Insurgency is the biggest business in the northeast

The terrorist attacks in the northeast are the most serious in recent years, killing at least a hundred people and maiming scores of others.

Who are the terrorists operating in India’s seven northeastern states?

G Vinayak provides a primer to the terrorist groups in the northeast.

India’s northeast has the dubious distinction of being home to Asia’s longest running insurgency.

The Nagas led by A Z Phizo launched an insurrection against the newly-formed Indian nation way back in 1956.

Since then the Naga insurgency has spawned dozens of similar protests across the region that still remains on the periphery of national consciousness.

Each of the seven states in the region today has some insurgency or the other keeping the state busy, often dominating and
setting the agenda in the respective geographical area.

At last count there were at least 15 major groups in the region that have been banned by the Centre. If you take the smaller groups, the number is closer to 40.

Over the last decade, at least 11,000 people, including security forces, civilians and militants, have been killed in insurgency-related violence in the four major states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura.

A majority of these outfits were formed in the 1980s or early 1990s but each of them is an offshoot of earlier attempts to rebel against the Indian State.

Except the Naga insurgency, most of the outfits in the northeast have been born out of neglect heaped upon by New Delhi on these distant states since Independence.

There are others who regard these insurgencies as nothing but money-making enterprises.

Says a senior army officer, who spoke on condition that he would not be identified in this report: “Insurgency is the biggest business in the northeast. Most of these groups exist only to make money through extortion and kidnappings. Ideology has taken a backseat.”

Assam

Going strictly by numbers, Assam continues to bleed because of insurgency-related violence.

In 2003, over 400 people were killed in militant violence. Among the killed are a large number of militants (208) while 103 civilians died during the same period. These figures are more or less in keeping with the trend in 2002 when 445 people lost their lives in Assam. Among them were 275 militants.

Formed in 1979, the United Liberation Front of Asom became a force to reckon with in the late 1980s. It virtually ran a parallel government in the state between 1988 and 1990 till New Delhi cracked down by ordering full-fledged army action.

Operation Bajrang was followed by Operation Rhino.

More than a decade after these two military operations, ULFA remains active despite a split in its ranks and surrender of a large number of its cadres over the years.

The National Democratic Front of Bodoland was formed by group of radical Bodo youth on October 3, 1986 who, like their counterparts in ULFA, believe their nationalities can prosper only when outside the Indian State.

The NDFB is active in Assam’s Bodo-dominated areas bordering West Bengal and Bhutan.

By exploding bombs across the state and in Nagaland, both ULFA and NDFB are out to prove that they are still a force to reckon with despite having being evicted from Bhutan last December.

At least two divisions of the army (20,000 troops), over 10,000 paramilitary personnel besides 50,000-odd Assam policemen remain engaged in battling ULFA, and to a lesser extent NDFB.

Manipur

As of today, Manipur is the worst case scenario in the northeast as far as militancy is concerned. Apart from the fact that there are more militant groups in the state than anywhere else — at least seven prominent groups operate in Manipur — the rivalries between these outfits often leads to greater violence.

Kidnappings and killings are common in Manipur.

What worries the security forces is the parallel government run by militant groups. These groups extort money or levy ‘taxes’ on people, government officials and businessmen.

No transporter can operate in Manipur without having paid at least three prominent militant groups.

The outfits dispense instant justice, provide protection and rule certain areas with impunity.

Some of the groups like the Kanglei Yaol Kanba Lup are attempting to ‘cleanse’ Manipuri society by launching high-profile campaigns against drug peddlers, corrupt government officials and issuing diktats to ‘preserve’ Manipuri culture.

Nagaland

The state with the oldest running insurgency, Nagaland appears to be as normal as any other Indian state following the ceasefire between the Isak-Muivah group of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-IM). But factional fights between the IM group and its rival the S S Khaplang-led NSCN(K) has dominated the scene over the past few years.

The NSCN(IM) is regarded as a mentor of many groups in the northeast since it helped form these outfits, nurtured and armed them over the years. But it has created tensions in the northeast by demanding a ‘greater Nagaland’ by uniting Naga-inhabited areas spread over other states like Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

Tripura

One of the most violence-prone states, Tripura has been traumatised by killings and kidnappings over the past decade. Two major outfits, the National Liberation Front of Tripura and All Tripura Tigers Force have been on the rampage, killing and kidnapping people with impunity.

Tripura, which was a princely state before Independence, has witnessed a steady decline of its indigenous population giving rise to militancy among the tribals. Tripura has nearly 10 lakh (a million) indigenous tribals who live in abject poverty in the hilly and often inaccessible areas of the state.

The two banned militant groups — the ATTF and the NLFT — have bases in Bangladesh across the porous international border.

Other states

Among the other states in the northeast, Meghalaya has two active insurgent groups. Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram are relatively free of militancy but security experts warn that trouble is round the corner in Arunachal Pradesh where the NSCN(IM) is making inroads in some districts.

Mizoram is perhaps the only state in the region which can claim to have abandoned insurgency. Indeed, the Mizo National Front, which was underground for 20 years, signed a landmark pact in 1986, came overground and now runs the state government.

The major militant groups in the northeast which have been declared as ‘unlawful organisations’ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 include:

Assam:
The United Liberation Front of Asom.
The National Democratic Front of Bodoland.

Manipur:
The People’s Liberation Army.
The United National Liberation Front.
The People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak.
The Kangleipak Communist Party.
The Kanglei Yaol Kanba Lup.
The Manipur People’s Liberation Front.
The Revolutionary People’s Front.

Meghalaya:
The Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council.
The Achik National Volunteer Council.

Nagaland:
The National Socialist Council of Nagaland including all factions.

Tripura:
The All Tripura Tiger Force.
The National Liberation Front of Tripura.

Say yes to the FBI!

October 11, 2004

After spending five decades and more repudiating the idea of India as a nation and a sovereign State, rejecting the political symbols of Indian nationhood, and rewriting the history of this land to erase uncomfortable facts that clash with their perverse ideological biases, our Communists and Marxists have suddenly discovered merit in protecting India’s sovereignty.

Having forced the UPA government to rid the Planning Commission’s consultative groups of ‘foreign’ consultants because their inclusion ‘compromised India’s sovereignty and freedom,’ the Left has now launched a vituperative attack on the US Ambassador to India David Mulford for daring to offer FBI assistance in tracking down those responsible for the series of blasts and other acts of ghastly terror in Assam and Nagaland.

There is a popular adage in Bangla that most of our comrades would be aware of: Bhooter mookhey Ram naam, which loosely corresponds to ‘the devil quoting the scripture.’ It is laughable that Comrade Jyoti Basu and his junior comrades who have rarely missed an opportunity to denigrate Indian nationhood should now jump onto the nationalist band wagon.

It is, however, not my intention to focus on the Left’s perversity. Tele-Marxists and their camp followers do not deserve a fraction of the space that the media lavishes on them. Step into my parlour, said the spider. Thank you, but I would rather have my chai elsewhere.

The bloodletting in Assam and Nagaland, in which nearly a hundred civilians have perished, is a grim reminder that there are troubled regions in India other than Jammu and Kashmir. If there is a commonality between the violence in our north and Northeast, it is the foreign hand that arms and guides the killers. Almost a week after the killing spree began on October 2 as the nation observed Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s birth anniversary, the identity of the killers remains a mystery.

