General Secretary’s Report

Today we complete the ten years of our struggle for retrieval of our lost homeland. 28th of December, 1991 was a defining moment in the history of community’s resistance against the forces of genocide. It was here, on that day, my community showed determination and vision, when it told to the powers that be that Kashmiri Hindus’ exodus was not a fait accompli. It declared that it would fight back for its political rights and the strategic imperatives which were necessary for retrieving Kashmir as a nationalist bastion and a functioning secular society. Out of this vision was born the historic resolution of Margdarshan ‘91.

This resolution said that the Kashmiri Pandit community will no more submit itself to the operatives of Muslim precedence and it was determined to carve out a union territory on the soil of Kashmir to the north and east of river vitasta for its permanent settlement to put an end to perpetuate genocide. We have assembled here not only to commemorate the tenth anniversary of this historic vision, but also to reaffirm our pledge to work for the aims for which Panun Kashmir was launched.

Struggle of a community, which is in the throes of a genocide, is not a dinner party. The enemy, which has pushed the victimsed community towards genocide cannot be expected to sit idle and allow the situation of genocide to reverse. It employs all the strategies-subterfuge, deception, blackmail and force to break the victimsed community’s will and determination to fight back. The enemy’s strategy is to sabotage the victimised community’s resistance from within and tighten the siege around the exiled community by declaring no-holds barred assault on the economic, religious, social and political interests of the victimize community. The objective is to break the resolve of the victim to a point where it is forced to welcome and endorse the policies of the perpetrator of the genocide. This is what is happening to our community.

The enemy which wants the perpetual genocide against us to continue, is trying to subvert the agenda that meets our aspirations. It has launched an all round assault on the economic, social, religious and political interests of the community. Never before have the community’s educational institutions and shrines been under threat as today. Lastly, the perpetrators of genocide are trying to create a counter-feit leadership. Through such a leadership enemy is trying to rationalise the assault on community’s interest as well as break the community’s struggle against genocide. The tenth anniversary of Margdarshan ‘91 is an occasion for us to introspect on enemy’s strategies and refashion our responses to move the struggle to the next phase.

Panun Kashmir Movement has completed the first phase of the struggle. It has identified the forces which have pushed our community to a state of continuous genocide and laid bare the historical processes which have facilitated this process. It has prepared a generation of the community to listen to the message of Panun Kashmir. Now it is the task of the next generation to implement the vision of Panun Kashmir. An exiled community that glosses over its achievements cannot struggle. Today Kashmiri Pandit is identified by Panun Kashmir and the ‘Pandit question’ is the Panun Kashmir question now.

Margdarshan ‘91 was a continuation of the vision elaborated on 13th and 14th July, 1990. The new leadership of the Pandit community challenged the old guard, which was still unwilling to work out a vision of survival for the community outside the shackles of Muslim communalism. This old leadership had a perspective which reduced the community’s resistance to the ‘migrant agenda’ of the different political groupings. Panun Kashmir soon challenged this dangerous thinking and declared that the community’s struggle would be decided by the community itself. It said the Pandit community will live in Kashmir by virtue of its own right and choice and not at the goodwill of Muslim communalists.

The first step in the community’s struggle was the territorialization of the community. Resolution No:4 that proposed security zone is thus a key link in the evolution of Panun Kashmir demand. The old leadership, which stood isolated continued to engage itself in manoeuvreings to subvert the agenda of Panun Kashmir and break community’s struggle. It gobbled together a coalition of different opportunists, many of whom had been active in working against the interests of the community, to create confusion in the community. In the process, the old leadership, which had never allowed a vision of survival to develop, got exposed.

Panun Kashmir elaborated the concepts defending the historic and secular regional identity of Kashmir. In 1991, the community under the aegis of Panun Kashmir observed the Vyeth Truvah, the birthday of river vitasta, which had been virtually forgotten by the community due to the constant onslaught by the forces of intolerance. The community members took a pledge on the grounds of Rajinder Park to strive for a future which lies in Kashmir and not in the diaspora. Resolve to return to Kashmir became a chief objective of Panun Kashmir. Observation of Vyeth Truvah also sent a message across to the Pan Islamists who continued their efforts to subvert the secular and historic identity of Kashmir by crafting a putative and sectarian identity.

