Kashmiri Pandits and Assembly Elections

In a country where democracy has been reduced to the level of a vote bank, it is no surprise if the national or regional elections have become an anathema to the Kashmiri Pandit community. In the first place, they are numerically almost immaterial in a State where, after suffering unceasing persecution for more than six centuries under hostile regimes with fanatical social paradigms, they are reduced to fingertip count and thinly distributed throughout the Valley of Kashmir.

 

Secondly, since vote bank politics means patronizing the majority from which political and social power flows, suppression of a minority whose religious and philosophical beliefs are diametrically opposed to those of the majority community, is a putative corollary. Additionally, constitutional derecognition of a religious minority in a numerically imbalanced society is tantamount to squeezing the minority community to its nadir.

 

The result is that the religious minority is bereft of rights and privileges that would normally accrue to them in the light of existing universal practice. The reason why Sheikh Abdullah opposed recognizing any community as a minority is not that he was inimical towards the Kashmir Pandits. He was against minority-ism because he knew if the status was conceded, the entire Jammu region Hindus would be entitled to a plethora of privileges not expandable to Kashmir Valley. This proves that his concept of secularism was region-centric and not universal.

 

This explains why voting in elections has become an anathema to the Kashmiri Pandits. If the Home Minister could, for a moment, come out of the vote-bank syndrome, it would not be too difficult for him to have a second thought about accusing the Pandits of not coming out to cast their vote. To Kashmiri Hindus imposition of a pseudo-democratic and almost dictatorial constitution is tantamount to the legalization of their oppression and suppression.
This is perfectly in line with the thinking of the rulers in New Delhi and their proxies in J&K. What steps have any of the in-power political parties at the centre tried to mitigate this serious discrepancy in the State Constitution over seven and half decades of independence? None. The ruling parties in J&K gave this legalization the subtle name of Kashmiriyat.

 

 

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The other day, out of several political organizations of the KPs in exile, one of them met together and passed a resolution of boycotting the forthcoming Assembly election. Numerous political groups from various mainstream political parties have furiously reacted to it, castigating the said resolution and labelling the KPs as anti-democracy, anti-national and unpatriotic.

 

Many of them are connected with the BJP. The Home Minister is reported to have remarked that he has the full statistics of how many KPs cast or did not cast votes in respective booths during parliamentary elections. In other words, he means to convey to the KPs that safeguarding their rights and interests is subject to the votes cast in favour of the BJP. In political parlance, it is called an overt attempt of persecution.

 

During the decades of militancy, many mainstream political parties boycotted parliamentary/assembly elections. PDP led by the Muftis was at the forefront of such dissenters. Yet the BJP formed a coalition government with PDP. How many votes were cast in favour of BJP by PDP voters? Has the Home Minister kept its count?

 

The subject in hand is the resolution of one group of KP displaced persons calling for the boycott of the assembly election. Boycotting an election in a country with a democratic dispensation is painful and inadvisable. It is an extreme step not to be taken without a brain-storming debate. Even the staunchest opponents try to avoid it. The Indian democratic system allows other ways of expressing dissent if it comes to dissent. We have NOTA, a milder form of boycott, conveying a negative message to the other party. The KP resolution dispenses with the option and it is sad as well as painful.

 

The boycott has been announced for the alleged failure of the government to concede that there was a genocide of the Hindu minority and religious cleansing in Kashmir in 1989-90. In this case, the Indian government has reacted almost in the same manner in which the militant organisations and their handlers have reacted. Let us try to sift the grain from the husk.

 

It is not the first time that the displaced community has made this demand. The community raised the issue at many international and national platforms including the National Commission for Human Rights. Nobody listened to them. They asked for IDP status according to the charter of the UNHRC. No. They submitted an authentic and fully scrutinized list of targeted killings. No. They asked for constituting a Court of Inquiry into the rise of fundamentalism and terrorism in Kashmir in 1989-90. No. They asked for IDP (Internally Displaced Person) status, not Migrants. No. The Supreme Court said it was a three-decade-old case and evidence could not be culled out. But the same Supreme Court opened the case of Sikh genocide in 1984 in Delhi that had happened six years before the Kashmir genocide and ethnic cleansing happened. The judges take an oath of impartiality and fair justice when assuming office. Not only the Government but the SC as well is an anathema to them.

 

Groupism is the bane of Hindu society. Let us not open that sordid debate. The point is that one of the numerous groups of KPs has recently resolved in a meeting to boycott the assembly election owing to the government’s failure to declare the genocide of the community in the 1990-armed uprising in the State.

 

But, the Pandits have a point which must be clarified. It is not the first time that this minority community has demanded that the tragedy thrust upon them is genocide and ethnic cleansing, which the government should have acknowledged publicly in the name of justice for all. It has to acknowledge its failure to protect the life and property of this minority, a responsibility which the Indian Constitution enjoins upon the sitting government.

 

 

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In the initial days of the rise of externally sponsored and internally abetted armed insurgency in Kashmir, the Government of India clearly saw the massive violation of human rights of the Kashmir Hindu minority and did not hesitate to apprise the international community of this gross injustice. Let me illuminate the argument.

 

In an official memorandum of the MHA to the International Commission of Jurists — an affiliate NGO of the UNHRC — the then Government of India (1994) clearly stated what had befallen the Hindu minority of the Valley. The memorandum says: “The events since 1988-89 need to be seen in this background. The violence in the State since then has been characterized by ……. the targeted killing of members of the Hindu minority community which has led to the exodus of over 250,000 members of the community resulting in a change in the very demographic profile of the area and blatant religious cleansing; use of indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians generally to create terror; and, selective killing of media persons and attacks on media installations to cause, not merely a breakdown of independent journalism, but also to force the media to act as a mouth-piece …..” (Para 22, page 106, Human Rights in Kashmir: Report of a Mission, Geneva, 1995).

 

 

How else would one define genocide and ethnic cleansing than the contents of this memorandum? The INHRC’s verdict on the genocide and religious cleansing of the Kashmiri IDPs said “It was akin to genocide.” The then Government of India realizing that the verdict could implicate the internal abettors of genocide, suppressed the verdict of the INHRC as well as the Report of the ICJ so that it does not put the internal abettors in docks.
In early 2024, the Home Minister paid a 4-day long visit to Jammu. He visited many bereaved families in different towns in Jammu to extend the government’s sympathy. Who will not appreciate this noble gesture? But he refused even a five-minute audience with the President of KP Sabha, Jammu.

 

 

Last winter, Prime Minister Modi paid an official 2-day visit to Srinagar. He addressed a mammoth gathering of over 2 lakh people. In an hour-long public address, he touched upon almost every aspect of the Kashmir situation but he did not even once take the name of displaced Kashmiri Hindus, several lakhs of them living in forced exile. Rehabilitation of former Kashmiri militants is his problem but the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir is not his problem. In this background, displaced Kashmiri Hindus highly appreciate the golden slogan of PM Modi viz. “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas” if and when extended to them.

The writer is the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University, Srinagar.