The proverbial needle of suspicion points at the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has been waging a bloody separatist war for more than a decade. The purpose could be to scuttle all possibility of dialogue, both in Assam and Nagaland, with separatist groups who have been considerably weakened in recent years. It could have been a demonstration of undiminished strength despite the demolition of terror camps in Bhutan. Or it could have been ULFA seeking to pour oil on the fire that is raging in Manipur — with more northeastern states erupting in an orgy of violence, the Centre would be confronted with a major crisis.

What is beyond doubt is that our internal intelligence apparatus has failed miserably, though not for the first time. After ULFA’s cowardly act of terror on Independence Day, which claimed the lives of 15 children, both the Union home ministry’s Intelligence Bureau and the state government’s intelligence wing should have been on their toes, gathering information and nipping mischief in the bud. Obviously, they were busy minding other affairs, the import of which is best known to them.

What is also now evident is that a wimp of a home minister like Shivraj Patil cannot be entrusted with the onerous task of managing the country’s internal security. His response time is alarmingly slow — Manipur burned for more than a fortnight before it struck him that something was wrong and needed his ministry’s attention — and his public pronouncements — ‘Our doors are always open for unconditional talks’ — are manna from heaven for perpetrators of terror.

The abject manner in which he pleaded with chief ministers to adopt a soft line on Naxalites was the ultimate negation of the Indian State’s responsibilities. He is totally clueless of what’s happening in Jammu and Kashmir and one can take a wager that he cannot tell the difference between LeT and JeM. If the country’s home minister is so emasculated, is it a wonder that terrorists should have a field day?

This brings us to the third certitude: Now that Pakistan has to make a show of easing up on the Jammu and Kashmir front, it has shifted its theatre of action to India’s northeast. The ISI has set up 195 camps in Bangladesh for training and arming anti-India elements, ranging from ULFA and Bodo terrorists to Islamic jehadis, with the active connivance of Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party-Jamaat-e-Islami Government. Cox’s Bazaar and Chittagong have been established as key transit points for arms and other weaponry. What we have just witnessed in Assam and Nagaland is a foretaste of things to come.

The minister for external affairs acknowledges this new reality and bristles with rage, the home minister admits that he is aware of the emerging threat from the east and pitifully wrings his hands, and the prime minister expresses public concern over terror camps in Bangladesh and tut-tuts in admonishment.

Meanwhile our babus, including those in IB and RAW, having abysmally failed in the very task for which they are maintained in high comfort by taxpayers, taking a cue from our comrades, are howling in protest at the American offer of the FBI’s help in tracking down the perpetrators of the violence in Assam and Nagaland and bringing them to justice. Their refrain centres round the cliché, ‘We have the ability to handle this problem, we can do it on our own,’ as one home ministry babu put it.

Deploying additional army troops and paramilitary forces is the easiest option, but does not necessarily mean success on the ground. Counter-terrorism involves waging an asymmetrical war for which sophisticated technology and trained personnel are required. The truth, much as we may hate it, is that we lack both men and material, not to mention political will, to fight terrorism on our own.

The debris of the explosions, the bullet cartridges and other clues left behind by the killers in Assam and Nagaland could yield vital evidence about the origin of the explosives and the arms, the identity of the terrorists and their patrons. If the FBI can provide assistance in putting together this evidence, why not make use of the American agency?

After all, India and the USA have a joint counter-terrorism working group, both countries are partners in the global war on terror, and there are at least two UN resolutions that mandate such cooperation. By accepting the American offer of help, we will not be compromising our national sovereignty; on the contrary, we will be adding real value to our counter-terrorism efforts whose dismal failure we can continue to countenance at the cost of our national sovereignty.

There are other possible gains, too. If the Americans were involved in putting together clues that led to the conclusion of ISI having a hand in the upsurge of violence in our northeast, if they were confronted with the reality that Bangladesh has now become the hub and haven of Islamic jihadis owing allegiance to Al Qaeda and terrorists of other ideological persuasion, then we can rest our case.

Terrorism, as has been pitilessly established by the perpetrators of terror, knows no national boundaries. From Beslan to Assam, from Kandahar to Kashmir, from Jakarta to New York it is one seamless world. The war against terror is not a war for national sovereignty. This is a war that no nation can fight alone. Others have gone into battle ignoring this simple truth, and paid a terrible price; let us not make a similar mistake.

Of course, egos will be bruised: our political leaders, such as we have, will feel rendered impotent; our babus who suffer from an incurable disease called ‘instant rejection syndrome’ that makes them say ‘no’ to the sanest of suggestions, will be shown up for what they are; our intelligence sleuths will be forced to eat humble pie. So be it.

They can cry on the shoulders of the new defenders of the faith, our comrades.

Kanchan Gupta

Truth clouded by heavy shades of grey

October 25, 2004

An autobiography and a memoir are often thought to be, to use a quaint expression, one and the same. But although both autobiography and memoir are about personal history, they are not quite the same. Ian Jack, editor of Granta, once described the difference as that between ’showing and telling.’ An autobiography is a mere record of accomplishments, artless in style and overburdened with minutiae; a memoir is about intimate, personal experience, rich in colour, devoid of deeds and fame.

A less sophisticated distinction that lays down the rule of thumb which separates autobiography from memoir, hinges on the author. Sanctimonious, pompous, self-righteous people with an exaggerated sense of importance and singularly lacking in humour, who actually believe they have never done anything wrong in their blessed lives, write their autobiography. Sensitive, self-effacing people who want to thank god for little mercies, look back at all the terrible indiscretions they committed and the horrible mistakes they made, and are not ashamed to tell others about an imperfect life well lived, pen their memoir.

P C Alexander’s Through the Corridors of Power — An Insider’s Story, recently published by HarperCollins, could have been a memoir had he chosen to ‘tell’ rather than ’show’ and not fallen prey to the ‘I’ syndrome which makes Indian writers of this particular genre so utterly tedious. Unfortunately, he belongs to that exclusive club whose members have never erred in their lives, are excellent fault-finders and have nothing good to say about those who have not done them a good turn.

As a probationer, he found his collector ‘not worthy of being a role model;’ as a junior officer of the IAS he found his chief secretary ‘petulant’ for not conceding his request for a transfer to headquarters; he found the post-Emergency dispensation ‘vindictive’ for seeking to punish those guilty of excesses, namely Mrs Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay; he was livid about V P Singh’s decision to evict him from the Raj Bhavan in Chennai as part of the National Front government’s move to purge the system of all Congress appointees; and, much later in life, he could not quite accept the fact that practitioners of realpolitik chose to overlook his services to the first family of the Congress, but for which he would have come to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Of course, it would be grossly unfair to even remotely suggest that P C Alexander compromised on principles or set aside ethics at any point during his rather long innings in public life. Unlike many bureaucrats who have displayed remarkable ability to crawl before those sitting on Delhi’s masnad, P C Alexander walked the straight line during the years he spent navigating the corridors of power which, at the best of times, can be extremely slippery and treacherous. It must also be said, in admiration and to his credit, he remains as steadfast in his loyalty to Mrs Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi as he was when both were alive. Bureaucrats happily genuflect at more than one altar, not so P C Alexander.

