CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Proxy War Declared

The Punjab was already in the grip of terrorism disrupting normal parameters of stable political and economic life. There were ample indications that there was a close- nexus between the Punjab and the Kashmir terrorists working for de-stabilisation of the country resulting in its fragmentation. It will be pertinent to put that Kashmir was the main target of the strategists across the borders and the Punjab was only a diversion. How it went unheeded is absolutely amazing and intriguing.

The Muslim militants got a shot in their arm when they succeeded in kidnapping the daughter of the Home Minister of India, Mufti Mahammad Sayyid. The entire tribe of the Central Ministers, all in sheer panic, landed in Kashmir only to retrieve her from the clutches of the armed terrorists. Negotiations were quickly entered into with the terrorists to secure her release. That a Justice on the bench of Allahabad High Court turned up to wield his enormous influence over the terrorists for the release of Mufti's daughter is a sad commentary on Indian judiciary. The same ministers remained tight-lipped when the Kashmirian Hindus were brutally murdered and hounded out to meet the end, of lebensraum game. Given to swapping favours, the Central Ministers under the orders of the Raja of Manda conceded the demand of the kidnappers to release five hard-core terrorists including Hamid Sheikh, the deputy chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. What was astounding was that Farooq Abdullah had already issued orders for the release of the terrorists before negotiations were held with them thereby establishing his collaboration and complicity. l

The release of five hard-core terrorists was stated to have been opposed tooth and nail by the then chief secretary, Moosa Raza, who measured the disastrous consequences of the act for the future course of developments in the state. The Central Ministers with no awareness of the Muslim psyche and their cultural model conceded the demand of the kidnappers for the release of five hard-core terrorists in exchange for the daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayyid, the worst-ever hater of the Kashmirian Hindus whom he got looted, plundered and ravaged and their places of worship demolished and burnt.2 The negotiated settlement was nothing but an act of meek and disgraceful capitulation designed to secure the release of the Home Minister's daughter at the cost of broader national interests, which were at stake in Kashmir already in the whirpool of terrorism and mayhem.

The Central Ministers out to ingratiate themselves with the Home Minister exhibited utmost haste in working out a settlement with the terrorists without gauging the disaster that it was bound to spell for the country as a whole. What would have happened if the Home Minister's daughter was kept in captivity for a longer period ? The terrorists at best would have killed her as they had killed numberless innocents. The kidnapping of the Home Minister's daughter rocked the entire flock of the Central Ministers, who did not speak a word about the innocent men and women, ruthlessly and wantonly butchered by the same terrorists they were going to release. Was the Home Minister's daughter high above the vital interests of the country? Was she a very precious person necessitating a settlement with the terrorists out to snap the ties of Kashmir with India? By all standards she was an ordinary citizen suffering the terrorist atrocity like many other women, who were raped, sliced into pieces and barbarically cast off to the ravenous vultures. And the Home Minister should have well measured that his daughter could be a prime target of the Muslim terrorists. How was it that she moved about freely and carelessly? Could it be divined that she had much love lost for the Muslim terrorists and allowed them to fructify their design by carrying her off as a precious catch? Then appeals were telecast in the name of Islam for her release and no such appeals were issued when Hindu women were butchered and barbarically treated.

Sacrificing the vital national interests, the release of the five hard-core terrorists caused an unprecedented upswing to terrorism in Kashmir. It gave a big boost to the morale of the terrorists, who were hailed as Mujahids fighting for Islam and true sons of the soil out to change the destinies of the Muslim millions. The Muslim women crowded the streets in unprecedented numbers only to sing paens and poems for the terrorists, who stole the occasion for display of arms and firing of shots. The Muslim masses got rallied under the umbrella of terrorism for waging a jehad designed to establish an Islamic state. The Muslim literates only as first generation learners lauded the role- conduct of the Muslim boys and girls taking to arms thereby removing the label of cowards attached to them by the Mughal oppressors. The act of abject surrender on the part of Central Government created an unfathomable sense of euphoria in the Muslim masses, who were led to believe that Azadi was round the corner and what was needed was only to get rallied under the banner of terrorism held aloft by the highly regimented Muslim youth.

The capitulation on the part of Central Government sent wrong signals to the terrorists, who used the device of kidnapping for mass mobilisation and entrenchment of terrorism in the polity of Kashmir. The Muslim terrorists having understood the efficacy of the device went on feeding the machine of terrorism and utilised the deep sense of euphoria that the release of hard-core terrorists had generated for recruiting freshers to be trained as terrorists locally or in camps set up in POK, thus making the fort of terrorism impregnable. The Muslim masses absolutely collaborated with terrorists, who were believed to usher in Prophet's governance. They provided them shelter, cover, refuge, money and all manner of support and succour. In reality, terrorism found its seminary for breeding only in Muslim homes doling out the worst type of bigotry to their blooming buds quite at an impressionable age.

With the snow-balling of terrorism, the terrorists as is wont with the Muslim bigots turned mosques essentially meant for religious prayers into their sanctuaries.3 Arms and ammunition were dumped there. A battery of cassettes loaded with anti-India and anti-Hindu venom had found its way into the mosques much earlier than the actual declaration of proxy war against India and the Kashmirian Hindus. In the Mughal times, Muhta Khan, the worst bigot, had set the precedent for the barbaric Muslim terrorists only lo be emulated. He had declared war against the Kashmirian Hindus from the pulpit of a mosque leading to the infliction of worst-ever atrocities on them.

