CHAPTER TWENTY

Terrible Plight Of Minorities

Considerable numbers of the Hindus are languishing in tattered tents, cramped camps and rented hutments. There are others, actually not many in numbers, who are provided a room or so by their close relatives only to live through this period of trial and travail. Many others, slightly well-off, have been staying in rented rooms. Joint families under the weight of cruel times have cracked up. Commodious accommodations not being available have caused breakup in links, parents living apart from their sons, brothers falling apart from their near and dear ones. There are families that have divided, husband at one place earning his living and spouse elsewhere doing her job and their children, desperate and frustrated, roaming from pillar to post in quest of jobs and admissions. l

Pain, agony and anguish are tearing up every individual wherever he be and whatever condition he is in. A mere look at Kashmiri Hindus will establish their extreme frustration, anguish, pains and troubles that have made them a permanent abode. The trauma they are in and untold sufferings and hardships they are faced with have taken a heavy toll of their pnysico-psychical health. The horrendous events leading to their exit from their native abode have shaken them to roots. That they are in a state of morbidity is the direct outcome and offshot of the nightmarish experiences that have been perpetually haunting them. Very often they come to a breaking point finding a dark tunnel ahead of them with no immediate prospect of it coming to an end. As of now, they have found no caring friends to console, boost and prop them up only to face the dark, bleak and desolate future taxing their nerves. Instead, for one reason or the other, they have earned hostility and animosity especially on part of political parties and self-seeking journalists with their charted courses to pursue only to achieve their political ends divorced of humanistic consideraticns and empathies.

Gross Discrimination

Thrown out of their native home, the ducks of the lake waters have been unable to withstand the blistering heat. Hundreds have fallen a prey to heat strokes. Camps for them having come up in desert lands have not proved safer places. Hundreds have lost their lives due to snake bites. Tension ridden and unable to withstand the trauma, scores of youngmen suffered heart attacks and died. The older people have been in greater distress as they are economically poor and crippled and forced to spend and live fag-end of their lives in unsavoury and inhospitable conditions and under great strain and stress.2 The young men at threshold of their careers are convinced of their bleak future as sympathies are lacking and genuine assistance is not forthcoming to alleviate the heavy weight of worries and hardships. All employment avenues have been sealed for them and even opportunities for education valued as a real asset by them have been cruelly snatched. In a state of destruction they have not been in a position to put their learners in very good institutions where they could flower and emerge as the patriotic citizens of Mother India. The Muslimised state had already slammed its doors on them. The Central Government is equally proving the worst in oppressing and tyrannising them. With a view to conciliating the Muslims, all set norms and regulations are waived and relaxed to recruit them to serve sectarian ends deemed as the only panacea to lift Kashmir from the mire of worst brand of bigotry and chauvinism.3

The sun has proved their great tormentor. The tattered tents with gaping holes fail to protect them from the heat and had they been in good shape, they could not have saved them from the searing heat inside the cramped space.4 Some of the Kashmirian Hindus have been living in one-room tenements bereft of all facilities for a normal life and living. The hygienic conditions are abominable, facilities for fighting the blistering heat are absolutely missing and government agencies responsible for proper maintenance of tented accommodation are callous and apathetic. The rains are no better though they bring a temporary relief after suffering the scorching sun. The fury of wind and rain leads to the collapse of the tents making the inmates really miserable. It is a thing only be lived and felt. Winter is not kind either. It is bitter cold and the poor Hindus, who lost their mobile properties to the Muslim looters, rue the day that they were born in Muslim Kashmir having set new records in the realms of loot, murder and arson.

It is true that the Kashmirian Hindus depending on land or doing small business or engaged in private jobs are paid a dole of 1000/- rupees per month. It as a meagre sum in the times when prices are sky-rocketting is no longer sufficient to maintain a family of five members. Then, the payments have not been regular turning them into models of misery. The entire affair for the Hindus has been poorly managed, bogged down in red-tape and more than most corruption-infested. The callous administration has been repeating processes for them which have already been gone through with the intent of causing them pain and frustration. The Hindu migrants are required to paste a photograph on their ration-cards or registration forms and in case a mischievous clerk removes it or comes off on its own, he is made to starve for months on end with no available channels for prompt redressal. The whole affair is sunk in and riddled with corruption forcing one to feel that the entire country is in the grip of monsters of corruption. The corrupt, unjust and biased administration has proved a scourge for them and for pittances of relief every refugee has to wage a humiliating battle at every step and end.