It took the new leadership one and a half years to concreatise the objectives and the broad aims of Panun Kashmir. Its culmination was the Margdarshan ‘91. For the first time in seven centuries of persecution Pandit community was calling spade by its proper name. It said that Pandit’s expulsion was the consequence of the rejection of Coexistence by the majority Muslim community. Pandits declared that they will not live in Kashmir as ‘amanat’ of the majority community or as symbols of tokenist secularism or nationalism. Islamic fundamentalist ideology, which has gripped the Kashmir valley forecloses all options for survival of pluralistic and healthy society. This was the vision of Panun Kashmir.

Panun Kashmir challenged the human rights discourse, the nationalists, paradigm on retrieval of Kashmir and the existing paradigm on secular revival. Panun Kashmir reached the global community and sensitized it to two realities. One, that it was not Kashmiri Muslim but the ethnically-cleansed community of Kashmiri Hindus that was the real victim of human rights violations and it was a key factor in any solution to Kashmir. Secondly, the international community was told that Kashmir question is not synonymous with aspirations of Kashmiri Sunni Muslim community, which constitutes just 18% of J&K population. J&K is a heterogenous society, where different ethnic groups have antagonistic aspirations and overwhelming majority was opposed to any form of dilution of Indian sovereignty over Kashmir- be it autonomy or so-called independence. For the first time the nation had an alternative vision for permanent nationalist consolidation in Kashmir. Muslim-Left and the liberal lobbies, which are working overtime to undermine the integrity and sovereignly of India but retain their accessibility to the Indian state have been torpedoing all the nationalist initiatives. It is this lobby which is spearheading the campaign to undermine the relevance of Panun Kashmir as solution to Kashmir and the issue of resettlement of displaced Kashmiri Hindus. Those who are working against Panun Kashmir are the same people who are bent upon sabotaging the nationalist initiatives on Kashmir.

Panun Kashmir emerged as a true mass movement. It forged its links with the masses through countless corner meetings and propagated its vision through seminars, rallies media and wall-paintings, and Prabhat pheris. The distinction between cadres and the masses got blurred. Panun Kashmir cadres reached every Pandit home. This gave new confidence to the Panun Kashmir movement. In 1992 Mr Hamidullah Khan, the then advisor to the J&K government revealed his true colours by stopping the payment of relief to the displaced Pandit community, For four months no relief was disbursed to the members of the community whose sole source of income was the paltry relief. PK organised a massive demonstration of more than 15,000 people at Jammu and the government had no option but to put an end to the anti-Pandit policies of Hamidullah Khan.

A resistance movement of an exiled community cannot be forged without remembering the contribution of the martyrs who have laid down their lives for the survival of the community. Panun Kashmir recalled the day when our ancestor Pandit Kripa Ram Dutt approached Guru Teg Bahadur, the greatest of Indian saints who became the martyr for the survival of our community and faith. We recalled this supreme sacrifice by paying obeisance at Sisganj Gurudwara on Martyrs’ Day in 1993. Panun Kashmir organised the Kritagyata Yatra in April 1995 to Anandpur Sahib.

First world Kashmir Pandit Conference brought Panun Kashmir into the national focus. As many as thirteen leading national dailies wrote lead editorials on the movement. This amply demonstrated that Panun Kashmir as a solution to Kashmir cannot be brushed aside. The conference made a strong plea that unless Pakistan was declared a terrorist state, there can be no meaningful battle against forces of subversion. It has taken Indian state and its political leadership nearly eight years to take preliminary steps now for this.

In 1994, two landmark developments took place. Panun Kashmir sent its own delegation headed by our chairman Dr Ajay Chrangoo to Geneva to tell the world the other side of the coin. Till date it remains the only delegation of Pandits that did not dilute the enormity of human rights violations of Pandits by counterposing the question of killings of the members of the majority community due to varying reasons. This was not obviously liked by those powers that visualised the incorporation of Muslim sectarian subnationalism as a permanent factor in the political landscape of Kashmir.