At exact 11 O'clock in the night of 19th January, 1990, all the mosques equipped with mikes suddenly started yelling out war cries against India and the Kashmirian Hindus. The Kafirs were issued an ultimatum to quit as the star of Islam was up in the sky of Kashmir. The war waged through cassettes exhorted every Muslim man, woman, and child to take to streets to shatter off the bonds of socalled servitude for a social and political order sanctioned under Islamic tenets. The shrill yelling issuing out from mosques simultaneously through the length and breadth of Kashmir was so sudden that the Hindus got panicked and threatened waiting to get massacred at the hands of Muslim hordes who got collected in thousands in the streets braving the chill-cold of the winter night. Muslims in unprecedented numbers formed processions yelling at the 'Indian dogs' to quit and the 'enemies of Islam' to vacate only to pave way for an Islamic enclave.

They appeared not to be the same old Muslims. They had suffered a sudden metamorphosis bearing brazen, stern, torrid, and corroded countenances, brutalised and dehumanised, crying hoarse to give a jolt to the citadel of India in Kashmir, pelting stones at the Hindu houses, breaking doors, windows and window-panes, threatening death to the frightened inmates had they dared move out, brimming with killer instinct, all bordering on absolute barbarity. The Muslim crowds swelling in size and scale flitting about the streets filling them with their lousy and stenchy but lethal slogans appeared as if they had developed an excruciating distress, convulsing and writhing in agony and pain only to cast off the slough of decency and civilised demeanour, softness and mellowed humility. Frenzied and wild, they seemed to have lost not only rational but even reasonable modes of thinking in that high-pitched hysteria caused hy the miasmic blaring of religious venom from mosques. The sudden emergence of such a malaise and that too without much of fore-warnings, almost in close kinship with a disease recurring that had shown its symptoms 42 years ago shook the Hindu captives in their roots, most of them frantically contacting the Police Control Room and Raj Bhawan. It did not take the captive Hindus much of time to measure their concrete reality that history was repeating itself for them and their fate in their mother-land was sealed by the hurricane of Muslim fundamentalism and bigotry.

The barbaric killings of the Kashmirian Hindus by the Muslim terrorists without rhyme or reason failed to evoke a murmur of protest from the Muslim majority signalling the crumbling of the walls of Muslim rationality. 'Give the dog a bad name and kill him' was the rationale of the terrorist killings. The Hindus condemned as Mukhabirs (agents) - and every Muslim uncritically believing so - were wantonly slaughtered and all Muslims everywhere without a single exception, no matter what their station in life was, de-sensitised under the blinding effect of hate assumed an eerie muteness and dumbfoundedness, relishing the sadistic killings with whoops of joy and whimpers of satisfaction, thereby establishing their solidarity with the armed bigots. The Hindus simple and innocent, unarmed and non-violent, stood shaken in their roots failing to comprehend the reason for their imminent decimation at the hands of fascist hordes led by armed fundarnentalists. They were on cross-roads unable to determine whether to cling to their ancestral homes and hearths, to their roots and moorings and to the scenic splendour of their land of genesis or quit under the terrorist armed onslaught.

The state machine crippled and thrown out of gear failed to flex its muscles against the terrorists upholding and wantonly executing an agenda of death and destruction for the Hindu minorities. Had the state machine appeared to be in pink health, it could have sustained the hapless Hindus only to hold on. But, Farooq Abdullah had already played a treacherous role by playing fast and loose with the terrorist menace needing a firm handling to give roots to the impression that the state power had virtually suffered perishment. The Islamised bureaucracy and more than most the Kashmir police playing a collaborative role, true to their form, had deliberately abdicated for the terrorists to take over all sectors of administration only to establish their absolute writ and supremacy. The mosques that had mushroomed under a well co-ordinated plan on every inch of Kashmir soil took over as nerve centres of terrorism for administrative management. The Muslims, conforming to and acquiescing in, rallying for militancy related pogrom, stood in absolute solidarity with the militants directly owing allegiance to ISI dictating the entire course of happenings for the liquidation of the minorities already delineated as a vital part in the Zia plan.

The twin factors of sudden vertical crack in the Muslim rationality and absolute perishment of the state power led to the exodus 4 of the Kashmirian Hindus in massive numbers and magnitude signalling a deep-set crisis for the secular democracy that political managers claim India to be. The political statements made about the Kashmirian Hindus by all hues of anti-nationals and commmunalists had acted as a catalyst for the processes of liquidating them from the soil of Kashmir. The ominous developments prior to 19th January, 1990 contained sufficient potential to establish that a storm had already gathered far them and they, infact, were in the eye of the storm. The Hindus were killed, butchered and their properties vandalised by the hordes of vandals working out the format of a plan delineated in 14th Century.

A Kashmiri Pandit house at Sarai-bal in Srinagar was looted and set ablaze. The shop of D.N. Dhar on court road, Srinagar was looted in broad-day light. A taba belonging to a Hindu at Maharaj Bazar, Srinagar was denuded of all utensils and other articles and set to fire. Most of the Hindu shops in Ganda Singh building, Lal Chowk, Srinagar were put to a loot by the regimented hoodlums only in day-light. All liquor shops of the Kashmirian Hindus were looted and ravaged. But the same shops owned by the Muslims were left untouched. The Vishva Bharati Institution run and managed by the Kashmirian Hindus was blasted as it did not have a mosque for the Muslim girls to say their prayers. 5 The Hindus under a fiat were forbidden to put on a tilak-mark. Tolling of hells in temples was stopped. All hoardings everywhere were fiated to be painted green. Small wooden boards put up at crossings directed all to say namaz and 'not to discuss', all smacking of Muslim bigotry and fascism. People were fiated to sport beards and don themselves in traditional Kashmiri garb. Wrist watches as in Pakistan had to be worn on the right hand and the time set back by a half-hour only to correspond with that of Pakistan. In Kupwara, stray dogs were affixed with discs around their necks with the inscription 'Indian dogs' and in Khag effigies of the Indian soldiers were hung from trees.6

