POLITICS ON MIGRANTS: By now, it is crystal clear that none of the political parties including PDP, BJP, NC, Congress, Hurriyat, JKLF, wants the displaced Kashmiri Pandits back home. Within the community too, they have a section of self-defeatists. Each and every ruling and opposition party, including the incumbent rulers PDP and BJP, is simply making rhetorical statements on the KPs being "part and parcel of the Valley's plural and secular culture and society" and "our brothers". It's clear that the politicians, employed either by New Delhi or Islamabad or both, have no intention of getting the migrants back. They all are making politics on the lines given to them by their masters. As far as the common Kashmiri Muslim is concerned, he is genetically secular. Being a journalist on the ground, who has reported, every single incident and political development since 1990, with complete honesty and without any fear or favour, I can say without any fear of contradiction that not a single Hindu place of worship or temple has been damaged or desecrated by a common Kashmiri Muslim. Not a single KP woman has been ever kidnapped or raped by them. I am not the one who will defend the militants who did not spare anybody. It is a fact that they shot dead or hanged to death 222 KPs which was enough to spread a wave of terror and trauma in the community. It is also a fact that two or three urchins from one or two mosques shouted that deplorable slogan "batav rous ta.....". I never heard that until I read it in HT in a story done perhaps by Mr Anil Maheshwari on an unconfirmed "eyewitness account". But I am a living witness to it that the common Kashmiri Muslim was as helpless as the Kashmiri Pandit. Even today, he is being targeted and shot dead at will. The common masses never took out an anti-KP procession or indulged in devastation of the migrant properties. When JKLF militants allegedly raped and killed a Pandit harbourer's sister in Basant Bagh, Gawkadal, in 1991, over 5,000 Kashmiri Muslims took out a protest march. Even anti-Pakistan and anti-terrorist slogans were shouted. In Ichhigam (Budgam), Muslims constructed a temple for some poor resident Pandit families out of the religious funds which they had collected for the construction of a mosque. The story was reported by Muzamil Jaleel in Indian Express. Nobody on TV is highlighting this positive picture. I won't hide the fact that hundreds of the deserted Pandit houses were robbed of everything by local youngsters and their elders did not stop them. I am witness to it that a group of boys set on fire about a dozen deserted KP houses, one after another in Gogjibagh. For god's sake, don't please dub the Kashmiri Muslims as your "enemies" and "communalists". We must sincerely and realistically appreciate the fear which is continuously existing and haunting the migrants, particularly those who don't regularly visit today's Kashmir. They will never stay or sleep for an hour at their ancestral home, dilapidated, intact, reconstructed or sold off. We can't give them any confidence by saying that "3,000" or "10,000" non-migrant Pandits have been living here with "full dignity and sense of security" since 1990. It is only they---not politicians like Omar Abdullah, Mufti Sayeed, Modi, Rajnath or Rahul Gandhi, or even Geelani, Mirwaiz and Yasin Malik or Engineer Rashid---who can decide where to stay on their return to the Valley. Gradually, they can fan out to their villages or other places and settle there without changing any "demography". We have seen that those settled at Sheikhpora, Baramulla, Tulmulla etc stay in ghettos but they are posted in schools and government offices spread over the entire valley. Let the politicians, including the Pandit groups, stop politics on this nightmarish human tragedy. Let the genuine CIVIL SOCIETY, not the one affiliated to stated political positions, take a sincere initiative.

I further want to make it clear here that Muslims as a community have not treated the KPs' deserted properties or places of worship as "maal i ganeemat". I have investigated the land encroachment cases at Khrewa, Rainawari and other places and found that the encroached temple lands have been secretly sold out by a coterie of Hindu custodians to unscrupulous Muslim neighbours. It is a great nexus in which Muslims are not playing the primary role. A Jammu-based religious trust has made billions out of illegal sales and rent deeds with local businessmen. This business has grown so lucrative that Purohits are contesting cases against one another in different courts to retain their position and "customised authority". It is a fact that some trees were felled and some deserted KP houses grabbed by unscrupulous neighbours but the bolder fact is that most of such properties remained intact for two decades. I also found a coterie of people involved in burning down these houses at the instance of displaced owners so as to draw compensation/ insurance money. Distress sale of KP properties continued, even after J&K Govt outrightly banned it during Farooq Abdullah's regime, as a consequence of nexus between the Pandit owners, middlemen and the Muslim buyers. The modus operandi of "SALE BY ATTORNEY" was invented and misused by the owners of these properties with the involvement of officials in offices of Tehsildars, DCs and Divisional Commissioner. No such deed can happen without the satisfaction of Divisional Commissioner. How does it continue till date? What role was played to curb it by Div Comm SL Bhat, Revenue Secretary Vinod Kaul etc? My point is that an entire community, Muslims or Pandits, can not be painted black and demonised on the basis of a perception created more on hearsay and mischief than on facts and reality. Jalal Ud Din Shah sahab is right that there is a strak generation gap and the post-1990 KP generation doesn't have the sensibility of our centuries old value system. But I beg to add that a degree of decay is also evident in the Generation Next on our side which has little idea of the pre-1990 harmonious culture of Kashmir. We can not generalise things and pass sweeping remarks without self-introspection. We must also admit that a lot of mistrust and suspicion was created by the statements of our separatist politicians when they openly laid conditions that "KPs can come back and stay at their homes if they participate in the processions and anti-India and anti-forces demonstrations". I have received and seen such statements several times. However, the other fact is that some right wing outfits, claiming to represent KPs, spread venom against the majority community en bloc with hugely exaggerated data. Hundreds of the houses and temples, which decayed due to snow and rains over the years and collapsed, were shown as the structures "vandalised, demolished and desecrated by Muslims". In Omar Abdullah’s presence, I clarified all these things at a gathering organised by an amalgam of the KP associations in America and Canada, on the sidelines of our conference in Toronto, Canada, in December 2004. Finally, one request to our KP brethren: Please go and see who got the Temple Bill in Assembly blocked with a letter to Sonia Gandhi? All Muslim MLAs and MLCs were keen to pass that Bill. It is a Hindu of Jammu, not any Muslim. When in 1998, I visited Tulmulla I found everybody trembling on hearing the name of local militants Bambaar Khan and Hameed Gada. They had allegedly killed dozens at the drop of a hat. In another village, Wakoora, militants had gunned down a Pandit medical assistant and his wife, who often took their care and provided to them treatment, alongwith 5 Muslims in broad daylight at local Iddgah. In that horrible environment, I saw one local Muslim of Tulmulla going to Khirbhawani temple regularly to drop a bucket of milk in the spring. It was simply inviting the death. He did it till death. Hakeem Rouf, who lives there, can bear me out.____Ahmed Ali Fayyaz