Pandit refugees & post-poll Kashmir

HINDUSTAN TIMES, November 7, 1996
By Shailendra Aima
AFTER six years in exile and waiting for that ray of hope which would see them re­settled in their homeland, three lakh Kashmiri Pandits still find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Now that the elections are over and Dr Abdullah has come to power with a thumping majority, Pandits' fears should have been allayed and a sense of security gradually descended on their hurt psyche and battered souls. Maybe the din of the victory processions in Jammu, the base camp and epicenter of Pandit poli­tics, has to subside before activity and enthusiasm among the "mig­rants" is heard and felt. But those who are inclined to hear murmurs and feel for weak tremors have a different tale to narrate. Pandits, who comprehensively boycotted the poll-process in the valley, do not visualize an immediate return, a much desired act to fit in the larger scheme of declaring nor­malcy in the state, nay the valley.
While the state in general is gripped with a fever and fervour of hailing the recently acquired democracy and a popular govern­ment, one finds the Pandits and their leaders huddled in closed room discussions and conference rooms, pondering over their fate and fortune, debating the wisdom of their election boycott and anx­iously awaiting orders for the "migrant employees" to march to the valley. Similar would be the predicament of more than a lakh of such "migrants" who have moved away from Jammu to De­lhi and other places outside the state. Something somewhere is definitely wrong.
Dr Abdullah, in his first Press conference after winning the elec­tions, while prioritizing the tasks before his government, commit­ted himself to the safe and secure return of the Pandit refugees. He also talked of Pandits as an in­separable part of the Kashmiri milieu and stated that Kashmir is and shall remain incomplete with­out the Pandits. Anyhow, after these initial expressions, Dr Abdullah is now concentrating on his first political priority of defin­ing, deciding and negotiating on a package of autonomy for the state. His second priority is sur­render of militants and rehabilita­tion of surrendered militants. And his third priority is to deter­mine, within the package of grea­ter autonomy, the quantum of re­gional autonomy to the three re­gions of the state. Besides these important political issues, Dr Abdullah has to address other administrative and related mat­ters. In fact, his involvement and proclivities hardly leave any doubt that the issue of Pandit re­fugees has been relegated to the back stage, at the moment, in his list of priorities.
Besieged by the last six years of administrative apathy and politic­al isolation, the refugees are clue­less as to what is in store for them. During their exile, these refugees, while eking out a living in ram­shackle tents, have continued to espouse the cause of the Indian nation even under grave provoca­tion and alienation from the poli­tical establishment of the country.
Pandit organisations like Panun Kashmir, have been in the fore­front in exposing the fun­damentalist and communal con­tours of the militant movement in Kashmir. While doing so they have also exposed the ruling elite of Kashmir, both of NC and Con­gress brand, for having pursued a policy of disguised communalism.
In fact, the Pandits have been so irked by the Kashmiri variety of disguised communalism that dur­ing the 1994 UN Convention on Human Rights in Geneva, the Panun Kashmir delegation con­fronted the Indian delegation led by Vajpayee on inducting Dr Farooq in the official Indian de­legation. In spite of this, both Dr Farooq and Panun Kashmir emerged heroes at Geneva in de­feating Pakistan. And hence, this love-hate relationship between the two sides of the Kashmir story - Dr Farooq on one side and the refugee Pandits on the other.
With the youth in Kashmir hav­ing tasted and tested the power of the gun, with the forced and illeg­al occupation of Pandit properties and premises in the valley, and with the vacancies (created due to mass exodus of Pandit em­ployees), having already been fil­led by the so-called "misguided youth" at the instance of militant leaders, a vested interest in keeping the Pan­dits away from their homeland, already exists in Kashmir. And it is not going to be easy for any government to neutralize this vested interest.
If the recent trends are any in­dicators, Pandits' properties are being purchased through large scale distress sales in the valley. A fair estimate suggests that about eighteen thousand refugee fami­lies have already constructed houses in and around Jammu. An equal number has found settle­ment outside the state, in Delhi, Bombay, Dehradun and other cities. There are another four thousand government employees' households and five thousand re­fugee families living in the camps who might be the only persons with active stakes in the valley. Even, as reports indicate, many among them would only be in­terested in going to the valley to dispose of their properties at the first possible opportunity. Such is the feeling of insecurity and dis­tress among the Pandits. Hence, the chances of a viable and perma­nent return of the Pandits to Kashmir have become bleak with time.
In such an eventuality, it is not difficult to imagine the character of the state and society in Kash­mir. The ethno-religious cleans­ing in the valley has deprived Kashmir of any semblance of a pluralistic character. How long shall the Indian state, which is committed to a secular, democra­tic order, be able to retain a monolithic, Islamic pocket of re­sistance into its fold, with hostile Islamic states in its immediate neighbourhood?
The state, the society and the political establishment in India shall, therefore, have to do a soul searching to find an answer. Is the priority for the Indian state in Kashmir an agenda of greater autonomy or the agenda of viable return of the Pandits to the valley? The post-poll scenario enjoins upon the state as well as central governments to come out with a foolproof resettlement and re­habilitation plan for these hapless victims of terrorist violence and communal politics. Their perma­nent rehabilitation with constitu­tional safeguards defined entirely to their satisfaction is the real test of the secular and democratic character of the Indian state and Kashmiri politics. Else, in the frame-work of regional auton­omies, Pandits have a strong case for a homeland with a union terri­tory status.