The Jammat-I-Tulba chief, Azim Inqalabi, a school teacher turned terrorist, nephew of the Education Secretary, J & K Government, now retired, dealt out the final blow when he granted general amnesty to all Muslims7 whom he characterised as traitors for consistently pursuing a policy of betrayal, but did not grant the same amnesty to the Kashmirian Hindus, who as per him, had a much murkier record than the Muslims. Though there were dissensions initially in regard to the treatment to be meted out to the Kashmirian Hindus, yet in ultimate analysis a policy of liquidation of the Hindus was agreed upon by all the terrorist outfits.

The Muslim terrorists motivated and frenzied by intolerance and religious prejudice launched upon a systematic campaign of liquidating the Hindu minorities. Big-sized posters purporting the Hindus to quit or get killed were pasted on the doors of the Kashmirian Hindu houses and gates of temples. Individual letters were written only to exhort them to march out. Telephone calls to the Hindus, both commoners and well-to-do, conveyed a barrage of invectives and final warning to quit. The Kashmirian Hindus out on roads and in their localities, usually mixed ones, were advised to march out as Kashmir had suffered a sea-change and so was not their cup of tea. Open threats blared out from mosques serving as the bastions of terrorism turned the current and tide against the Hindus, who got panicked, scared and awfully terrorised. Ultimately the Daily Alsafa, the main mouth-piece of terrorists in Kashmir, published a warning to the Hindus to quit within 48 hours or face consequences. The warning reads:

'Kashmiri Pandits responsible for duress against Muslims should leave the Valley within two days.'

The Kashmirian Hindus in doldrums witnessed the Muslim frenzy assuming menacing proportions. They saw the Vitasta (Kashmiri name of Jhelum river) going gory with their blood. They were virtual prisoners in the Muslim dominated localities brimming with unprecedented anti-India activities mobilised by the highly motivated elements. The Hindus terrorised by the gun-wielding terrorists were forcibly dragged to the mosques to participate in wild and frenzied anti-India fulminations and demonstrations. They, in fact, were forced at gunpoint to raise slogans denouncing India and also in praise of Islam. They were forced to form the frontline of demonstrators, because the militants, while firing at the security forces, reckoned that they would not fire back on them for fear of killing the Hindus. But firings did take place and many Hindus got killed.

The milling crowds in a drift between the layers of illusion and reality, non-vision and vision, frenzied and violent, raised slogans marking the reversal of positions, shared perceptions, and common bonds of pluralist fabric allowing rational freedom to all irrespective of religious and creedal distinctions They highlighted a discernible trend suffused with bigotry, myopia, narrow-mindedness and more than most hatred, a trend directed, like a well orchestrated artillery barrage, at destroying the traditional foundations on which a plexus of enduring human values and beliefs had been based for thousands of years.

The cohesive and re-assuring slogan of 'long live Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Unity had suddenly disappeared from the political parlance of the Muslim crowds, seeming to have given a go-by to their rational patterns of conduct as components of a civilised life, making bonfires of tyres at night, ensuring by coercion the participation of Hindu Kaffirs, in a state of high-pitched hysteria installing high voltage lamps at crossings only to serve as signal posts for the Afghan, Libyan, Iranian, Turanian, Saudi Arabian and Pak jets to land. All a dramatic blend of frenzy, ignorance, phantasy and naivity tinged green by the foot-lights of Islam.

The new slogans being mouthed with zooming zest presented an amazingly myopic content declaring war against the Hindus, threatening them with death and destruction, allowing them no lee-way, frightening them to quit and buzz off, stressing the establishment of the Prophet's governance and exposing low levels of cultural achievements. The slogans were:

(a) Kashmir main rahna hai, Allah-ho-Akbar Kahna hoga.

 (If you choose to live in Kashmir, you will have to say

 Allah-o- Akbar).

 (b) Asi gachi Pakistan, Bata ros ta batanev san.

 (We want Pakistan, with Kashmiri Hindu women and

 without their men-folk).

 (c) Allah-o-Akbar, Musalmano jago Kafiro bhago, jehad aa

 raha hai.

 (Allah-o-Akbar, arise and awake Muslims, buzz off

 infidels, jehad is approaching.)

 (d) Kashmir kya banega - Pakistan

 (What will Kashmir be - Pakistan)

 (e) Zalimo 0, Kafiro, Kashmir hamara chhod do

 (Ye cruel Kafirs (infidels) vacate our Kashmir)

 (f) Yahan kya chalega, Nizam - e - Mustafa

 (What will have sway here - Prophet's governance)

 (g) Arise ye, fearless Momins,

 For Russia has lost the race, Now the sword hangs on

 India's neck

 Now it is Kashmir's turn.

 (h) Islam hamara maksad hai

 Kuran hamara dastur hai

 Jehad hamara rasta hai.

 (Islam is our destination

 Koran is our constitution

 Jehad is our way.)

 (i) Hamein kya chahye, NizameMustafa

 Kashmere main kya chalaiga, Nizame Mustafa

 Hindustan mein kya chalaiga, Nizame Mustafa

 (What do we need - Prophet's governance. What will

 have sway in Kashmir - Prophet's governance.

 What will have sway in India - Prophet's governance.