The same administration has a different treatment to offer to the Muslims, who have migrated from the Valley for seasonal business and sabotage. They are paid doles regularly and most of the time in advance. They are not required to have ration cards and fill up registration forms. The rations are delivered at their door-steps through Government agencies. Some political parties with minimal base in Kashmir are paid doles in lump-sum. The government norm of Rs. 300/- per person subject lo a maximum of Rs. 1000/- per month is not applicable to them. The workers of such pclitical parties are comfortably lodged in government quarters, wherefrom they pay lip-service to secularism and dare not condemn the Muslim terrorists and their barbaric crimes against humanity. The erstwhile ministers, MLAs and MPs from Kashmir get the treatment of British lords and peers, are lodged in government bungalows and are paid hefty sums for all the disservice they have rendered in demolishing the entire polity of Kashmir. A cursory perusal of the statements issued by them from time to time are sufficient testimony to their being the apologists of the Muslim terrorism concertedly working to blast the unity and integrity of India and instead of condemning the heinous crimes of the terrorists against the micro-community of Hindus, they have heen busy in spinning and spreading a fabric of unfounded canards only to justify the Muslim insurgency with its main thrust against the Kashmirian Hindus.

Aware of the Hindus being bona fide patriots, the terrorists and their cohorts coerced thenn to march out of their native abode. But, to the utter dismay of the Hindus, all governments at the central capital have been callous, cruel and allergic to them. Their miseries in camps and prisonhole hutments do not form their serious concern. They are paid Rs. 6.50 per individual per day as dole and the Muslim oriminals now in jails are paid Rs. 45/- per day per criminal. It is how the barbarous terrorists are fed and looked after. Is it not a travesty of justice? 'Pay a criminal to beef up his morale and stamina and starve a Hindus patriot' has been the star policy of the powers that be.

It is known world over that the terrorists in complicity with the bigoted Muslims, oriented in Hindu-bashing, have been relentless in setting the Hindu houses ablaze, giving the owners a life-time shock. The houses mostly were insured with various insurance companies operating under public sector. The owners submitted their cases to the respective companies for compensation. As is obvious the Hindus thrown out of their native places could not submit fool-proof cases and must be wanting in details which could be supplied by the government agencies and police department. As the entire administrative set-up including the local police are steeped in the implacable hatred of Hindus, the details are suppressed or wrongly put and conveyed or delayed. Using it as a ploy, the insurance companies and their surveyors alleged to be sunk in the mire of corruption stall their compensation cases thereby causing lots of mental torture to the sufferers already in a trauma.

But, in case of Muslims, rules are bent and regulations are set aside and compensation paid with promptness. Height of it is that the Home Minister of India, Mufti Mohammad Sayyid, paid a visit to Handwara to pay money in cash to the Muslims, whose houses and shops got gutted in a blazing fire, said to be the handiwork of the terrorists. The same Home Minister refused to pay a visit to a nearby village, Gushi, dominantly inhabited by the Kashmirian Hindus whose houses were set ablaze by the Muslim hordes with all vengefulness. The Home Minister deeply rooted in anti-Hindu persuasions did not think of paying a visit to the Hindu village where they had lost properties worth lakhs and the question of paying them compensation did not arise.

As of now 15 percent of the claims submitted by the Kashmirian Hindus for compensation have been settled while in case of the Muslims more than 80 percent claims for compensation have been promptly settled and paid. Why this discrimination is obvious and self-explanatory.

It is a patent fact that the Muslim looters fearing none including Allah, looted and ravaged lhe mobile properties of the Kashmirian Hindus from their houses, which were broken into in broad day-light. The properties were equally insured with various insurance companies which have virtually shelved their cases already submitted for compensation for untenable and spurious reasons. The Muslimised police officers aiding the processes of ethnic cleansing issue the same uniform certificate that the incumbent had carried his goods at the time he left his home only to buzz off and the same was testified to by the residents in the Mohalla, obviously all Muslims. It is again a travesty of justice that the looters testify that the Hindu owner had taken his goods at the time he was forced to flee his home. If it were a fact, what was the necessity of breaking into the Kashmirian Hindu houses ? Are there any Hindu houses, which are still locked with their doors and windows shut and barred? Where from did the booty come which was put to sale in open markets? Gas cylinders looted from Hindu houses were sold just for Rs. 25/- cash only to tlhe Muslim buyer. Shawls and stitched suits were sold and utensils put to auction And the insurance companies have failed to cognise the anti-Hindu-venom in the issuance of such certificates by the police officers with deep-set commitments to terrorism and ruination of the native Hindus. The discriminatory and biased attitude on part of the insuranee companies cannot and will not miss the gaze of the Indian public, who are the ultimate arbiters in the prevailing political dispensation.