As Mrs Gandhi’s principal secretary, he had the twin responsibilities of looking after the functioning of the PMO as well as trouble-shooting in the political arena. By his own admission, he also tried to serve as Mrs Gandhi’s conscience keeper. That he largely failed in this endeavour does not come as a surprise: the lady with a Mephistophelian smile was an astute practitioner of Machiavellian politics and had scant regard for ethical rights and wrongs.

Yet, this did not prevent P C Alexander from pointing out the pitfalls of first alienating Sheikh Abdullah and later sacking Farooq Abdullah and anointing a certain Gul Mohammed Shah who, a decade or more after the farce in Srinagar, does not merit mention even as a footnote to Jammu & Kashmir’s recent history. Cynics will describe P C Alexander’s belief that nobody in Delhi’s durbar, including the presiding empress, knew about the plot to sack N T Rama Rao and replace him with an unknown and unheard of entity called Bhaskara Rao, as amazing naiveté. But that is his version of the truth, and only the initiated will doubt it.

The ‘anti-foreigners’ agitation in Assam, whose after shocks are still being felt in the form of gory violence practiced by ULFA, social disquiet over continuing illegal immigration from Bangladesh, tribal separatism in lower Assam and economic stagnation in this key north-eastern state, was one the two serious challenges — the other was terrorism in Punjab fanned by Khalistani separatists — that Mrs Gandhi faced in the last years of her reign. Instead of striking at the root of the problem, Mrs Gandhi chose to ride roughshod, as was her style, over popular anger.

The forced infamous elections in Assam, which P C Alexander helped to conduct with great gusto, continues to remain a lesson in how to aggravate a regional problem and turn it into a national crisis. The blood-curdling massacre of Muslims at Nellie, which witnessed suckling infants being speared to death and which has so conveniently been wiped clean from Congress memory, has found a passing mention in P C Alexander’s 480-page total recall. But that does not absolve Mrs Gandhi of mishandling Assam.

P C Alexander valiantly defends Mrs Gandhi’s misadventure in Punjab. Everybody, including President Zail Singh, was plotting and scheming, but not Mrs Gandhi. Conventional wisdom suggests, and with no little evidence, that if Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale turned out to be a monster (that was after Rajiv Gandhi described him as a ’sant’), his Frankenstein could not have been unknown to the prime minister’s principal secretary.

The unkindest cut, of course, comes in the form of P C Alexander pinning the blame for the disastrous Operation Bluestar on General Vaidya who has been accused of planning and executing the offensive on the basis of inaccurate and poor intelligence. Later in the book, a similar charge has been levelled against General Sundarji for the IPKF’s dismal failure in Sri Lanka. Since dead men tell no tales, it would be in order to record that the first stop of all primary intelligence, emanating from IB and RAW, is the principal secretary’s desk.

Although public memory is short, it would also be in order to point out that the timing of Operation Bluestar was not decided by General Vaidya, as P C Alexander records on more than one page, but by the fact that Mrs Gandhi wanted to pre-empt the declaration of the ‘Republic of Khalistan’ by Bhindranwale on the martyrdom day of Guru Arjan Dev when thousands of Sikhs were expected to congregate at the Golden Temple.

But then, the truth, according to a popular BBC promo, comes in shades of grey. P C Alexander asserts that what he has to say in his autobiography is the truth. We should respect that assertion, as much as he should respect the reader’s right to decide the shade of grey that colours his truth.

Through the Corridors of Power could have provided an intimate, tantalising view from the mountaintop of the political landscape of Indira’s India. Instead, living up to the thumb rule that sets an autobiography apart from a memoir, it is all about life at the base camp.

Kanchan Gupta

Light a candle for 4,733 Sikhs slaughtered by Congress hoods

November 01, 2004

This week, light a candle in your window. And whisper a silent prayer in memory of more than 4,000 Sikh men, women and children slaughtered by Congress hoodlums 20 years ago. In Delhi alone, 2,733 Sikhs were burned alive, butchered or beaten to death.

Women were raped while their terrified families pleaded for mercy, little or none of which was shown by the Congress flag-bearers. In one of the numerous such incidents, a woman was gang-raped in front of her 17-year-old son; before leaving, the marauders torched the boy.

For three days and nights the killing and pillaging continued without the police, the civil administration and the Union government, which was then in direct charge of Delhi, lifting a finger in admonishment. The Congress was in power, and senior Congress leaders, perhaps for the first time in their political careers, led from the front while the prime minister, his home minister, indeed the entire council of ministers, twiddled their thumbs.

Even as stray dogs gorged on rotting human entrails, gutters were clogged with charred corpses and wailing women, clutching children too frightened to cry, fled baying mobs armed with iron rods, staves and gallons of kerosene, All India Radio and Doordarshan kept on broadcasting blood-curdling slogans of ‘Khoon ka badla khoon se lenge’ (We shall avenge blood with blood) raised by Congress party workers grieving over their dear departed leader, India Gandhi.

Rajiv Gandhi, having ensconced himself as prime minister, later sought to justify the terror unleashed by his party. Addressing a rally at Delhi’s Boat Club to celebrate his mother’s birth anniversary, he thundered: ‘When a big tree falls, the earth will shake.’ And shake it did!

In mid-morning on October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh guards posted at her home. The assassins, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, later said they had killed the prime minister to avenge the Indian Army’s assault on the Golden Temple — Operation Bluestar — at her explicit instruction on June 5 that year. Beant Singh was killed by the Indo Tibetan Border Police soon after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Satwant Singh and an alleged accomplice, Kehar Singh, against whom there was thin evidence, were executed for the crime.

Indira Gandhi’s death was officially confirmed by All India Radio and Doordarshan at 6 pm, after due dilligence had been exercised to ensure Rajiv Gandhi’s succession. By then, stray incidents of violence against Sikhs, including the stoning of President Zail Singh’s car, had started trickling in at various police stations.

That night, the Congress party machinery went into a rumour-mongering overdrive: in colony after colony (Delhi, the seat of India’s colonial rulers, is a sprawling conglomerate of ‘colonies,’ some upmarket, most little more than shanty towns), rumours spread like wildfire, describing in graphic details how ‘Sikhs were distributing sweets to celebrate Indira Gandhi’s assassination,’ how ‘gurdwaras had been lit up as if it were Diwali,’ and, how ‘Sikh terrorists had infiltrated the city.’

By the morning of November 1, hordes of men, shouting Congress slogans, had started running riot in south, east and west Delhi. They were armed with iron rods and carried old tyres and jerry cans filled with kerosene and petrol. Owners of gas stations and kerosene stores, beneficiaries of Congress largesse, provided petrol and kerosene free of cost. Some of the men went around on scooters and motorcycles, marking Sikh houses and business establishments with chalk for easy identification. They had been provided with electoral rolls by their political masters to make the task easier.

By late afternoon that day, hundreds of taxis, trucks and shops owned by Sikhs had been set ablaze. By early evening, the killing, loot and rape began in right earnest. The worst butchery took place in Block 32 of Trilokpuri, a resettlement colony in east Delhi. Scores of families were killed over November 1 and 2: most of them were despatched by putting burning tyres around theirs necks.

The pogrom continued with the active abetment of the police. On November 1, some residents of Lajpat Nagar took out a peace march to thwart the violence. The police stopped the march because the participants did not have ‘official permission.’ In many places, police asked Sikhs to hand over their kirpans, took them away forcibly if the Sikhs refused, before the marauders descended upon them.