 (j) Ganga-Jamuna mein aag lagayenge

 (We will destroy Ganga and Yamuna)

In face of an armed onslaught the Kashmirian Hindus marched out of their native land only to save their skin and faith. Caring two hoots for their properties, movable and immovable, worth crores, they paid hefty sums to the truck and bus owners to carry them across the Bannihal tunnel to safer zones. The villagers, poor and destitute, allowed their cows with garlands on to stray away, but sold off their bulls for paltry sums only to quit their mother-land, prowled about by monsters of murder, loot and arson. The Hindus from the border towns of Kupwara and Handwara in north of Kashmir were the first to flee followed by the teen-age girls from Srinagar and towns and hamlets in south of Kashmir. Flight of the Hindus from the millennia old homes and hearths had started much before the advent of Jagmohan on the political scene of Kashmir. The Kashmirian Hindus with tremendous literacy levels did not need a Jagmohan to pave way for their exodus, which as a crisis phenomenon is deeply entrenched in their 'race memory'. The December, 1989 exodus is the fifth such exodus in the hiistory of Kashmirian Hindus, who have been fleeing their land of birth under the armed onsalught of the proselytisers and Muslim zealots and never learning lessons from history. 'The Hindus were dealt a shattering blow, their lives hanging by a slender thread' liable to be snapped any moment. Swamped by unprecedented terror and delirium,' they landed on the streets of Jammu, shattered, battered, pounded, bludgeoned and bloodied. It was a distressing journey from their native homes to Jammu and elsewhere. Sad and morose, they were fish thrown out of water.

A well articulated canard was given currency that the Kashmirian Hindus chose to to be in self-exile, otherwise all was well with them and they had no reason to suspect the intentions of the Muslim majority. Stories were planted in the media that the Hindus were inspired to march out by Jagmohan, who had all the plans to liquidate the Muslims. The pith of the matter is that the vested interests with a view to propping up the terrorists by putting forth the thesis they are 'innocents', 'just trapped by ISI network' and 'rosy cheeked guys' have established agencies in Delhi and abroad only to feed the campaign designed to malign the Hindus and hold them responsible for the proliferation of terrorism in Kashmir. It is alleged that huge sums are provided to these agencies to lure and net individuals and vital sources to plant the canard to impute motives to the forcible exodus of the Hindus from their homes and hearths. There are some known persons with a track record of dubious politics busy in feeding the campaign from Delhi. They are the traducers of the Kashmirian Hindu community and have proved brazen faced to impute motives to their forced exodus 9 from their land of genesis.

Be it said with emphasis that the fundamentalist Muslims did not get lured into but consciously chose the path of terrorism taking it as an effective weapon to break loose from the so-called colonial fetters. Unarmed Hindus have been their first targets. How long will they go on killing and looting the Kashmirian Hindus? Sikander, the iconoclast, urged by Mir Maqbool Hamadani, led to the genocide of the Hindus. The Sayyids proved their worst tormentors. The chaks, the Mughals and the Afghans beat all records of barbarism in torturing them. The Dogra rule was no better. In 1931-32, the Kashmirian Hindus were killed and ravaged. Even in secular India, they have not been allowed peace and respite by the Muslim marauders, who were ruthless in mowing down the cream of the Hindu society, doctors, engineers, professors, administrative officers and barbaric, to loot in raping their women-folk. Non-violent and unarmed, they fled their homes and hearths in face of armed onslaught and have been rendered refugees in their own country.

The Muslim terrorism signalling the death of Muslim rationality was an essential factor leading to their exodus. There was not a sane Muslim, tolerant and liberal in views, who dared denounce the Muslim terrorism with its thrust against the Hindus. All so-called liberals, intellectuals and forward-looking people, suffered a sudden demise and eclipse and have been flaunting long beards only to appease the terrorists, cringing when the terrorists wanted them only to bend, feeding the Muslims on the staple diet of Azadi synoymous with annexation to Pakistan and sustaining the laity and terrorists, mostly semi-literates, by fabrication of astounding theories ranging from intervention of the Muslim world to India going bankrupt as a result of continued insurgency and chaos.

There is a Tarkunde,10 who deliberately ignored the Kashmirian Hindus, hapless victims of terrorism, only to formulate a thesis on atrocities basing it on his exclusive interview with a Muslim taxi-driver in Srinagar speaking volumes for his wisdom. He along with many other self-styled human rights activists contributed to the canard that the Kashmirian Hindus marched out of the Valley on their own, not because they were brutalised and hounded out under an armed onslaught. His formulation of the situation in the Valley is so biased that he describes atrocities and repression of the security forces as the root cause of terrorism in the Valley. The characterisation of the Muslim terrorists as 'chubby faced innocent youngmen' is astounding ignoring their heinous crimes, barbaric acts, ruthless killing of the unarmed Kashmirian Hindus and raping of their women-folk. Tarkunde is deliberately evasive, has seen and known facts, but smoke-screens them for ulterior motives to serve the ends of Royism.

There is a George Fernandes, who attributed the genesis and proliferation of Muslim terrorism to the dominance of bureaucracy by the Kashmirian Pandits. 11 He is the same person, who as the Minister of Railways, was about to sell India's nuclear technology to Libya for oil only to be foiled by the then Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai. He has had an acquaintance with Aman Ullah Khan and even sought his support and intervention for the solution of Kashmir tangle. Farooq Abdullah, the destroyer of Kashmir and one of the founding fathers of JKLF, happens to be his blue-eyed boy. George could be held guilty of sending wrong signals to the terrorists, who as per reports just duped him. His attempts to wean them away from terrorist path ended in a fiasco rendering incalculable damage to the broader interests of Indian polity. V.P. Singh, Mufti Sayyid, the worst-ever hater of the Hindus, and George Fernandes only to pamper Muslims flouted all norms and set rules to recruit the Muslims to fill up the vacancies occurring in the wake of the flight of the Hindus from their homes and hearths in Kashmir. Had it been a movement for jobs, the terrorists should have given up arms in view of the promises held out to them by all manner of people. It is in reality a revolt against the Indian presence in Kashmir, a fundamentalist revolt for establishing an Islamic state in Kashmir, an armed revolt for ethnic cleansing. Facts speak and are out. No assiduous concealment of them will help in meeting the challenges thrown up by Muslim terrorism.