The second historic development was the launching of Kashmir Sentinel, as the powerful mouthpiece of Kashmiri Pandit community. This fortnightly worked as the Sentinel of the nationalist interests on Kashmir and as the authentic voice of Kashmiri Pandit community. This paper is now in its ninth year of publication and prides in having one of the most enlightened readerships. No paper can survive without funds. It is the strong determination displayed by our community in seeing that the paper survives. However, due to constant financial problems, we have to compromise with the frequency and the space of the paper.

On 28th Dec. 1994, Panun Kashmir dedicated Margdarshan Day to our great saintness, Bhakht Lalleshwari, the great apostle of popular Kashmir Shaivism. Refocusing on her true legacy cleared much of the mist on the Sufi-Rishi interface of medieval times. Panun Kashmir organised seminars in Kanpur, Hyderabad, Udaipur, Chandigarh, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Jaipur etc. to sensitise the nation to the new challenges in Kashmir.

Panun Kashmir organised a human chain of 1500 children, in the age group of 6-16 years, culminating outside the UN observer’s office in Jammu. On the same day its representative in Geneva was speaking to the international human community about the gross human right violations of Kashmiri Hindus.

In 1996, Panun Kashmir refused to accept a role that would depict displaced Pandits as pawns in the political chessboard of Kashmir. Bhuvnesh Chaturvedi the blue eyed man of Narsimha Rao then had said in Geneva ‘Agar Pandit Election Mein Hissa Nahi Lenge To Inko Koi Gaas Nahi Chodega’. Panun Kashmir presented a comprehensive critique of the elections and asked the community to boycott elections till conditions were created for its participation for free elections. It gave precedence to right to live and rehabilitations over tokenist participation in elections. Panun Kashmir demanded a blue print for its rehabilitation, a proper census of the community and guarantees for participatory democracy. This was asking too much for the pro-Muslim lobbies in Indian state. The decision to boycott was endorsed by the entire community, when the leading lights of the community along with the representatives of the camps met at Indian International Centre and served an ultimatum on the government. Anti Pandit sections in the establishment worked overtime to plant disinformation campaigns against Panun Kashmir and its leaders.

Our pleas for survival before legitimising elections, did not go unheard. Despite all the obstacles being put by the state machinery, our delegation managed to meet Mr T.N. Seshan, CEC. He understood our pain but felt helpless. He told us ‘Jav Mandir Me Praathna Karo’ our organisation brought out a pamphlet “Why Boycott”. It was widely distributed among MP’s, Journalists and Opinion Makers. It was the will of the tormented community.

Some of the people who were not prepared to fight out the machinations of the community deserted the organisations. This did create some hiccups but people identify with ideas and not the persons. With the strength of the people, reinvigorated Panun Kashmir challenged the semi-secessionist communal agendas on Autonomy, Resettlement bill etc and the sensitized national opinion thwarted these conspiracies.

Our campaigns against American conspiracies on Kashmir be it the different balkanising plans or the ceasefire deceptions or track-two games have borne fruit. There are signs of national leadership waking upto the assaults on national sovereignty.

No struggle can succeed with out a broad but purposeful unity. The community has enough experience that tokenist or protocol unity only builds intertia. Real unity is the unity of minds and not the heads. With this objective Panun Kashmiri worked as a catalyst in forging the unity of Ladakhi, Kashmiri Hindus and people of Jammu by launching PIPU, Peoples’ Initiative on People’s of Unity. PIPU has successfully contested the subversive politics of autonomy and is creating a basis for secular-nationalist consolidation in J&K. PIPU organised a seminar in Bangalore in February 2001. It was a clear message that the deprivations of different groups in J&K cannot be removed in isolation from the broad struggle against the forces of nationalist disruption. PIPU organised two bandhs in Jammu to focus attention of people of Jammu to the acts of terrorist war and the game-plan of ethnic-cleansing against minorities of J&K.

Panun Kashmir delegation met Mr KC Pant in Srinagar this year and in the first ever press conference in Valley after the exodus articulated that no exodus can be a fait accompli. Pandits will fight back. Attempts to snatch away Kashmir’s historic and secular identity will not succeed come what may.

The next phase of our struggle is to be launched outside J&K by mobilising the Indian Nation to put pressure on Indian state for nationalist intervention in Kashmir.