In our last week’s editorial, we saw all the events preceding the horror which struck the beautiful valley and land of the Hindus. However, the dreaded terror which unfolded was gory beyond imagination and led to a complete exodus of the Hindus – our very own Kashmiri Pandits!
A gory ‘Indian’ holocaust
Not a single Pandit was spared be it the scholars, teachers, lawyers, businessmen, dignitaries, public & private officials and civilians – men, women and children of every household. The militants approached this massacre with just one motto – “A Free Kashmir with only the Hindu women and no men”. Every man and male child of the household was brutally murdered while the women were spared. The butchery they witnessed in front of their eyes looking at their husbands and kids fall to the ground was beyond comprehension. So why were these women spared? Why were they included in the scheme of a free Kashmir? Was it any form of compassion? Not at all. At some level it feels the men who lost their lives just experienced momentary pain falling to the ground as bullets pierced their entire body. But the Hindu mothers, daughters and sisters who lived a life of hell were brutally raped not once but many times repeatedly and in front of many. They were then forced to go through conversion and marry the Muslims. Those who vehemently resisted were brutally murdered in ways which would make our blood boil. The Pandits were confiscated of their lands, made to flee from their homes and slowly wiped out from Kashmir. Those who managed to survive this killing spree ended up as refugees in other states of the country. Unfortunately, their identities which they lost looks like one forever and are still dispersed across the country as minorities. This was nothing but a systematic ‘militant’ approach of religious cleansing in an erstwhile valley of peace and beauty. This was the costly price and the unprecedented aftermath of releasing the most notorious terrorists who then wandered as free men licensed to affect this brutality by Mufti Mohammad Syed. The verdict should simply be capital punishment and if not, nothing less than life imprisonment for war crimes committed by these animal-like criminals!
Who were the wreckers in Chief?
Yasin Malik was the Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), the outfit which originally spearheaded and primarily responsible for the armed militancy in the Kashmir Valley. A Kashmiri separatist leader who has been advocating the ideology of “Azaad Kashmir – separation of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan.” Born in 1966 in Srinagar, Malik himself claimed that he took to arms after witnessing violence by the Indian security forces in 1980. He took to official politics and formed the Tala Party — yet another radical front aimed at destroying any sort of possible harmony amidst the people of Kashmir. It was in 1983 that this tyrant was first arrested, though just for 4 months for trying to disrupt the first international cricket match at Srinagar when the West Indies toured India. Three years later in 1986, the same Tala Party which he founded restyled itself as the Islamic Students League (ISL) and named Malik as the general secretary. This time around he was more focused and the ISL joined the Muslim United Front (MUF) in the run-up to the 1987 Assembly elections. Owing to a lack of belief in the constitution itself, it did not contest any seats however, he took charge of MUF’s campaigning across all Srinagar constituencies. As expected, the elections were rigged and MUF’s candidate at Amirakadal Mohammad Yusuf Shah (who would eventually style himself as Syed Salahuddin and become the dreaded head of Hizbul Mujahideen) was declared as a loser, despite having secured a majority. Both Shah and Malik were arrested and detained without any formal charge, court appearance or trial.
Malik was in jail this time till the end of 1987. When he was released this time, Malik crossed over to Pakistan to receive training at the militant camps there and returned to Kashmir in 1989 as a core member of the JKLF declaring his goal for the independence of the entirety of Jammu and Kashmir – Azaad Kashmir! What followed was nightmare – the extreme violence against and eventual exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits. With immense effort the Indian security forces caught Malik who was in a hideout in August 1990 and was imprisoned until May 1994. Yet another blunder committed was his release on this condition – renunciation of violence and adoption of peaceful methods to come to a settlement on the Kashmir conflict. Which government would ever do this? As always, he never adhered to any of the laid conditions and in October 1999, he was once again arrested under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and once again under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) in March 2002 detained for almost a year. Recently, a couple of years back in 2020, Malik and six accomplices were charged under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) for the attack on 40 IAF personnel on January 25, 1990, in Srinagar’s Rawalpora.
Bitta Karate – A True ‘MANIMAL’
Born with the name of Farooq Ahmed Dar in 1973 in Srinagar, Bitta was his nick name and “KARATE” was the name he earned because of his mastery in martial arts. He was synonymous for the terror against the Pandits in the valley and was a key accomplice of Yasin Malik. In 1988, he was handpicked by the then JKLF chief commander Ashfaq Majeed Wani for armed training in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) where he reportedly received 32-day armed training in a state-sponsored terrorist training camp. With this he was all set to unleash a wave of violence which he did in a brutal manner with no remorse. Being a key accomplice of Malik, he was drenched in the bloodshed from the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits. Among his first victims was his close childhood friend who happened to be a Kashmiri Pandit. He shot him dead right in front of his house and made his wife consume her husband’s blood as her food for the next one week. Later, he raped her along with other militants and slayed her to death by cutting her genitals using a manual saw cutter. He was so radical that in one of the television interviews, he said that he would not mind to kill his own mother if he “received the orders” to do so. In the very same interview, he openly confessed to have killed at least 20 Kashmiri Pandit in cold blood. Bitta Karate was first arrested in June 1990 by Indian forces and remained under detention for 16 years until 2006. It is very popularly known that while releasing him on bail in 2006, the TADA judge ND Wani had remarked – “The court is aware of the fact that the allegations against the accused are of serious nature and carry a punishment of death sentence or life imprisonment. But the fact is that the prosecution has shown total disinterest in arguing the case.” To the horror of the valley, he was granted indefinite bail in October 2006. Once out of jail, he joined the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front but was arrested again by the NIA in 2019 on charges of terror funding under the anti-terror laws after the recent Pulwama attacks.
The Road Ahead – Repeal of Article 371
There was no progress whatsoever in the regressive regime of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on the Kashmir issue. Peace talks, be it with Pakistan or the militant outfits in Kashmir, have not been fruitful on any account. Wearing the garb of secularism, the UPA has supported and promoted only divisive politics in the valley. Shockingly, during their regime in the 2000’s, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had invited Yasin Malik in recognition of his effort to promote peace in J&K. As a nation, our real hope has emerged through the rise of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi. The NDA has dealt this issue with an iron hand and given it back strongly to our warring neighbours Pakistan. Many surgical strikes have been done in the border to cripple the Pakistani army and the accomplice militants. The Uri surgical strike is the most popular of those. No peace talks were ever encouraged to communicate their stance of an Indian Kashmir or war. Most importantly at a constitutional level, the NDA is working sincerely on the annulment of the main cause of the Kashmir issue – Article 370/371. The sun will truly rise in the valley once this effort of the Modi government sees
the light.
Truly, A Million Thanks
While we’ve delved into all plausible details on the exodus of the Pandits, the Kashmir issue and the best way forward for our country, this editorial would not be doing justice without a heartfelt thanks to Indian film director Vivek Agnihotri, his crew and the cast of his docudrama, The Kashmir files which made its humble beginning as a movie and eventually became a ‘Movement’. The authentic showcasing of the real-life horror inflicted on our Kashmiri Pandits, immense research and detailing is praiseworthy. This celluloidal work of art has not just got the cash registers ringing but has stirred a tsunami of awareness amidst the people of our nation.