Then there are Khusros, Dhars, Roshas, Chopras, Mir Qasims, Sozs and hosts of others, who have articulated their views on the present turmoil in Kashrnir. They are all in unison to pave way for the establishment of Kashmir as an independent or semi independent state with soft borders enabling the Muslims, who, as per them, are emotionally fractured, to cross over to POK to meet their relations and contacts with a view to softening and molifying their otherwise frayed tempers. It is how the Indian intellegentsia is posing itself on the burning issue of Muslim terrorism out to destroy the secular fabric of India to tatters. Objectively, all of them seem to pave way for the severance of political relationship of Kashmir with the India Union and hand it over lo Pakistan on a platter. As per reports, the document delineating such a dangerous position and stance was prepared by a three tier committee appointed at the behest of Janata Dal Govemment headed by V. P. Singh. And the document implicitly supporting secession or semi-independent status of Kashmir contains one line allusion, brief and succinct, to the Kashmirian Hindus that a fervent appeal will be made to them to return to their homes and hearths by all political parties, MPs, MLAs and men of public standing. The Kashmirian Hindus, be it said in plain terms, cannot think of returning to Kashmir unless it is cleansed of fundamentalist killers and treacherous secessionists out to erode the unity and integrity of sovereign, democratic and secular India.

Ayesha Kagal, Miss Baweja, Prem Shanker Jha, Kuldip Nayyar, Saif-ud-din Soz, Sunil Matoo, Rahul Singh and men of their ilk have dished out the same trite and commonplace thesis that the Muslims bereft of democratic rights, starved of funds for development, deprived of opportunities ard more than most the dominance of the Kashmirian Hindus in services were driven to the wall with no options left but to take up arms.

Basing their premise and approach on unfounded notions, they ignore the fact that the Muslim terrorists are no longer battling for restoration of democracy. They have a fundamentalist agenda for the genocide of the Hindus only to establish Kashmir as an Islamic ghetto. The Muslims in general as the dominant segment of the Kashmirian populace stifled democracy by not allowing the minisicule minority of the Hindus to exercise their right to vote like free citizens of democratic India. The Muslim United Front as a conglomeration ot bigots and Hindu-baiters kicked up the dust of elections being rigged designed to discredit the Government of India and its institutions to bolster up its Islamic image for waging jehad against Hindus and the Indian presence in Kashmir. Being leagues away from rational democratic temper, there was not a single Muslim, who expressed his resentment to and disapproval of jerrymandering of the constituencies where the Kashmirian Hindus had a political role for assertion. l3

It is sheer misnomer to assert that the Muslims are poor and bereft and that is why they have risen in revolt and taken up arms. Government of India has so far pumped ninety thousand crores into Kashmir to effect the development of various sectors of Kashmir economy leading to a sea-change in the life and living standards of the Muslim masses. The tremendous boost of the economy has resulted in the high levels of prosperity and affluence that are enjoyed by the Muslims in general. They have been the only beneficiaries of land reforms at the expense of the Kashmirian Hindus, who were deprived of even their small holdings lending them support and succour. A negligible percentage of people lives below poverty line and only to grab grants from the Indian exchequer some classes of Muslims otherwise above poverty line have been put in the category. 14 There are no slums and chawls in Kashmir. Nobody is without a shelter and posh colonies inhabited by the Muslims have dizzied even the foreign mercenaries fighting battles for Islamic hegemony in Kashmir. The Muslims live on sumptuous food with meat as one of its main items. Nobody lives on gur and water'.

That the Kashmirian Hindus dominate the services is a sheer half-truth. There are agencies working over-time to mislead the public opinion by inventing a far-ago of lies and canards. The Muslims have absolute sway over services establishod by fraud ard communal measures. The departments of Agricultrue. Horticulture, Tourism, Forest, Transport, Revenue, Home and Finance and more than most the Secretariat have absolute Muslim domination. The schools and colleges are staffed with third class M.A.s and M.Scs, mostly Muslims. The Department of Education was headed by three Muslim secretaries, who were mere matriculates. The Director General of Police, a Muslim, was a mere matriculate and was squarely responsible for Muslimisation of police force in J & K State. The Muslims comprise 1.37 lakh out of a 2.37 lakh government employment, when as per population ratio they comprise 60% of the total population of the state. How many Ladakhi Buddhists are in the main secretariat? How many Gujjars and Bakerwals are in the state employment?

The Kashmirian Muslims as per their history in time are given to the grabbing of the whole cake, and crying hoarse that they are poor, bereft and backward. The same bogey was raised by them in the time of Maharaja Hari Singh, who was forced to appoint Glancy Commission, which despite axing merit and achievements, did not uphold the Muslim contention of non-representation in services. And communal guidelines laid down by Glancy Commission are still pursued by the Muslim bureaucrats when education in the state is free from primary to post-graduate level.