To prevent Sikhs from taking refuge in gurdwaras, most of Delhi’s 450 gurdwaras were sacked in the early hours of the violence. The expedient means of setting houses ablaze was used to get at Sikh families who had taken refuge on the roofs of their homes. Entire families were roasted alive.

A sort-of curfew was imposed in south and central Delhi at 4 pm on November 1. But no action was taken in east and west Delhi and the outlying area of Palam where the massacre of Sikhs was being carried out with macabre ferocity and astounding impunity. Curfew was imposed in east and west Delhi at 6 pm, ensuring that the killers had an extra four hours.

P V Narasimha Rao, who was the home minister and responsible for maintaining law and order in Delhi during those dark days, was fully aware of what was happening. But he chose not to deploy the army in time which could have prevented the pogrom. In his affidavit submitted to the G T Nanavati Commission, inquiring into the pogrom, Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, much decorated hero of the 1971 war, has said, ‘The home minister was grossly negligent in his approach, which clearly reflected his connivance with perpetrators of the heinous crimes being committed against the Sikhs.’

The army was alerted at 2.30 pm on November 1; when the General Officer Commanding went to meet the lieutenant governor for orders, he was kept waiting for an hour. The first deployment of army jawans took place around 6 pm on November 1 in south and central Delhi, which were comparatively unaffected, but in the absence of navigators which should have been provided by the police and the civil authorities, the jawans found themselves lost in unfamiliar roads and avenues. The army was deployed in east and west Delhi in the afternoon of November 2. But, here, too, jawans were at a loss because there were no navigators to show them the way through byzantine lanes.

In any event, there was little the army could have done: magistrates were ‘not available’ to give permission to the jawans to fire on the mobs. This mandatory requirement was kept pending till Indira Gandhi’s funeral was over. By then, 1,026 Sikhs had been killed in east Delhi, the majority of the dead were residents of Block 32 in Trilokpuri.

The slaughter was not limited to Delhi. Sikhs were killed in Gurgaon, Kanpur, Bokaro, Indore and many other towns and cities across India. In a replay of the blood-letting in Delhi, 26 Sikh jawans and officers of the Indian Army were pulled out of trains and killed. There has been no effort to compute the death toll in these places, but the most conservative estimates have placed it at 2,000.

After quenching their thirst for blood, the brave leaders of the Congress and their foot soldiers retreated to savour their deeds of revenge. The flames died, the smoke from smouldering shops and homes lifted and the winter air blew away the stench of death. Rajiv Gandhi’s government, in a casual aside, issued an official statement placing the death toll at 425.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was then president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, had instructed party leaders in Delhi to organise relief camps and provide succour to the survivors of the pogrom. Madan Lal Khurana and Vijay Kumar Malhotra had braved the marauders to move from colony to colony, giving whatever help they could. Vajpayee contested the official death toll and asked his colleagues to collate figures. Their total added up to 2,800. ‘The BJP is an anti-national party,’ responded the Congress.

There were demands for a judicial inquiry to fix responsibility and add up the casualties. Rajiv Gandhi stonewalled these demands. Human rights organisations petitioned the courts. Rajiv Gandhi’s government declared that courts were not empowered to order inquiries.

Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi dissolved the Lok Sabha and went for an early general election. The Congress launched a vitriolic hate campaign through advertisements and posters (‘Can you trust a Sikh taxi driver?’). In Rajiv Gandhi’s constituency, Congress party workers raised a rather telling slogan against his opponent and sister-in-law, Maneka Gandhi: ‘Beti hai Sardar ki, qaum hai gaddar ki’ (She is the daughter of a Sikh, a community of traitors).

Rajiv Gandhi rode the crest of a gigantic ’sympathy wave.’ The Congress won 401 seats in the Lok Sabha. The BJP was reduced to two seats, punished for sympathising with the Sikhs.

By 1985, Punjab was fast slipping into a bottomless spiral of secessionist violence and Rajiv Gandhi was desperate to show a breakthrough. He mollycoddled Akali leader Sant Harchand Singh Longowal into agreeing to sign a peace accord with him. Sant Longowal listed a set of pre-conditions; one of them was the setting up of a judicial inquiry into the anti-Sikh pogrom. Political expediency made Rajiv Gandhi concede this and other demands (it is another matter that the accord foundered and Sant Longowal was assassinated by terrorists).

Thus was born the Ranganath Mishra Commission that shall remain known forever for white-washing official complicity and political patronage without which the slaughter of Sikhs would not have been possible. Submissions and affidavits were surreptiously passed on to those accused of leading the mobs to facilitate their defence. Some of these documents were later recovered from the house of Sajjan Kumar, one of the Congress leaders who had been accused by victims in their signed affidavits. Gag orders were issued, preventing the press from reporting in-camera proceedings of the Commission.

For full six months, Rajiv Gandhi refused to make public the Ranganath Mishra Commission’s report. When it was tabled in Parliament, the report was found to be an amazing travesty of the truth, an exercise that was dedicated to drawing a bizarre distinction between Congress party workers and the Congress party — the former were guilty, but not the latter; no responsibility was fixed nor were the guilty named.

Subsequently, three other committees were set up: the Jain-Banerji Committee to find out why cases were not registered by the police and, if registered, why was it not done properly; the Kapoor-Mittal Committee to look into the role of the police; and, the Ahuja Committee to compute the number of deaths. The findings of the first two committees are gathering dust in some corner of South Block.

The key finding of the Ahuja Committee is of relevance — a total of 2,733 Sikhs were killed in Delhi. There is no record of an apology being offered by either Rajiv Gandhi or his government for placing the death toll at 425, leave alone for their description of the BJP as ‘anti-national’ because it had placed the figure at 2,800.

In these 20 years, nine commissions and committees have been set up to look into different aspects of the anti-Sikh pogrom. Much bluster has been heard about bringing the guilty to book. What we have seen is inertia, political intervention and tardy prosecution. Overwhelming evidence against Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and H K L Bhagat has been set aside by skulduggery and gerrymandering.

Two thousand seven hundred and thirty-three men, women and children killed in Delhi, another 2,000 killed in other towns and cities, scores of women raped, property worth crores of rupees looted or sacked. Families devastated forever, survivors scarred for the rest of their lives.

After 20 years, all that we have to show as justice being done is the conviction of six men, who did not have the requisite financial or political clout to manipulate their way to freedom and are serving sentence for ‘murder.’

Sajjan Kumar is back in business as a Congress member of the Lok Sabha; Jagdish Tytler is minister for NRI affairs in the UPA government.

Those who survived the pogrom of 1984, haunted by nightmares of a genocide the world has forgotten, wipe their tears in silence.

Kanchan Gupta

BJP does not need enemies

November 11, 2004

During the heady days of the run-up to the 1996 parliamentary election, when the end of Congress hegemony over national politics seemed imminent, the BJP found itself in a quandary. Disgusted by the obnoxiously avaricious cash-and-carry government over which P V Narasimha Rao had presided without lifting his little finger, people were loath to vote for India’s “natural party of governance”. But neither were they sufficiently enthused about voting decisively for the obvious alternative, the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Lal Kishenchand Advani, who was president of the BJP, and his colleagues knew that the 1996 election was the most crucial the party had faced till then: power was within easy reach, but not near enough. For a party that had spent five decades in the Opposition benches, and hopped and skipped in the less than a decade from a paltry strength of 2 MPs in the Lok Sabha in 1984 to 89 in 1989 and 119 in 1991, the parliamentary election of 1996 posed the stupendous challenge of taking a long enough leap that would catapult it to power.

