Kashmiri Pandits should be rehabilitated with honour and dignity

22 March, 2013

If there is a Heaven on Earth, it is here, it is here, it is here, so said Firdaus, the Persian poet from the Iranian city of Isphahan on witnessing the beauty of Kashmir. The Moghul kings in India found the valley of Kashmir so bewitching and enchanting that they had the said Persian couplet written in the Mughal gardens in Srinagar.

The Kashmir valley was regarded as heaven on earth with periodic disruptions during reign of cruel Afghan, Dogra and other foreign kings from time to time. The cruelty, both mental and physical, was so devilish that many Kashmiri people, especially the Pandits (Shaiv Brahmins) chose to migrate to safer parts of plains in India rather than continue living in their ancestral land. The last exodus happened in 1989-90 and continued for a couple of years.

The rest of India read about it in bits and pieces and forgot all about it until a Kashmiri Pandit, a victim of terror himself, was banished from the land of birth, his habitat consigned to flames and his old parents were abandoned on the road on a wintry evening in the snow-laden cold valley. He is Colonel Tej K. Tikoo, Ph.D. who refused to suffer in silence. He made up his mind to share the trials and tribulations of the Kashmiri Pandits with the rest of the world who cared to listen.

The Kashmiri Pundits have survived in other parts of India despite no major help coming to them from the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The book titled “Kashmir: Its Aborigines and their Exodus” has been written painstakingly with an eye on historical details by Colonel Tej K. Tikoo. He was commissioned in the First Battalion of the Naga Regt on completion of training at the Indian Military Academy, Dehra Dun. Colonel Tikoo knows professionally what insurgency is.

Where do we go from here? It would be wrong on the part of the Indian population to let the Kahmiri Pandits suffer in isolation in a remote village in the valley or in a crowded locality in Jammu without a proper roof over their heads. After all the Kashmiri Pandits are citizens of India and it is incumbent on the Government of India that our unfortunate compatriots should get two square meals a day, have a shelter overhead and a little petty cash for a rainy day. It should be the aim of the central government and the state government to escort the Kashmiri Pandits and their families back to the Kashmir valley and rehabilitate them there with honour and dignity.

Men and women in the rest of India who have a barbed tongue must ensure that they have just a word of sympathy for our Kashmiri brethren and not dig old graves of history to say that they deserved what they eventually received. Allow me to say that the Kashmiri Pandits are our compatriots, our kith and kin and it is our sacred and moral duty to provide succor to the needy brethren and sisters.

I salute the Kashmiri Pandits for their perseverance, resilience and love of the Hindu Dharma that they still profess despite adverse circumstances. May Ishwar give them courage to walk on the difficult path of life as it is and may they live in happiness forever.