Be it put that the share of the Kashmirian Hindus in central services is determined by their competitive and learning capacitites and skills. Central services have been open to all and anybody competing would find a job slot. The fact of the matter is that the Muslims did compete and failed to kiss success. The Muslim leaders handled the entire issue as per the rationale formulated by the Muslim bureaucracy in Kashmir and buttressed by the Plebiscite Front Resolution stressing the share of Muslims in Central Services as per their population ratio. But, the entire rationale is blantantly sectarian and violative of all constitutional provisos.

The Kashmirian Hindus in Central Services are by and large the same brights, who would have been doctors and engineers and other high-skilled professionals had they not been edged out by the Muslim rationale of discrimination, manipulation and sectarian criteria. The Kashmirian Hindus sat for various competitive exams conducted by various statutory bodies and qualified them. Have they grabbed the job slots as the Muslims have been grabbing them in the state? Neither the Indian Constitution nor the state constitutian does uphold the Muslim logic of 'population ratio' as a determining factor for recruitment to various strata of services. If the same logic is projected and applied to all other states of India, what will be the Muslim share in various state and Central Services? The Muslims rooted in blatantly communal approach to problems have openly expressed their malice and hatred unto the Kashmirian Hindus whom they betrayed by fanning communal fires leading to their exodus.

Mr. Saif-ud-din Soz hounded out from Kashmir despite his consistent pursuit of pro terrorist policies has been thoroughly rooted in Muslim myopia and is squarely responsible for the dissemination of many a canard against the Kashmirian Hindus. Being the campaign manager, he has been planting stories of the Hindu domination of services and the figures he has published in this regard smack of falsehood and motivation. Why did he not publish the figures when his party was in power in the state? His essential campaign veers round the strategy of providing a cover to the Muslim terrorists, who are up in arms for establishment of Nizam-e-Mustafa and have murdered Hindus in cold blood and hounded the micro-community out of Kashmir. The Muslim strategy has been to invent a tissue of lies and a web of canards only to mislead public opinion, which is fully aware of the betrayal of. the ruling elite in Kashmir. The Government of J & K could be put under pressure to issue a white paper on the share of service slots held by various communities in the entire state only to give a lie to and nail down a deliberate canard to justify the religious war waged against the Hindus of Kashmir for their loot, murder and arson.

In 1990-91-92 Muslims have been appointed in various Central Services in open and flagrant violation of norms, rules and regulations at the behest of Raja of Manda (V.P.Singh), Mufti Sayyid and many Congress stalwarts hoping to normalise the explosive situation fuelled by vigorous communal elements and ISI subversives. A committee appointed with Mr. Bajpai as its chairman in collaboration with the Regional Manager of State Bank of India, Chief of the Post-offices J & K Circle and Muslim bureaucrats out to erode the total structure of secularism in Kashmir made a hunt for Muslims to recruit them to the posts left vacant by the forced exodus of the Kashmirian Hindus. No advertisements were issued calling for applications from all the citizens of India.

Appointments were made on sectarian and religious grounds. Rules and norms were bent, flouted and violated. The Staff Selection Commission created under law worked to meet communal and sectarian ends. The Banking Service Bcard as a recruitment agency for various central banks side-tracked aad blatantly violated its own set norms to recruit Muslims only. Thousands of Hindus suffering blues and greys of life in camps waiting for gainful employment were totally ignored. They had an inherent right to apply and compete. Why were they ignored? Why do not the Staff Selection Commission and Banking Service Recruitment Board pursue the same policy in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where thousands of highly educated youth are without jobs and are sunk to the bottom level of poverty and deprivation? How has the Indian Parliament overlooked the functioning of such bodies as are off-shoots of law and are required to function within the parameters of law? Terrorism put on the pedestal of religious bigotry out to erode and destroy the authority of state and law is not to be bribed, but fought with a heavy hand and determined will.

The Kashmirian Muslims suffering from and afflicted with religious anxiety have a history of demolition of temples and breaking of idols. B.G. Verghese and Harvinder Baweja strained their every nerve to establish that temples were not desecrated and demolished during terrorist violence sweeping through the length and breadth of the Valley since 1990 and in the wake of December, 6 demolitions in Ayodhya.15 The Kashmirian Muslims aided and abetted by the Islamised bureaucracy have committed heinous crimes by way of grabbing, desecrating, demolishing and setting ablaze the Hindu places of worship. The temple demolitions and destructions in the district of Anantnag in 1986 are still fresh in public memory. Hundreds of temples and shrines were razed to the ground, their properties as usual looted and then put to flames.

After December, 6, 1992, the Kashmir terrorists frenzied for establishment of Islamic state in Kashmir indulged in loot, desecration, demolition and arson of the temples. Scores of temples erected in the hoary past standing as testimony to the Hindu history of Kashmir have been ravaged and destroyed. Thirty one temples in Anantnag, three temples in Srinagar, seven in Baramulla, one in Budgam, one in Kupwara, two in Rajouri and seven in Doda have been looted, damaged, partially damaged or burnt.