Yet, that was easier said than done. The Congress had broken free of its socialist past and taken a sharp right turn, adopting an economic agenda whose main principles of free market, liberalisation and private enterprise the BJP had been espousing for long. So much so, there was little to distinguish the BJP’s agenda from that of the Congress, thus depriving the former of issues that had fetched popular support from India’s burgeoning middle class in previous elections.

In December 1992, the Babri Masjid structure in Ayodhya had been demolished by kar sevaks enraged by government apathy and Muslim intransigence and a temporary temple had come up at the site which Hindus believe is Ram Janambhoomi. In a sense, the demolition marked the high point of Hindu disquiet; post-12/6, that disquiet had rapidly given way to other concerns entirely divorced from religious sentiments and civilisational angst.

The BJP was, therefore, at a loss as to how to fire the popular imagination and capture the space vacated by the Congress. Advani came up with the slogan of “Su-raj” — good governance — and pledged his party’s services to meeting the rising aspiration level of the masses. Ideology, he said, would provide the cutting edge.

In the event, the BJP won the race in 1996, emerging the single largest party, but lost the game of numbers in a hung Lok Sabha to that master manipulator of parliamentary arithmetic, Comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet of the CPI-M. Instead of the BJP’s promised “su-raj”, the country had to contend with the ineptitude of first H D Deve Gowda and later Inder Kumar Gujral.

By then, the BJP had reconciled to its inability to get a majority on its own in a polity fractured by casteism and fragmented by regionalism, and had floated a loose rainbow coalition that was to be later christened National Democratic Alliance. Atal Bihari Vajpayee emerged as the national choice: he commanded both trust and respect. In 1998, power came the BJP’s way and it was able to retain it in the mid-term poll of 1999. Only to lose it in 2004.

Through the three crucial elections — 1996, 1998 and 1999 — it was the promise of good governance, backed by ideological commitment to Hindutva, that had carried the BJP forward. Hindutva by then had become more than a synonym for the Ram Janambhoomi agitation, abrogation of Article 370 and the introduction of a Uniform Civil Code. Hindutva, for most of its votaries, especially in urban India, had become the symbol of a modern day Hindu renaissance; the BJP was expected to facilitate its flowering.

That was not to be. Instead of nursing India’s vast majority that subscribes to conservatism anchored in ethics and moral values, and has scant regard for left-liberal balderdash, but aspires for a better deal, the BJP chose to redefine its political purpose. Those who sat at the high table of BJP politics during the six years when the NDA was in power, instead of ushering in the Hindu renaissance anticipated by its supporters, chose to seek legitimacy from its detractors.

The BJP’s pseudo-liberalism supplanted the pseudo-secularism of the previous Congress regimes. Conservative India was aghast by the unscrupulous ease with which the BJP began to subscribe to those very falsities that it had battled with conviction for decades. Rectitude in public life, which had set apart the BJP and made it a party with a difference, was given a clamorous burial. Morality and ethics were set aside by taking recourse to the expedient means of citing “dharma of coalition politics”.

It was, therefore, not surprising that 90 sitting MPs of the BJP were booted out in the last parliamentary election and the NDA as a whole came a cropper. The defeat in Maharashtra was a natural corollary.

Regaining lost ground in politics is never an easy task. Least of all when popular concerns record a radical change, as they have in India. It is an entirely new constituency that the BJP has to address: innately, this constituency continues to be socially conservative, it continues to hanker for a better deal and it continues to look for an agent of change that will transform India through individual prosperity and social mobility.

The obvious task for the BJP is to reinvent itself, and redefine the contours of its ideology, to address the concerns of this new India. An ideologically committed right-of-centre national party, anchored in morality and traditional values, whose firm views are not marked by emotional highs but mature equanimity, and which can deliver a better quality of life, is not only the required counterfoil to a Congress held hostage by a discredited Left, but also the natural choice of the new generation of voters, whether in cosmopolitan India or in our rural backyards.

Advani dealt with the immediacy of this task in his address to the National Council of the BJP after taking charge of the party formally. But before he could get down to the task of re-inventing the BJP for the 21st century, friends of the party have struck in a pincer move whose immediate fallout has further weakened a party hobbled by electoral defeat and demoralised cadre.

The first blow has been struck by the VHP whose leadership recently made a public spectacle of going into a big sulk because it believes the BJP has abandoned the Ram Janambhoomi issue after making political use of it. The VHP appears to be increasingly adding to the distance between its perception of what the Hindu masses aspire for, and what the Hindu masses actually aspire for.

In today’s India, nationalism is not defined by emotionalism of the kind unleashed by the Ayodhya movement. Young India wants to be seen as a powerful nation, economically, militarily and geo-strategically. This India has battled and exorcised the ghosts of the past; it now aspires to win the challenges of the future. This India is overwhelmingly Hindu, it is spiritually inclined and its sense of morality and traditional values is probably as strong, if not stronger, than that of India of the 1990s.

The VHP has a choice: it can become a powerful social force spearheading reform — Hindu society needs it — by strategising a new role for itself in today’s new India, or it can become increasingly irrelevant by refusing to move on and be reduced to akhada politics. The language of unbridled belligerence no longer inspires communitarian response, sustained and subdued community activism does. This simple truth appears to be lost on the VHP leadership.

The other assault has come from within the BJP. The obscenity of power hungry senior leaders slinging mud at their colleagues may delight their camp followers, but it lowers the stature of the party and puts a big question mark on the authority of the party president. More importantly, it raises the all-important issue of credibility: can a party that cannot run its own house, be trusted with the task of running the affairs of the country?

The BJP could learn more than one lesson from the Republican victory in the USA. It could also learn from why the Conservatives continue to lose elections in the UK.

Kanchan Gupta

The Forgotten Ones

September 22, 2004

Here is a snap quiz:

Who was Ashwani Kumar Garyali?

Who was Anil Bhan?

Who was Princy?

Who was Professor Kanhaya Lal Ganjoo?

Who was Mrs Prana Ganjoo?

Yes, I know, I know you are not able to recognise any of these names. Frankly speaking I do not even expect you to recognise any of these names. These names do not belong to any political leaders. These names do not belong to any film or media or sports celebrities. So how could I even expect you to answer this quiz?

So who are these individuals anyway?

Sorry. Should I say who these individuals were?

Yes. In your eyes, they probably existed. From your perspective, they are probably part of history. In your minds, they have probably passed away to heavenly abodes. Yes. Yes and Yes. Yes, they have passed away to their heavenly abodes. Yes, they are part of history.

But in the eyes of their families, they still exist.

They still exist because they are part of their families.

They still exist because they are in the hearts and minds of their loved ones.

They still exist because they never left the ones they cherished.

Their bodies left but their souls, their memories, their messages, their convictions, their beliefs, their values, their commitments are still with their friends and family.

They are the symbols of ultimate sacrifice. They are epitome of gallantry.

Yes, my dear readers, they are The Unsung Heroes.

They are the Kashmiri Hindus, who sacrificed their lives in Kashmir because they believed in one particular faith.