The Kashmirian Hindus living in camps, one-room hutments and rented spaces have fallen a prey to numerous diseases peviously not known to them. Afflictions of the skin have been their common problem. Many have suffered from kidney failures. Still many others have suffered from serious heart ailments necessitating bypass surgeries. Psychological diseases have taken a heavy toll of them. Poor and bereft, yet facing life with guts and fortitude, the ailing Hindus have been suffering for want of medicines. Deprived of their assets, they are virtually thrown on road-side. Most of them do not afford costly medicines with the result that they undergo agonising pains and even lose their lives prematurely. The government agencies receiving grants for medicines are steeped in corruption are callous and indifferent. Voluntary agencies have equally failed to exhibit any zest for alleviation of the pains of the people in shock and real distress. The Central Government is more worried about beleaguered Afghanistan as if all were well with its own people. Bagfuls of medicines costing lakhs were air-lifted to Afghanistan which is blatantly hostile to India and has been fuelling the fires of insurgency and Muslim bigotry in Kashmir. And the patriotic citizens of India are suffering from agonising ailments and are decaying and vegetating for want of medicines strengthening their feeling that destiny has in store for them a hell-hole where they are dying and are mere breathing corpses .

Not unlike other segments of the Kashmirian Hindus, the government employees having migrated in the wake of terrorism have received the same hamhanded and apathetic treatment.5 There are regional resentments against their adjustment on available vacancies and the same have been given a pushup by the Islamised bureaucracy. The annual increments af the employees already in arrears have been withheld only to spiral the troubles and hardships they are faced with. The service records are either destroyed or mutilated or held back only to keep them in constant tension. Those, who are on the brink of retirement. are not in possession of service records serving as a ploy for the officers not to prepare their pension cases for onward transmission to the competent authority. State insurance claims have been put under the carpet only to heighten the anxious state of the Hindu employees. There are cases where final authorities for drawal of moneys were issued to the heads of offices, who either embezzled the sums or avoided drawals on the pretext of having lost the authorities.

The General Provident Fund has not been settled in case of retired employees and the Funds Organisation staffed by the Muslim bigots is the biggest stumbling block in this behalf. Leave encashment benefits have been denied to the state employees who are normally entitled to it. The state administration manned by pro-terrorist elements has been inventing issues upon issues only to cause hurt and trouble to the Hindu employees, denying them arrears, periodical increments, revision of grades and more than most promotions. There are umpteen cases where blatant discrimination, bias and vengeance have been displayed in the most ludicrous form.

The Hindu employees of the University of Kashmir, Srinagar have been openly subjected to harassment and intimidation.6 The sub-office set up by the University of Kashmir in Jammu to deal with the problems of the migrant students is manned by the Muslims deputed from Kashmir and not-by the migrant employees of the University. The post graduate courses in the process of being started for the migrant scholars are to be taught not by the migrant professors living in Jammu, but by the Muslim teachers deputed for the purpose by the University authorities. The whole process is smacking of hatred, prejudice and sectarian considerations. The University campus as such is a den of terrorists and most of the departments are manned by the people with a track record of subversion and terrorism.

As a seminary of Muslim myopia and terrorism,7 the University of Kashmir has been pursuing the policy of Mukta Khan, the Sheikh- Ul-Islam, who denied and trounced upon the basic right of the Hindus to pursue educative processes and come up as bright sons and daughters of India. The University authorities at the behest of the bigoted Muslim teachers have been concertedly pursuing a policy frame of disrupting and destroying the educational careers of the Hindu students by delaying examinations and announcement of results. The Muslim teachers have already doomed the Muslim students by motivating them to take up guns for an elusive future and are now out to axe the Hindu scholars pursuing their normal studies. The hateful, brusque and indifferent attitude of the University in announcing results for B.A. and B.Sc. classes after full two years is a real Islamic onslaught on the Hindu community designed to stunt the growth and developmental processes of the budding citizens of free India. The multiple problems of the migrant student community created by the Muslimised University can be sorted out with the aid of healthy minds like Prof. M. R. Puri 8 by affiliating the migrant students to the University of Jammu with a view to off-setting the Muslim onslaught on their right to get educated for a bright future. The general Muslim tendency is to disrupt the educative processes of the Hindus, who in the wake of forced exodus clamoured for setting up of colleges and schools for their learners and scholars.

It is absolutely dismaying that no Prime Minister of this country has expressed a serious concern for the Kashmirian Hindus who are virtually on the brink of extinction. Not to talk of shedding tears, mere lip sympathy was not expressed over their fate of being hounded and coralled out of their ancestral homes only to get reduced to the bottom level of want, penury and deprivation.

They are undeniably the bona fide citizens of this country and had to be protected and shielded from the armed onslaught launched against them by terrorists operating under the Islamic facade. The dismantling of a dilapidated mosque built of brick and mortar was decried as national shame by all the politicians pursuing a particular shade of politics. That three lakh Hindus under an armed onslaught serving the ends of brazenfaced bigotry were thrown out lock, stock and barrel was as per them a national honour. An aspirant for power has been expounding the thesis that an apology be tendered to the Muslims as their religious sentiments have been hurt and impaired. Were not the religious sentiments of the Kashmirian Hindus hurt when their religious places were desecrated, destroyed and burnt whole hog? Assiduous efforts are put in to conceal the grim realities about Kashmir from the people of this country for fear of exposure of the de-humanised face of the ruling cliques and their brusuqe apathy and 'we care not' attitude unto the people in distress and agony.