The temple standing within the cremation ground in Karan Nagar, Srinagar was burnt and destroyed. Two Shiva temples in Anantnag were set afire. Five temples in Achabal, Anantnag were gutted by the Muslim bigots. The Kulavagishwari temple of Kulagam with its ancient origins closely linked with the Shaivite developments in Kashmir was put to flames. In Dooru, Anantnag, two Ganesh temples were destroyed. The Vitasta temple in Verinag as old as the gushing waters of the river Jehlum was burnt. Uma Nagri Temple in Brari Angan, Anantnag was looted and burnt. Two ancient shrines in Hanad, Chowalgam, Anantnag were set to flames. The temple at Devasar, Anantnag was destroyed. Three temples at Lok Bhawan in Anantnag suffered destruction at the hands of Muslim vandals. Lok Bhawan as a temple city has found mention in Kalhan's Rajtarangini. A very ancient temple of Tripursundari along with three dharamshalas at Khanabarni in Anantnag was burnt to ashes. Nandkishwar Bhairav Nath Temple at Sumbal in Baramulla was set on fire, but was saved, suffering the scars of ravage and plunder. Kunzar temple- in Baramulla was completely gutted. l6

A report says "The Muslim militants have destroyed at least 40 temples and 150 houses during the past five days, even as pro- militant political leaders urged Muslim countries to enforce economic blockade on India for the Ayodhya incidents. Most of the incidents have been reported from rural Kashmir, especially Anantnag district in the south and Baramullah and Kupawara districts in the north. In Srinagar city, a temple and seven houses at Banamulla and a cremation shed at Karan Nagar, migrant houses at Jawaharnagar, Natipora and some other localities were burnt. In villages, like Wadipora in Kupawara, Chinigund, Verinag, Peba, and Dooru in Anantnag, Shergund in Baramulla, Kokernag and Chak-i-Narain Das, entire settlements of minority houses, schools, dharamshallas and ashramas were reduced to ashes."

B.G. Verghese and Harinder Baweia as apologists to Muslim fundamentalism and terrorism in Kashmir 18 aiming at the destruction of the secular roots of the country as a whole planted a canard in the media that all temples in Kashmir were safe as an inference drawn from the ones they might have seen standing and safe. No pleading on part of them for the safety of temples in Kashmir can absolve the Muslim terrorists of the crimes and brutal acts of inflicting damage and scars on Hindu places of worship. They are out to complete the pogrom of genocide of the Hindus and destruction of their temples that were unleashed by the bigoted Muslims, urged by the Sayyids motivated by the design of transmuting the religious complexion of Kashmir. No such canard planted in sheer violation of journalistic ethics can establish the secular credentials of Muslim terrorists, who have proved as barbaric as invading hordes from North. Their intolerance is fully established and intolerance by and large as a reflex act of the Muslims in general is proved to the hilt the day the Hindus, 2% minority, were forcibly made to quit their land of birth leaving behind their properties, mobile and immobile, worth crores of rupees only to be looted and ravaged. The forcible exodus of the Kashmirian Hindus is and will be an indelible stain on the Muslim majority of Kashmir.

Amitabh Mattoo,l9 the latest to join the bandwagon of the apologists to Muslim terrorism and frenzy, has been busy in the spread of same tissue of lies with a view to putting up a defence to the Muslim crimes of killing the non-violent Hindus and looting, ravaging and burning their properties. As reported in media, his father, a conservator of forests, retired and reemployed, was brutally attacked in his palatial residence in Tulsi Bagh, Srinagar by the armed terrorists. Running for life, panting and pale, he gate-crashed into the house of a Sikh neighbour for refuge. Ultimately he reportedly made a truce with the Muslim terrorists by paying them ransom money as is paid by all living in present-day Kashmir. Ambitabh Mattoo must prove intelligent to understand that the Kashmirian Hindus are a patriotic community and could not have stayed on in Kashmir at the mercy of the barbaric hordes of terrorists and their cohorts and much less to feed the machine of terrorism by payments of regular ransom. They abandoned their homes and hearths only after Hindu lawyers, judges, professors, doctors and administrative officers were barbarically murdered and their women-folk gang-raped, sliced into bits and a cast off to vultures. He should desist from pandering the Muslim canard that the Hindus buzzed off their home-land as they were lured by promises of plots in Jammu and were provided with trucks to move out. Let plots and trucks be provided to all the Muslims in Kashmir and ask them to settle in camps and hovels. Will they move out? There are many ostriches in India, who pander the Muslim irrationality ignoring the armed onslaught launched against the Hindus for ethnic cleansing. And Mani Shanker Aiyar caps them all.

The Muslim terrorists and their think-tank - doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers are maintaining as a matter of design a token presence of the Hindus on the soil of Kashmir only to stave off the accusation that the ongoing terrorism in the Valley is fundamentalist in its essentials. That there are 20,000 Hindus living in Kashmir 20 is a sheer mental exercise unrelated to actual facts. As per authentic reports, there are few thousand Hindus living in Kashmir and the fact of the matter is that most of them inhabit the high security zone away from the terrorist sway and fury. As mere captives, they are at the mercy of the terrorists and are tolerated till they pay 13% of their monthly incomes only to feed terrorism and bigotry. They can be gobbled up any time the ISI hounds decide upon sounding their death-knell or Muslim terrorists pounce upon them only to satiate their avid thirst for the blood of Kafirs (infidels). Is there any letup in the brutal killings of hapless Hindus? Their killings continue unabated. Three such brutal killings were reported in the media in June 1993. How H. N. Wanchoo, projected as a human rights activist serving the Muslim insurgency was ruthlessly butchered at the behest of ISI saboteurs must serve as an eye-opener to the popinjays of various outfits holding fast to the fallacious idea of Muslim rationality. The token presence of the Hindus on the soil of Kashmir has misled many a wiseacre extolling it as a testimony to Muslim tolerance and accommodation.2l That nearly 3 lakh Hindus under Muslim intolerance and armed onslaught ran for life only to take shelter in safer zones out-side the purlieux of Kashmir has completely exploded the myth of Muslim tolerance and accommodation.

There are 30,000 Sikhs living in Kashmir. They are all on tenter- hooks and despite Simranjit Singh Mann's intervention, they have been subjected to killings and conversion.22 The Sikhs of Kashmir have been putting their landed and structural properties to distress sale at throw-away prices. Aware of the Muslim savagery, they have shifted their women-folk to Jammu and other parts of the Punjab. What has saved the Sikhs from total decimation is the nexus between the Muslim and Sikh terrorists pursuing the same objective of balkanisation of India as delineated by their mentors across the border.