They are the ones who paid dearly for their belief in the Indian tricolour.

They are the tutors who taught their pupils without imagining that the same pupils will turn out to be their killers.

They are the doctors who nursed their patients without realising that the same patients will come back to take their lives.

They are the little boys and girls who could not imagine the dark side of their playmates from the neighbourhood.

They are the friends who could never imagine that their closest friend would be the one to show up at their door with an AK-47.

Yes, my dear readers, they are The Unsung Heroes.

And unfortunately they are the Forgotten Ones and the Forsaken Ones.

The nation that they represented has forgotten them.

The faith that they represented has forsaken them.

The ideals that they died for do not mean anything to our political leaders. The sacrifices these individuals made mean nothing to our ruling class.

They were the pawns of this great game of chess between India and Pakistan.

Unfortunately the game has not ended yet.

Even today, the survivors of these unsung heroes are treated with disdain.

Even after 14 years since this community was ethnically cleansed from its home in the valley of Kashmir, this community of 700,000 Kashmiri Hindus still lives like refugees in its own country.

Till date, no government, no human rights monitoring agency, no non-governmental organisation has seriously taken up the issue of human rights violations against this community.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide in New York, in 1948, declared genocide as a crime under international law.

The Convention defined genocide as any act committed with the idea of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This includes such acts as:

Killing members of the group .
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to physically destroy the group (the whole group or even part of the group).
Forcefully transferring children of the group to another group.
As per this UN definition of genocide, there is no reason why the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Kashmiri Hindus should not be treated as genocide. There is no reason why the people and countries behind this act of genocide should not be held responsible and criminally prosecuted.

But who cares about Kashmiri Hindus? Not a soul.

Kashmiri Hindus observe September 14 every year as Martyr’s Day to pay homage to their fallen heroes and I pay my respects and homage to all these innocent souls whose lives were cut short and whose dreams were shattered by the scourge of menacing terror.

Today, I appeal to all those who believe in freedom of religion, who believe in freedom of expression, who believe in fundamental rights of humanity, to please take two minutes of your time and remember these innocent souls.

Tonight, when you get home after a tiring day of hard work, please take a moment and light a candle in your house to remember these noble souls.

Tonight, please spend a minute in silence and pray for their peace. This is the least we can do for those who sacrificed their lives so that we can stay alive and be free.

Today, I appeal to one and all to spend few hours educating themselves of the atrocities inflicted upon this community of peace loving human beings. Please use your knowledge of this recent-day genocide to educate others and use your voice to express your outrage against this continuing persecution of Kashmiri Hindus.

About 13 years ago, after spending 15 months on one specific project, at the time of my departure, one of my close friends gave me a farewell card. It said:

‘Can’t you please go without leaving?’

I wish I could say the same to these Unsung Heroes — The Forgotten Ones.

Sharnarthi is a freelance journalistand can be reached at sharnarthi@yahoo.com

Who cares for the Pandits?

July 30, 2004

FACT, the Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism, was fortunate — thanks to the efforts of Sunil Bakshi, director of the Indo-European Kashmir Forum — to have organised an exhibition and screened a film on the plight of Kashmiri Hindus called ‘Terrorism Unleashed’ at one of the most prestigious venues in London, the Commonwealth Club, Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square.

Pyara S Khabra, a British MP, inaugurated the exhibition. He highlighted the forced exile of Kashmiri Hindus from their homeland due to the continued threat of terrorism and said the Indian government must create a safe haven in Kashmir for the return of Kashmiri Hindus. Pledging his support to Kashmiri Hindus, he assured all present that he would highlight the plight of Kashmiri Hindus in the House of Commons, the British parliament.

Earlier, the exhibition was also held at Brent Town hall, Wembley, on June 27, and at the Clyde hall, Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow three days earlier.

Unfortunately, in spite of a good crowd, the results were not up to expectations.

First, where were the 200,000 Hindus from London and the 700,000 who live in the UK? As usual, most Hindus abroad only look after themselves, giving their children a thorough Western education and ensuring thus that they are lost forever to India. I even saw an Indian man turn his heels as soon as he saw it was something on terrorism and another woman tell me: “Don’t you think it is RSS and BJP?”

We also witnessed firsthand the basic hostility of Amnesty International to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. Sunil Bakshi had repeatedly sent invitations to them three weeks before the exhibition. I personally called the head of Kashmir at Amnesty International several times as well as Ingrid Massage, the director, Asia & Pacific Program of Amnesty. First she told us they only reported on first hand facts, I replied these were photographs and statistics which nobody could dispute. Finally, after ten phone calls, she said she had too many files on her desk and that she had no time to come, although the exhibtion was a few blocks from her office. So much for Amnesty’s sense of justice.

I personally had a lot of hope in the British press. I thought if they saw the photographs showing innocent Kashmiri Pandits’ children being mercilessly butchered; the beautiful film made by filmmaker Ashok Pandit (who just released Sheen) on the tragic story of a harmless community which through terror have become refugees in their own land; the statistics which nobody can deny: 1 million Kashmiri Hindus in 1900 in the Kashmir valley and barely a few hundreds today; more than 1,200 Hindu temples destroyed — they would be moved. I was sadly mistaken.

One of the few journalists who cared to come to the exhibition was Michael Binyon, lead writer for the prestigious London Times. Michael saw the exhibition and sat during the film without saying a word. At the end he had this to say: “It is very crude, it is not made for the British public, it sounds too much like propaganda.”

I was shattered: here was an intelligent, upper class Britisher who occupies a senior position in the most venerable of British newspapers and he reacts like that! I also understood the spirit put by a few people in institutions such as the Times endure long after these people are dead and that decades later, journalists like Michael Binyon repeat like parrots what their ancestors whisper in their ears.

Michael’s utterances were so colonialist in their essence, so superior minded in their content, that he should have seen it himself, although they were uttered in a very civil manner.

I replied the poor Kashmiri Pandits had never carried a gun in their hands and had to flee the valley like so many sacrificial lambs. But it made no difference to the Times of London or Amnesty International.

Yet, the Pakistani and Kashmiri Muslim community in London, whose religious brothers butcher entire Hindu villages, blow up buses transporting families of Indian soldiers going on leave, get a much more sympathetic hearing from The Times and Amnesty. What a world!

I understood also that in the West, journalists don’t go by facts, do not substantiate their writings by on the ground reporting and search for truth beyond preconceived ideas. No, they go by the politically correct, by what is said at the moment, or what is in fashion in Leftist and intellectual circles. This is not true journalism, this is the worst kind of conceited journalism.

The sad thing is that journalists in turn influence the public at large, so that many of my friends in Europe — good, sincere people — repeat with great conviction things which they do not understand and which are not based on facts: “Hindus are fundamentalists.”

In the end you are left with the realisation that nobody cares about the Kashmiri Pandits, neither abroad nor in India. They are too small a community to constitute a voting bank. They also don’t make their voices heard: they don’t blow up buses full of innocent civilians and don’t fire Kalashnikovs at crowds and, of course, they themselves are a disunited lot and except for a few beings like Sunil Bakshi or Ashok Pandit, nobody sticks his or her neck out.

