Genocide - Topsy Turvy

By Ajay Chrungoo

The Kashmir Pandit petition to the NHRC was a history sheet of happenings and events culminating in their genocide at the hands of Kashmiri Muslim fundamentalists. It is true it did not essentially conform in size and form to a petition but it did recount wants and happenings that faced the community at the hands of these well armed and treacherous people. To treat it as falling short and shora  of the legal form or being lax in its strict determinations called upon in such matters in the prevailing circumstances was to expect for the moon.

The community in fear and terror, uprooted from its ethos and roots, haunted and disgraced for being Hindus i.e., Kafirs to Muslim fundamentalists, was at its wits end and even so managed to cry foul of this dread pestilence, though it may not have conformed to strict codes of ‘definitions’ formalities, which under the circumstances was neither possible nor practicable and insistence upon the same with digressions of space and time has made the petition more or less infructious merely on technicalities. It is a pity that the hon’ble Commission has not appreciated the wounded collective psyche which formed the body of the petition. It is no wonder that the hon’ble Commission none of whom had to be a witness to this high tragedy not to say suffer its agony could bring itself to the agonised level of the victims of this catastrophe and therefore not expected to do full just ice to their trauma and tragedy.

The commission has insisted  too much on the letter of the law the ‘intent’, i.e. the intention. behind the collective crime to classify or place the tragedy within the ambit of ‘genocide’ which it has found lacking in the killings of the KPs by the Kashmiri Muslim fundamentalists. It has instead found the immediate intent in their i.e. of the fundamentalists urge for secession, the resultant ‘genocide’ removed a fool farther behind this urge and therefore resultant and not the instant intent. Indeed such calamities cannot be found to fit the confines of this or that authority on the subject of genocide which assumes different aspects in different historical situations. Definitions can not evunciate situations the latter in fact modifying definition from time to time according to the exigencies of each situation.

Law can not be a shait jacket if it is assumed the so, it become an ass! Any definition or motivations is provided by the circumstances obtaining in each historical case. A definition arrived at decades leak can not mechanically be transplanted and applied for entirely a different set of historical circumstances. It has to be in a flux, continuously assuming different contuous in different historical settings. It is difficult, if not impossible to find two similar cases in different historical contexts to fit squarely within the confines of an earlier definition. The definitions too do ask for enrichment a continuous involvement, or else they fade out as irrelevant. This the historically provided motivation is more relevant then any other mechanical application of “definitions” evolved in different historical contexts.  There is nothing innuctable not even the so called “definition”. It is the historical motivation that is relevant and a determinant in each and every case. Let us, therefore, visit the history of Kashmir to form an idea of the intent behind the repeated ‘genocide of Kashmiri Pandits at the hands of Muslim fundamentalist from time to time, the fast impulse the first intent providing the eradication of ‘Kufur’ infidelity-either by killing them wholesale or mass conversions. And these episodes directly from the history looks written by men of faith and not Kafirs are revealing and as well instructive.

Records Baharistan-i-Shahi with the help of some of the chiefs of this land, some of them had reverted to the customs of infidels and polytheists. These apostates had resumed idolatry some of the infidels related that during the hours of offering prayers and worshipping of idols, they would place a cops of the Quran under their launches to make a seat to sit upon. Thus idol worshipping proceeded him as they sat on the divine book, when the news and details of these doings were brought to Amir Shamsuddin Iraqi he summoned Halik Haji Chak to him accompanied by Malik Ali and Kh Ahmad, his two counsellors and administrators, Halik Kaji Chak presented himself before the venerable Amir who declared to them.

This committing of idolators has after entracing and subnuthey to the Islamic faith now gone back to defiance and apartsay... Thus seven to eight hundred  infidels were put to death”.

Baharistan-i-Shahi further records “those killed were the leading personalities of the community of infidels at the time, men of substance and Govt functionaries. Each of them wielded influence and sway over hundred families of other infidels and hactics. Thus the entire community of infidels and polytheists in Kashmir was coerced into conversion to Islam at the point of sword.

During the Govt of Malik Musa Raina, all the depraved ... of this land-Kashmir-had been converted to Islam, recofs Bahrishan-e-Shahi.
The Bahrustan-e-Shahi also records But with the support and authority of Malik Musa Raina, Amir Shamsuddin Mohd. Undertook a wholesale destruction of all those idol houses as well as the ruination of the very foundation of infidelity and disbelief on the site of every idol house he destroyed the ordered the construction of a mosque for offering prayers after the Islamic manner... It is publicly known that during his life time, with the virtuous efforts and elaborate arrangements made of the fortunate Malik Musa Raina twenty four thousand families of staunch infidels and shibborn hectics were enrolled by being converted to Islam.”

Reads Tohfatul Ahbab- “At the behest of Shaus Irafi, Musa Raina had ordered 1500 to 2000 infidels to be brought to his door steps any day .. his followers. They would remove their sacred threads, administer ‘Kalima’ to them, circumcise them and thrust lumps of beef into their mouths”.
ii) As may as eighteen big temples in the city of Srinagar and in rural areas of the Valley were completely destroyed under the instructions and orders of Shamsuddin Iraqi and Malik Musa Raina”.