The Kashmirian terrorists rooted in hate-syndrome of all ethnic groups not subscribing to the faith of Islam have instilled so much of fear in the Sikhs that 2500 Sikh families have quit the Valley under their armed fundamentalist onsalught.23 The Sikhs are by and large convinced that they shall have to abandon their homes and hearths en masse like their Hindu compatriots sooner or later. The pro-Pak armed outfits like JEI/HUM have already Islamised the Kashmiri society. The Sikhs view with great concern the continued burning of the properties of the Hindu migrants and the desecration of the Gurdwara at Rainawari by the Muslim terrorists on May 28, 1991. 24

The gun-wielding Muslim terrorists have shattered peace of the Sikhs in the Valley. As many as 30 Sikhs including three women have been ruthlessly slaughtered. A Sikh army officer, Lt. Col. G. S. Bali and his brother Surinder Singh were kidnapped from Badgam and put to brutal killings on October 21, 1991. Scores of Sikh girls have been kidnapped and converted to Islam. The kidnapping and conversion of Satinder Kaur d/o Bhupender Singh r/o Khwaja Bagh, Baramulla and Surinder Kaur d/o Dalip Singh r/o Alucha Bagh, Srinagar have been reported in the media. Even Simranjit Singh Mann's appeals to secure their release from the clutches of the Muslim terrorists failed to evoke any response. The Sikh organisations of the Punjab have also conveyed appeals for freeing of the Sikh girls, but to no avail.

The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a fierce terrorist outfit, has imposed ban on the purchase of the Sikh properties in the Valley. The ban fiats were issued when two prominent doctors, Daljeet Singh and Tejander Singh, disposed of their immobile properties to Muslims.26 The terrorists in particular and rabid Muslims in general believe in grabbing Hindu properties. So, why purchase them ?

The Shia Muslims, 600,000 strong, despite numbers, are equally apprehensive of the Wahabi character of on-going terrorism in the Valley. Living in absolute fear and panic, they know the sword of the Sunni-Muslims will take their toll after the Hindus are completely obliterated and wiped out. That 'after infidels the sword has to fall on the Shia Muslims' (Kafiras pata chay rafizas lar i.e. after the infidle (Hindu), it is the turn of Shia Muslim who has to be finished.) is in their 'race memory.' At the behest of a Shia-Muslim cleric, the Shia-Muslim boys were exported to POK camps for training in arms. Some of them were imparted training in camps set up on the Iranian borders. On their return, they were discovered dis-illusioned by the Sunni terrorists and were even divested of their lethal weapons. As most of the Shia-boys failed to operate on ground, twelve of them were brutally murdered. The Shia-Muslims have become all the more suspect in view of the Iranian position on Kashmir. They have weapons, but are keeping them only for self-defence. The few Hindus staying back in Kashmir have been provided safety and succour in villages dominated by the Shia-Muslims. What has been remarkable that even after the enactment of Land Reforms in Kashmir, the Shia-Muslim tenants under the instructions of Late Agha Sahib of Badagam continued to pay the share of the produce to their Hindu land-owners at a scale not provided for under the oppressive laws. Like Hindus, the Shia Muslims have equally been put to religious persecution. There was hardly an occasion when Tazia processions were not stoned by the Sunnis. The fate of the Shia Muslims in Pakistan has proved a wet blanket for them.

Notes and References 1. Inderjit Badhwar, India Today, April 30, 1990.  2. Martand File; Rajiv Gandhi's disclosures about Mufti Sayyid.  3. Inderjit Badhwar, India Today, April 30, 1990.  4. Pankaj Pachaluri and Nisha Puri, India Today, March 31, 1990.  5. Azan, Official organ of Jamaat-i-Islami of Kashmir.  6. Inderjit Badhwar, India Today, April 30, 1990.  7. Statement of Azim Inqalabi published in Alsafa, the mouth piece of Muslim terrorism.  8. Appeal to countrymen issued by Save Kashmiri Pandit Committee, New Delhi.  9. Ibid.  10. Ibid.  11. Seminar, Kashmir Issue.  12. Appeal to countrymen issued by Save Kashmiri Pandit Committee, New Delhi.  13. Mirza Mohammed Afzal Beg and Sheikh Abdullah got the Constituencies with sizeable Hindu populations  jerrymandered only to reduce their effectiveness in electoral processes.  14. Incidence of Rural Poverfy - A Survey .   Orissa- 67.7%, Madhya Pradesh - 60.85%; Bihar- 56.83%;   Tamil Nadu - 55.43%; West Bengal - 57.40%,   Maharashtra - 59.50%; J & K - 30.57%.  15. B. G. Verghese; Kashmir Temples Unharmed,"Indian Express; Harvinder Baweja, "Kashmir Temples - Damaging Lies," ; India Today, February 28, 1993.  16. Jammu Kashmir Vichar - Temple Special Number, February, March, 1993  17. Indian Express, December 15, 1992.  18. Jammu Kashmir Vichar - Temple Special Number, February-March, 1993.  19. Illustrated Weekly of India.  20. Amrik Singh, "Future of Kashmiri Pandits," The Hindustan Times, July 17, 1993.  21. Seminar- Kashmir issue.  22. Harmeet Singh "Kashmir Militancy and Sikhs," Daily Excelsior, Jammu, September, 1992.  23. Ibid.  24. Ibid.  25. Ibid.  26. Ibid.