There remains then a feeling of sadness, of a world upside down, where what sells by millions is Bill Clinton’s memoir which has no interest except his affair with Monica Lewinsky, where the politically correct, the shallow and untrue has the upper hand, and where the voices of the truly downtrodden are not heard. It is a world where those who shout that unless we start accepting each other, unless Islam starts reforming itself and stops killing innocent people in the name of one true God, we are going towards catastrophe, are labelled as dangerous radicals, pro-Hindu and anti- Muslim.

Nevertheless we are continuing our fight. We have the blessings of great souls like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who inaugurated the exhibition in Glasgow. Many Indians are also giving us their support. Ultimately, truth has to triumph.

Sooner, or later, too, the world will realise that India is a great, liberal, pro-Western nation, its best bet in Asia — not China, which is neither democratic nor liberal nor pro-Western.

It will also realise that the greatness of India lies in greater part in its Hindu ethos, the belief that God manifests Himself at different periods of history through different names. India has to become the spiritual leader of the world, as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and today Sri Sri Ravi Shankar prophetised.

Francois Gautier

Are we now a nation of shameless people?

Colonel Anil A Athale (retd)

October 19, 2004

India is a meaningless mass of amorphous humanity:’ Oswald Spangler, The Decline of the West

A few days ago when a group of 16 Pakistani journalists visited the Jammu camp of Kashmiri Pandit refugees from the valley, there were unruly scenes. Many victims of terrorist violence begged the Pakistani journalists to ask their country to stop the violence and help them return to their homes.

The reaction of the visiting Pakistani journalists is not known but it ought to make every single of the one billion plus Indians hang their heads in shame. Here is a peaceful community of over 300,000, that was driven out of their ancestral homes 14 years ago and have been living in pathetic conditions for all of those 14 years. What was the ‘crime’ of these people other than the fact that they practiced a religion different from the majority? Did they commit any atrocity against the majority?

True, Kashmiri Pandits are not the only such unfortunate people. Palestinians have been enduring this for the last 57 years! But there is a crucial difference, the plight of Palestinians is recognised by the entire world. India, as the self appointed ‘mukhiya’ [leader] of the Non Aligned countries, has been championing their cause. But ‘we the people of a secular, democratic and socialist Republic of India’ have resolutely and totally put them out of sight and out of mind.

The Kashmiri Pandit exodus took place in the early 1990s. Since then we have had six prime ministers — from V P Singh to Manmohan Singh, and three different parties have ruled India, including the ostensibly ‘Hindu Nationalist’ Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet all of them have ignored the plight of the Pandits and did nothing to end their suffering.

Also Read: Francois Gautier: Who cares for the Pandits?

The ever so alert judiciary that intervenes in issues ranging from the use of CNG in Delhi, to pollution, to even the selection of hockey teams, does not look at the fate of 300,000 Indian citizens who have been denied their basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution. What stopped the Honourable Lordships from taking a suo moto cognisance of this injustice?

The sad plight of Pandits has also not touched the conscience of the ever so sensitive ‘human rights’ groups in India. The Teesta Setalvads and Javed Anands, the Medha Patkars or Arundhati Roys of this world have been deafeningly silent on this issue. There are no street plays, no documentaries or painting exhibitions on the sad state of these 300,000 Indians. The news media, both print and television, have shown no inclination to highlight their cause.

Also Read: Sharanarthi: The Forgotten Ones

The political parties, government machinery, judiciary, media and the NGOs, have all failed to fight for the cause of these hapless people. The people at large have been apathetic. In no elections was this ever made an issue by any party. The common refrain seems ‘how does it bother me!.’

Indians as a people have a short historical memory. It is precisely this attitude that helped the British gobble up the whole country, one region at a time. Thus while Robert Clive was busy finishing off Siraj-ud-Daulah in Bengal, Shah Shuja in Awadh was least concerned, till the British did not turn against him. In 1799, the Marathas watched the British under Duke of Wellington decimate Tipu Sultan, knowing fully well that it would be their turn next. After 150 years of slavery, nothing seems to have changed in this land of Bharatvarsha.

As a former soldier I feel ashamed that with the world’s third largest army, we are unable to ensure the safety and security of our own citizens.

Has India reached that advanced stage of decay that we are now a nation of shameless people?

Pandits will return on their own terms

In recent weeks, we have once again seen some chattering by local Jammu & Kashmir politicians, national politicians and Islamic terrorists about the return of Kashmiri Hindus to the Kashmir valley. Various forums, commissions, me-too-NGOs have propped up to talk about how Kashmiri Hindus can be resettled back in the valley.

One such front is a four-member Committee of National Minority Commission on rehabilitation of Kashmiri Hindus. Former Jammu and Kashmir chief secretary Musa Raza is leading the team. Other members of the delegation include Maulana Shafi Moonis, vice-president Jamaat-I-Islami Hind, Dr Qasim Rasool Isyas, All India Muslim Personal Law Board and Dr Navad Hamid, Movement for Empowerment of Muslim Indians. The modus operandi of this front is to visit Kashmir to create an ‘atmosphere’ in which Kashmiri Hindus can return to the valley with honor and dignity.

There is another facade (they call it a NGO) ‘Maytri’ floated by Taj Mohi-u-Din, a minister in Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s J&K government. The objective of this front too is to help Kashmiri Hindus return to Kashmir.

Taj Mohi-u-Din is apparently joined by 24 Kashmiri intellectuals — retired judges, academicians, lawyers, writers and some journalists. Due to security concerns, he is not yet identifying these 24 intellectuals. His proposed plan is a cruel joke. This minister, who had the audacity to say that only 100 odd Kashmiri Hindus were killed during this latest ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus, needs to study history and then remember it. As per his proposed plan, his first step is to approach
the imams of the villages and other Muslim leaders in the valley. This is what he has proposed:

”Once they (imams) are motivated, they can convince the villagers through Friday congregations. The youth, if motivated and mobilised, will go out of the way to make arrangements for the safe return of Kashmiri Pandits.’

‘Kashmiri Muslims never wanted the Pandits out, it was just the fear psychosis.’

Has Taj Mohi-u-Din heard the venomous threats that were blasted through mosques’ loudspeakers during late 1989 and early 1990? Has he seen the advertisements published in Kashmiri newspapers during the late 1980s and early 1990s? Does he know that those advertisements demanded Kashmiri Hindus to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or be killed? Does he remember the slogans in which Islamic terrorists demanded that they want Kashmir without Kashmiri Hindu males but with Kashmiri Hindu females? Does he remember all that? And he has the gall to say that Kashmiri Muslims never wanted the Pandits out? And where were those Kashmiri Muslims when their Kashmiri Hindu neighbors were getting raped and killed and dead bodies were being thrown in the middle of the road? Where were they? Acting like moot spectators makes them equally responsible.

It is one of the greatest tragedies in free democratic India when it is projected that Kashmiri Hindus’ return to their own homes and hearth is dependent upon an imam in a Kashmir village. What can be worse than that? Are we saying it has come to such a pass that we are leaving everything to an imam? Taj Mohi-u-Din and all of us need to look back into history and see who was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus. Those people who are ignorant and need more information, need to at least read the following books:

Under the Shadow of Militancy — The Diary of an unknown Kashmiri by Tej N Dhar
Lost Rebellion by Manoj Joshi (at least Pages 61 to 70)
Here is an excerpt from Manoj Joshi’s book:

‘G K Muju was a lecturer at the Medical College in Srinagar and a working committee member of the Kashmiri Pandit Conference. In February 1990, Muju was told that his name had been seen in hit lists passed by the militants in some mosques in the city. The following month, his family went through a number of harrowing incidents: people throwing stones at his house, mysterious phone calls, and so on. On 6 March, Muju, his wife and children left. However his eighty-year old father, a retired teacher, and his seventy-five-year old mother stayed behind. On 6 July, some intruders entered the house and brutally knifed the old couple to death. Nothing was taken away from their house.’

