They should join their aggrieved brethren in Kashmir in lodging the strongest protest against heinous acts of rape of women and wanton killings of the innocent.
Happily the appeal issued by the MMS has got a quick response from Kashmiri Pandits still living in Kashmir. Kashmiri Pandits Sangarsh Smiti, an organization of few KPs still living in the valley has condemned in strongest terms the rape and killing of two Shopian women allegedly by police men and has demanded severe punishment to the culprits. It has announced its own program of protest, appealing all Kashmiri citizens to wear black badges on their arms till the culprits are not identified and punished. But what is more important is for Kashmiri Hindu migrants to express and demonstrate their solidarity with the aggrieved family. The few left over Kashmiri Hindus in the valley can be interpreted to be acting under mental duress, since their safety in the valley lies in the goodwill of and pleasure of Muslims there.
In the meanwhile the violent demonstration in Baramullah over alleged misbehavior of an SHO and a police cop with the wife of an accused for involvement in the kidnapping of a 14 year old girl by the brother-in-law of the accused introduces yet another dimension to the entire subject of debate. Strong protests were lodged by the people of Baramullah in the face of complaint by the wife of the accused that as she went to the police station to plead for the release of her husband, the SHO and a cop in the police station asked her for spending a night with them in exchange for the release of her husband. The protestors turned violent and police retaliated, leading to death of two civilians in police firing and injuries to 20 civilians and 30 policemen in the clash between the police and the protestors. But ironically none of the protestors or anyone else has shown any concern for the abducted girl, who too was a Kashmiri Muslim and the aggrieved family. No protest has been lodged against this heinous act committed by a civilian. These incidents weaken the case of protestors against the rape and murder of two Shopian women and blunts their appeal to KP migrants and Jammu people to join in their protest.
Further there have been several cases of false complaints and cries of foul play by the security forces, including molestation and misbehavior with women, aimed at maligning the forces, to provide impetus to the secessionist agenda, creating an impression of genocide of Kashmiri Muslims at the hands of Indian government and its forces in Kashmir. To win sympathies of the people of Jammu and of the countrymen as a whole and to awaken their conscious over such heinous acts. These mischievous game plans and machinations by the secessionists must be opposed by the civil society in Kashmir.
(Author is a senior journalist and columnist based at Jammu. Views expressed here are purely his own. Send him feedback at: [email protected])
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