The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley of Kashmir is by far the greatest moral calamity and administrative failure of modern India that dwarfs other comparable atrocities.
The chargesheet filed by the State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Monday (June 29) against five operatives of the banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) for murder, including its jailed chief, Yasin Malik in the brutal murder of a Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat that took place nearly 35 years ago is a welcome step in the right direction; a much needed moral course correction in the history of modern Kashmir; a case of “better late than never.” It offers a glimmer of hope to the Kashmiri Pandits who were killed and driven out of Kashmir in the 1990s that justice may yet be done.
In a country like India that is ethnically diverse, religiously plural and linguistically different, sectarian conflict is inevitable, occasionally resulting in a major calamity. India has had its fair share of notable communal discords: the Gujarat riots of 2002, immediately come to our mind; to a lesser extent we remember the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, but completely forgotten from public memory is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir.
In such instances, the duty of a government is to ensure immediate law and order to prevent loss of innocent lives. Subsequently the government must investigate the root cause of the disturbance, arrest all culprits and determine whether action was taken in a timely manner to prevent recurrences.
Post the assassination of PM Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, an orgy of mob violence gripped Delhi in which close to 3,000 Sikhs were killed. An enraged Congress party deliberately delayed calling in the Army for 48 hours, allowing the killings to continue. Initial investigating bodies (Marwah, Mishra etc) commissioned by the Congress were merely eyewashes. The Nanavati Commission appointed in 2000, however, found clear evidence of culpability on the part of local Congress leaders and recommended the opening of closed cases.
As a result, a prominent Congress leader, Sajjan Kumar was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court in 2018 and Jagdish Tytler, another well-known leader, is still facing charges. Other local leaders have also been convicted with one of them being sentenced to death.
The Gujarat 2002 riots remain the most extensively investigated of all Indian calamities partly due to the focused media attention that it received. In 2002, Gujarat was the scene of horrific communal riots that were triggered by the burning to death in a train compartment of 59 Hindu pilgrims including women and children by a Muslim mob in Godhra. Over 1,000 (790 Muslim and 254 Hindus) lost their lives in the riots.
Allegations of administrative failure were thoroughly investigated. The Nanavati-Mehta Commission concluded that the Godhra train fire was a “pre-planned conspiracy” and there was no evidence of serious lapses on the part of the government. A Special Investigation Team decreed by the Supreme Court interrogated scores of witnesses including Narendra Modi (who was the then Chief Minister of Gujarat) and stated that there was no prosecutable evidence against Narendra Modi and 62 others. Individual cases like the Godhra train burning, the Naroda Patiya massacre and the Gulbarg Society massacre specifically resulted in significant convictions including a former BJP minister Maya Kodnani.
In contrast to the Gujarat riots, government attitude towards the ethnic cleansing of KPs has been one of singular apathy. The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley of Kashmir is by far the greatest moral calamity and administrative failure of modern India that dwarfs other comparable atrocities: over a quarter million Hindu citizens were driven from their homes to become refugees in their own land, close to 1,000 of them were killed and 16,000 of their homes were burnt to cinder. To complete this picture their temples were also desecrated and destroyed.
While it is easy to shift the blame to Pakistan sponsored terrorists, it cannot absolve the Indian government and Indian society of their responsibilities. There was a total failure, at all levels: society, government-local and central, press and human rights commissions—all abrogated their responsibility.
What makes this human tragedy even more egregious is that no serious attempt has been made to ascertain what went wrong in this mother of all failures—a total collapse of governance. There has not been a single investigation to date.
The million dollar question is why? Is it because the victims are Hindus? And is it because any investigation would make the Muslim majority of Kashmir uncomfortable and therefore politically sensitive? Is it to buy a transactional but superficial peace in Kashmir for global optics at the cost of Hindu lives?
According to a 2008 J&K police report, militants killed at least 209 Kashmiri Pandits from 1989 onwards (The KPs indicate that the number is closer to 1000) with 109 of those killings occurring in 1990 alone. The report also stated that out of 140 registered cases, chargesheets were filed in only 24, leaving the perpetrators unidentified in 115 cases—a travesty of justice.
Those responsible for these heinous crimes must be tracked down and brought to justice; many of whom roam around in Kashmir in plain sight. Some even boast about their treacherous exploits on camera; one terrorist confessed in an interview that he had lost count after killing 20 Hindus.
While the government has reopened the cases relating to the killings of Sarla Bhat and Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo, there needs to be a broader and a more determined initiative to include all unresolved cases of killings.
The tortured souls of Girija Tickoo—a 28-year-old gang raped and sawed into two while alive—Sarla Bhat, a nurse abducted from a premier hospital and killed, and Justice Ganjoo (killed in a busy street) and others cry out for answers. Their cries echo through the vast length and breadth of India pleading for a justice that has been denied to them. Unfortunately, no one hears them; their cries are lost or neglected in the political correctness of our times and in the cacophonous din of a warped secularism that marginalizes Hindu victimhood dubbing it as majoritarianism.
Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, once said, “I see what I am doing as a warning to the murderers of tomorrow. A warning that they will never rest in peace.”
With apologies to him I will say: “Reopening the cases will serve as a warning to the murderers of yesteryears. A warning that they will never rest in peace”
