Survival
The
Hindu
has become a refugee in his own country where he
gets a shabby treatment worse than what India has
given to the refugees from Tibet, Burma,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan etc. He is
being discriminated even vis- a- vis the handful
of Muslim refugees from the valley - mostly
political bigwigs of discredited parties who have
been housed in spatial and furnished lodgings; who
are neither to get registered as refugees nor to
stand in queues for relief or rations in burning
Sun, nor to run from pillar to post to prove tbeir
bonafides as displaced, nor to wait for release of
the ameneties. On the contrary cash relief and
other facilities are given to them in advance for
months together.
It
is a savage battle that the community is fighting
for shelter, livelihood, education, health care,
employment and above all for its survival. It is
heading towards unmitigated disaster as the
deprivation, sun and humiliation have wreaked
havoc on the physical, psychological and mental
well-being-of the community and taken a huge toll
of its members. The community continues to perish
while the nation looks on unconcerned. More lives
have been lost due to starvation, malnutrition,
disease and accidents than due to terrorists'
bullets. The community is facing dispersal and
extinction. And before it is too late it may be
forgotten that Kashmir valley belonged to the
Kashmiri Hindus. The displaced yearn to return to
their homes and hearths, to till their own land,
pursue their own professional calling and visit
their gods and temples; but all doors are closed
to them. The jobs have been usurped, the houses
burnt down or looted, the lands mutilated and
encroached upon or annexed, the temples
desecrated. And the erstwhile Muslim friends have
already thrown them out of the valley and do not
want them back. The community is at a loss to pick
the loose ends of the tangle and to free itself
from tbe web in which it finds itself enmeshed. It
is hard pressed to preserve its religious and
ethnic identity and maintain its glorious cultural
traditions. It is at pains to uphold the
principles of secularism, social justice, freedom
of faith, democratic pluralism and nationalism-the
very principles at the altar of which it was
sacrificed in the valley and driven into exile.
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