January 19, 2025 is being observed as the 36th ‘Holocaust Day’ by the indigenous people of Kashmir, the displaced Kashmiri Pandits. It needs to be mentioned here that the community of Kashmiri Pandits underwent severe genocidal action against them during the period 1989-90, and such heinous actions reached their worst in the valley of Kashmir on January 19, 1990. The whole community living in the valley for the last thousands of years was threatened to get killed in Kashmir if they didn’t toe the line of the organised fundamentalist and terrorist elements, supported by Pakistan and active in the Kashmir valley.
“Raliv-Galiv-Chaliv” slogans were openly raised against the Pandit community that asked the members of the community ‘to get converted to Islam, accept death or leave Kashmir’. While various mosques were used to announce threatening and deafening loud messages in this connection, lakhs of people came on roads and streets to create fear among the minority community to leave the valley. The womenfolk of the Hindu community were blatantly abused throughout the night between January 19-20, 1990. This humiliation in particular caused a clear reason for the minority community to think in terms of the mass-exodus from the valley in order to save the life and honour of their womenfolk and also the existence of the original inhabitants of Kashmir, the community of Kashmiri Pandits.
After the forced mass exodus, which was also caused due to the utter failure of the then governments that didn’t come to their rescue, the displaced community has been observing January 19 every year as the Kashmiri Pandit Holocaust Day (Kashmiri Pandit Nishkasan-Divas). The Hindu minority community of Kashmir observes this day in different cities throughout the country wherever the community took refuge during all these more than three decades after the forced mass exodus from Kashmir. Indoor and outdoor programmes including seminars, on-line webinars, sit-in protests, dharnas, panel discussions & debates and also ‘havans’ are organised on this day to highlight the issue of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the community. Displaced people living overseas have also been observing the day with deep commitment and dedication.
It is important to review the situation on this day from the Kashmiri Pandit point of view. All these years, the displaced community was promised a lot by the governments in the state and the centre. However, the community has developed a deep feeling of abandonment by the government/s for valid and visible reasons. This feeling has added more pain to their already existing pain of victimhood but the Pandits learnt the art of hiding their pain behind their smiling faces. The best nationalists were treated in the worst way even after their mass-exodus as their dispersal was allowed and encouraged as if it would absolve the government of its responsibilities in terms of their resettlement back in the Kashmir valley. We discuss here five promises, their status as on date and how the government/s failed the displaced community despite showering those promises.
The biggest promise that the community expected the governments and in particular the central government to realise was the official recognition of the genocide of the community in Kashmir. Failure of the government/s to recognize the genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits officially is indeed a tragic saga of the victimhood of the community in exile. This author was instrumental in taking the issue of genocide of the Kashmiri Pandit community in Kashmir to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in 1994. A long struggle was fought at the level of the Commission which referred the matter to the Commission’s court, a historic first for the NHRC. Heaps of documentation and presentations were made to the Commission and in the Commission’s court. Ultimately, the Commission after a marathon phase of meetings and argumentation delivered its decision in the matter in June 1999.
Though the National Human Rights Commission recognised the ethnic cleansing of the community as ‘acts akin to genocide’ committed against them by the terrorists and militants in Kashmir, yet the government didn’t take any steps consequent upon the decision of the NHRC to take the issue forward. There are also a number of judgements in this regard delivered by the honourable courts in the country describing the displacement of the community as ethnic cleansing and a migration that can’t be compared with any other migrations of humans. The State of India is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and the Convention on Prevention & Punishment of Crime of Genocide as also the two Covenents on Human Rights are an integral part of the customary law in India. However, the government of India, irrespective of which party was in power, dissuaded itself from recognising what was done to the Kashmiri Pandits as genocide.
There is a very strong lobby among the senior bureaucrats of India which believes that the recognition of the issue as genocide would eventually invite international intervention in the internal affairs of India and more so when it pertains to Kashmir, they desist the government from doing so. But what they fail to understand and think is that it would have put Pakistan also in the dock internationally as the perpetrator and progenitor of the heinous crime. Failure on the part of the government/s in this regard reflects failure to put the historical facts straight and constitutes one of the biggest broken promises of the governments whose vanguard would day in and day out talk about the genocide, human rights violations and ethnic cleansing of the community from all available public platforms all these more than three decades.
On the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission of India and due to our consistent struggle, the government of India got the nominations of the two displaced community members for the J&K Assembly passed in the parliament in December 2023. This author was in the forefront of the struggle in this connection consistently for five years. However, even after the constitution of the new Assembly for the UT in October 2024, the nominations haven’t been made by the government which left the displaced community without any representation in the Assembly. In regard to the Pondicherry Assembly, such nominations have already been upheld by the Supreme Court of India in the past which the government, unfortunately, seems to have not taken cognizance of as yet.
For the last eight years, the relief-holders in the community have been struggling for enhancement of their monthly relief. Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his last visit to Jammu during the election campaigning promised to enhance the relief without any delay. There is a measure of genuine desperation in this regard among the relief holders for the last more than five years.
In order to woo the youth, the then government/s in 2008 claimed that the Employment package would pave the way for the so-called rehabilitation of the displaced community back in Kashmir in a phased manner. However, the package has miserably failed in this context all these years and it has provided a bonded-labour type formula to the unemployed educated youth of the community under the J&K government.
No government/s over the last three decades have taken any serious measures to take the displaced community of Kashmiri. The community of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 and 1991, in this context, displayed a great political resolve and courage to ask for its resettlement in the valley of Kashmir as per the Margdarshan Resolution of 1991. A number of demands in the resolution such as abrogation of Article 370, reorganisation of the J&K state and conversion of J&K state into a Union Territory have already been met in August 2019 in a revolutionary manner by the present Modi government.
It seems that the government of India (irrespective of parties in power) is not inclined to take any risk in regard to the resettlement of the community in Kashmir. There is surely a lurking fear in the context of terrorism that has not died down and also about the overall socio-political scenario in Kashmir in relation to the displaced community. No government would like to get exposed so far as its confidence in this regard is concerned. The Modi government is perceived as a government to create new history in Kashmir and the displaced community of Kashmiri Hindus looks up to this government with great expectations and hope. The saga of broken promises needs to be reversed, sooner than later. Hope that the government is listening on this fateful 36th Holocaust Day….!
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