The crimes committed against the Hindus of Kashmir are the planned handiwork of Muslim majority o. Kashmir and their so-called educated elite. Aware of the heinous acts of barbarity perpetrated on them and their present state of destitution and deprivalion, the rulers have been assiduously hiding them by maintaining an intriguing silence for fear of getting identified with the Hindus thereby suffering a scar on their secular credentials. Be it said that the Kashmrian Hindus are no life-less brick and mortar. They are a living, pulsating and palpitating mass of population put to brutal massacre, inhuman torture and worst intimidation reminisccnt of medieval ages. They beiong to this country and have inherited a corpus of values generated during the processes of cultural and civilisational growth and efflorescence and also have a remarkable history of patriotism and nationalism. Their pains and agonies, sorrows and tortures, have been ignored lest the Muslim majority should get alienated.

It is quite painful that the killers are minded more than the sufferers. And every killer identifying himself with Islamic tenets of Jehad is to be tolerated otherwise he will get alienated. The Hindus alone are the people who are not prone to alienation and so trounce them, trample them and put them to inhuman torture. In the ultimate analysis the pains, agonies, sorrows and tortures of the Kashmirian Hindus will and are sure to prove a catalyst in the crucible of the Indian political laboratory for the emergence of forces deeply rooted in the soil of India and committed to the preservation and conservation of value frame of tolerance, co-existence and healthy interaction between various ethnic groups gaining a new orientation in a renewed political agenda.

It will be pertinent to put that the Kashmirian Hindus fleeing their homeland under the pressures mounted on them by armed Muslim bigotry had to sell off their ornaments, jewellery and bulls for paying buses and trucks to carry them out to safer zones only to save their honour and dignity. And the people of India are more than aware that crores were spent in transporting Muslims from Kuwait to India and their homes. The hapless Hindus living in tents with gaping holes, camps that are stenchy and cramped and one-man hutments resembling prison-holes have been dying each day for want of medicines, food and shelter.

M.L. Fotedar as a Congress popinjay paid a visit to Sopore, which is declared as the Capital of liberated zone only to apply balm to the Muslims supposed to have suffered atrocities by the security forces still holding fort for India in face of tremendous pressures and difficulties. And what was shameful that he did not show any concern and bother about the Kashmirian Hindus dying by inches in tents, camps and hell holes. P.L. Handoo as the mouth-piece of retrograde secessionist politics of National Conference could talk of Resettlement Bill, but has maintained muteness about the plight of Hindus. Saif-ud-din Soz, whose daughter was kidnapped and kept in captivity, goes on talking about conciliating the barbaric terrorists and feeding the machine of canards against the Kashmirian Hindus only to justify Jehad and ethnic cleansing. One Shafi Bhat, who stalled the installation of the Gandhi statue in a park in Srinagar, now turned into High Court complex, raised a sign 'stop atrocities of the security forces' by seating himself on the pavements of Parliament House. Ghulam Nabi Azad 9 talks about so-called reservartions about the Kashmirian Hindus, but is gutless in condemning the Muslim majority communalism and the deep wounds inflicted on the Hindus by the Muslim terrorists and their collaborators in the country.

Notes and References

 1. R.N. Raina, Migration and After, Daily Excelsior, April, 24, 1991.  2. Dr. K.L. Chowdhary and Dr. P.K. Hak have made a survey of ailments afflicting the Hindu refugees in camps.  3. Recruitments made in the government sectors by a Committee headed by Mr. Bajpai vested with special statutory powers in violation of rules and norms.  4. Bharat Bhusan, "Plight of Kashmiri Migrants," Daily Excelsior, March 25, 1991.  5. Migrant Employees, Smt. Krishna Bhat and others, Daily Excelsior, September 11, 1991.  6. Memorandum submitted to the Vice-Chancellor, University of Kashmir by the University professors and other employees in exile.  7. Mr. Wani, killed by the Muslim terrorists, was Head of the Faculty of Law, University of Kashmir, Srinagar. He was the kingpin of the secessionist forces operating in the university.  8. Prof. M.R. Puri, Ex-Vice-Chancellor, University of Jammu proved of tremendous help for opening of schools and colleges for the Hindu refugee boys and girls in Jammu. He exhibited tremendous zeal for the provision of facilities in such institutions where the refugee scholars pursued their studies despite all odds.  9. Speech as reported in the media.