Towards the fag end of his life Sultan Sikander was injured with a zeal for demolishing idol houses, destroying temples and idols of the infidels. He destroyed the massive temple at Bijbehara. He had designs to destroy all the temples and put an end to the entire community of infidel-records Baharistan-i-Shahi.

“Many of the Brahman rather than abandon their religion or their country poisoned themselves, some emigrated from their houses while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mohammadans” writes Farishta. Twenty four thousand families were converted at one stroke to the faith of Islam by force and compulsion (qahran and gabran” ) Records Hassan in Tarikh-i-Kashmir page 223. Enough of these historical samples where number is though legion.

The aforesaid quotes from the histories of Kashmir are a pointer to a particularly consistent and common running through ale the loots, the massacres and killings of the community as an ethno religious minority. This has not however, been peculiarly common to a certain period in history but has been the usual feature in the modern times too from time to time the genocide of 1989-90 not being at all an exception for which any other dominating factor has to be sought for; the only distinctive feature being transition from swords and sticks to bullets and bombs etc supplied in an external agency for reasons of its own which bears a larger dimension against the Hindu majority of India. In the case of Kashmir, the perpetrators already having history of genocide propensities right for the advent and Muslim rule. Mercifully been the hon’ble commission had in its judgement in para-62 through observed interalea... And there can be no gainsaying the acute suffering and deprivation caused to the community... the commission is constrained to observe that while acts akin to genocide have occurred in respect of the Kashmiri Pandits, grave as they undoubtedly are, fall short of the ultimate crime genocide.

In other words, it is conveyed that the acts akin to genocide, the commission is restricted by the formalities prescribed in this behalf by experts who though have had an experience of an entirely different character in a different context.

The historical witnesses quoted here-in-before are proof enough of the orgy repeated genocide of Kashmiri Pandit Community from time to time for no other reason than of being a religious minority in the Valley of Kashmir, the same intent and impulse having also generated the genocide of 1989-90 in a new historical situation when the local maranders found new allies extra territorially.

The Hon’ble Commission has exclusively depended upon the reports of the state agencies and not deemed it necessary to make an independent and impartial investigation to arrive at the truth. While state has the capacity and the means to distort the truth, the dispossessed and expropriated victims have neither the capacity nor the means to compete in this sordid business in which the truth is casualty. An in-depth and impartial investigation above is expected to bring out the real truth without the need of an over dependence on professionals for their fees are supposed to represent both the victim and the bully with equanimity and the least pangs of conscience.

The acts akin to genocide having been acknowledged to have happened along with the motivation in the minds of some perpetrators. There would appear no reason why the Hon’ble Commission falling short of calling a spade a spade thus making truth itself a casualty supposedly in the minds of people on account of competitive secular--non-secular considerations.

A distinction would need to be made in the proceedings as between a commission and a govt the later strictly depending upon the capacity of the parties to prove their point on the strength of their witnesses and the capacity of the extending legal luminaries which necessarily does not lead to the divulgence of truth for both the witnesses and the law-without of course, any disrespect to any quarter can be purchased which, however, is beyond the capacity of dispossessed and expropriated community. In the process truth becoming the casualty. The Hon’ble Commission would therefore, need to go deeper into the roots of the tragedy on its own inlegal parlance suo-moto again a fresh without much dependence on the state agencies which have mutiliated and manipulated the whole truth are in every way interested in camoflouging the reality as the state administration was and is all along biased against the complainants. Indeed it is the very same cover up of the truth off and on that has perpetuated this menace. It is worth while mention here that the entire state administration a right from the beginning of the socalled, “Peoples Raj” and move particularly so since the onset of ‘terrorism’ against KP community has made common cause with this brutal force as the state bureaucracy and the law and order machinery comprise largely the elements from anti-national outfits like the Al-Fateh and Plebiscite Front etc instructed all along on the lore of Muslim fundamentalism. Thus the whole atmosphere been fouled dependence upon the state agencies to present a factual position to the commission has been misplaced which explains the imperatives of an independent enquiry; the only means to arrive at the unvarnished truth.

The state government has enlarged the time frame from 1989 to 1997 instead of restricting it to 1989-90 as such a course has provided the state statistical support for dilution of the change of genocide against the Pandits committed largely since the end of 1989 to the end of 1991 when definitely no Muslim was targeted and the ourslaught was exclusively directed against the Pandits, the only victims who had to leave their homes and hearths to escape the fate of hundreds of their co-religionists and were on notice of the terrorist outfits to quit or face the inevitable. Subsequently Muslims also fell victims of these terrorists. It was and has largely been for reasons of inter and intra terrorist gang rivalries and not for any other reason and if some of them have assumed the garb of ‘migrants’ it has been a contrived affair by both the state agencies and the political wing of the terrorists in attempt to escape the shame and slur of genocide of Pandits. Here it may also be stated that the exception of some Pandits having stayed back and survived in fact proves the rules as even in similar situations in the past which bears testimony there existed once only eleven KP families in the Valley. In any event these unfortunate Pandits are living as Pandits on borrowed time.

There still is hope in the Pandit mind that the truth will at last prevail.

Source: Kashmir Sentinel