Did you notice the mention of mosques in this piece of factual information? And who runs these mosques? Yes, you guessed it right. ‘Imam’ is the right answer.

The above mentioned two books will remind ignorant people and those who have their heads buried in sand, how Kashmiri Hindus were mercilessly killed by Islamic zealots. And who promoted and harbored those Islamic zealots? Some of the imams Taj Mohi-u-Din wants to approach. Have we already forgotten the threats we heard coming out of mosques during the night of January 19, 1990?

Some of the imams were inside those mosques allowing all that to happen and possibly even participating in those
threats. And we are now going to talk to these imams to motivate them to take Kashmiri Hindus back? Is that what we have to do?

A few days back, Hurriyat/JKLF leader and terrorist Yasin Malik said the Pandits should keep themselves out of the political process. He said: ‘They should remain neutral in the ongoing struggle, and lead a normal, peaceful life, without involving themselves.’

What exactly is Yasin Malik proposing? Is he saying that he has a fundamental right of self-determination and Kashmiri Hindus don’t have a right to exercise their fundamental right of political voice? A terrorist can have a political voice and a peace-loving patriot cannot. What kind of standard is that?

Yasin Malik seems to be delusional. Let us remind him that Kashmiri Hindus are the only original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley and nobody on the face of this earth can deny them the right to their homeland. Kashmir belongs to Kashmiri Hindus. It has belonged to them since its inception and will continue to belong to them. Yasin Malik and his cronies cannot take away Kashmiri Hindus’ fundamental right to live in their own homeland with full dignity, honor, security and rights.

In my honest opinion, it has been a grave mistake on the part of Kashmiri Hindus that they have never been seriously politically active in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. And it has proven to be a big disadvantage. It is about time that Kashmiri Hindus float a serious political party and actively engage in the politics of Jammu & Kashmir.

Kashmiri Hindus need to create their own political clout by creating their own vote bank. The vote bank they would create will help them in getting a seat at the negotiation table.

For all those self-styled peace-missionaries, for any reconciliation the first pre-requisite is to bring out the truth. In any such ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ commissions, you will first see the Truth and then the Reconciliation. And the first truth that has to be brought out is the truth about the people who are responsible for this worst ethnic cleansing that happened in Kashmir.

The first step in any approach has to be to convict the people who have been responsible for this ethnic cleansing. They cannot and should not go scot-free. Anybody who forgets that and allows it to happen will be held equally responsible for the worst ethnic cleansing of a particular community in the recent history of India.

Decent people should not forget that there are children in the Kashmiri Hindu community who don’t have fathers because some Islamic terrorist killed their fathers. There are girls in this community who don’t have brothers because an Islamic terrorist killed their brothers and then hid behind an imam in a mosque. And they were killed only because they were Kashmiri Hindus and believed in the Indian tri-color. If somebody is giving you some other reason and you are buying that, I would like to talk to you.

Let it be known to one and all that Kashmiri Hindus will surely return to their sacred homeland and will return on their own terms. Neither Mufti Sayeed nor Yasin Malik will dictate when and how Kashmiri Hindus can return to their cherished homes and hearth.

Lastly, a little advice to Taj Mohi-u-Din, Musa Raza, Yasin Malik et al: If there is anybody who will decide the time and manner in which Kashmiri Hindus will return to the abode of Kashyapa, it will be Kashmiri Hindus.

19/01/90: When Kashmiri Pandits fled Islamic terror

January 19, 2005

Srinagar, January 4, 1990. Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu and Kashmir’s secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.

In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference government abdicating all responsibilities of the State. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans.

Reports of killing of Hindus, invariably Kashmiri Pandits, begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.

Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.

Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: “Be one with us, run, or die!”

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Jagmohan arrives to take charge as governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah, whose pathetic, whimpering, snivelling government has all but ceased to exist and has gone into hiding, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order. But it fails to have a deterrent effect.

Throughout the day, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.

As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: ‘Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, noted lawyer and BJP national executive member, by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989. Soon after that, Justice N K Ganju of the Srinagar high court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into bits and pieces at a sawmill.

In villages and towns across the Kashmir valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Kashmiri Pandits. With no government worth its name, the administration having collapsed and disappeared, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.

And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: to flee their homeland to save their lives from rabid jihadis. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 2005. There are no Kashmiri Pandits in Srinagar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Kashmir valley; they don’t live here anymore. You can find them in squalid refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi. As many as 300,000 Kashmiri Pandits have fled their home and hearth and been reduced to living the lives of refugees in their own country.

Two-thirds of them are camping in Jammu. The rest are in Delhi and in other Indian cities. Many of them, once prosperous and proud of their rich heritage, now live in grovelling poverty, dependent on government dole and charity. In these 15 years, an entire generation of exiled Kashmiri Pandits has grown up, without seeing the land from where their parents fled to escape the brutalities of Islamic terrorism, a land they dare not return to, although that land still remains a part of their country.

A large number of them are suffering from a variety of stress and depression related diseases. A group of doctors who surveyed the mental and physical health of the Kashmiri Pandits living in refugee camps, found high incidence of ‘economic distress, stress induced diabetes, partial lunacy, hypertension and mental retardation.’ Statistics reflect high death rate and low birth rate among the Kashmiri Pandit refugees.

And thereby hangs a tragic tale that has been all but wiped out from public memory.

An entire people have been uprooted from the land of their ancestors and left to fend for themselves as a weak-kneed Indian state shamelessly panders to Islamic terrorists and separatists who claim they are the final arbiters of Jammu and Kashmir’s destiny. A part of India’s cultural heritage has been destroyed; a chapter of India’s civilisational history has been erased.

Had this tragedy occurred elsewhere in Hindu majority India, and had the victims been Muslims, we would have described it as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide.’ We would have made films with horror-inducing titles. We would have filed cases in the Supreme Court of India. Our media would have marshalled remarkable rage in reporting the smallest detail.

But, this tragedy has occurred in Muslim majority Kashmir valley, and the victims are all Hindus, that too Pandits. What has been lost is part of India’s Hindu culture, what has been erased is integral to India’s Hindu civilisation.

Therefore, the government makes bold to record that the Kashmiri Pandits have “migrated on their own” and their ‘displacement (is) self-imposed;’ the National Human Rights Commission, after a perfunctory inquiry, refuses to concede that what has happened is ‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing,’ though facts add up to no less than that, never mind that 300,000 lives have been destroyed.

And, our jhola-wallah brigade of secular activists rudely turn up their noses to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits: Hindu sorrow, inflicted by Islamic terror, stinks.

Today, on January 19, the 15th anniversary of the forced flight of Kashmiri Pandits, look back at India’s wretched history of secular politics and consider the terrible price the nation has paid at the altar of appeasement because the Indian State has, and continues to, toe the line of least resistance.

Reflect. Resolve. React.