Part II: Chapter 16

SANGRAMPORA MASSACRE

As evidenced by the Sangrampora carnage it can be justifiably asserted that the naked dance of death and destruction unleashed against the Kashmiri Pandits continues unabated and with impunity. The tall but unbelievable claims made by rulers wielding political power and authority that terrorism ravaging the state has been vanquished and stamped out stand debunked and put to rest. The occurrences of daily encounters and increasing number of killings deflate the sails of propaganda and disinformation spree floated and hyped by the Chief Minister and his charts. The valley is yet to be retrieved from the brutal clutches of the Muslim terrorists and Doda continues to be reeling under the heels of gun-totting desperadoes and the infiltration of waves of trained and armed terrorists has been stepped up in the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri, thus lending new pitch and volume to the ongoing terrorism.

The cold-blooded slaughter of seven Kashmiri pandits inhabiting a tiny but distant hamlet of Sangrampora in the District Badgam by the treacherous Kashmiri-speaking terrorists gone crazy in the chase of Islamic goals sent shock waves into the Kashmiri Pandit refugees in distress and Diaspora. The crime that they had committed was that they had not joined the ranks of fleeing refugees to escape the Muslim brutalities and had chosen to stay back in a hostile society firmly glued to the Islamic agenda. Yet they were put to a grisly carnage which had frightening range and contours. The Kashmiri Bandits in the beginnings of insurgence and mayhem were tortured and killed in ones and two throughout the valley thereby cleansing Kashmir of infidels. But the Sangrampora massacre was a holocaust that was perpetrated on the Kashmiri Pandits in general and beleaguered Pandits in the valley in particular.

The dastardly and inhuman massacre did not earn full-throated condemnation on part of politicals who act as hostages to their Muslims majoritarian identity based on the cocoon of insularity and deliberately refuse to perceive beyond the eyelids of its set parameters. Under the motivations of Islamic fundamentalism the mortgaged mentality of the Muslim politicals assumes extremely hostile and inimical postures unto the religious minorities which is manifested through a relentless campaign of calumny and vilification against them. Tolerance as an accepted canon has ceased to be and secularism necessitating even-handed treatment of diverse religious groups is rejected thereby stabilizing the parochial politics with communal under-pinnings. Shackled by such thinking and attitudinal changes, clitches and compulsive words of sympathy were doled out with some insincere references to composite culture and beaten-out secularism. There are Kashmiri pandits perhaps a siezable section among them who firmly hold on to the view that they cannot and should not expect a fair deal from the political dispensation that has come to power. The same dispensation betrayed them at the critical juncture of 1989- exodus and the same formation is at the helm when the Sangrampora massacre was perpetrated with all its brutal savagery. The prejudices, outmoded notions and malafide pulls remain and have not been dispensed with for smoothening of relations between the majority and the minority for the achievement of desirable goals of economic development and strengthening of democratic apparatus.

Despite tall claims of normalcy, the Sangrampora massacre establishes beyond any shadow of doubt that the terrorists have not been marginalised and are still calling shots and Kashmiri pandits who Still dot some localities and hamlets are not let off the hook and remain targets for killing besides canards and disinformation to meet the strategic goals and political imperatives. The savagery that was let loose on the. beleaguered Pandits incontrovertibly lays bare the Muslim motivations of liquidating and ethnically cleansing the left-over elements of the religious enemies who have a saga of persecution and harassment to relate. In fact, the Sangrampora massacre in the culmination of the entire process of exclusion, decimation and ethnic cleansing which had started way back in 1947 under the dubious cover of socio-economic reconstruction and regeneration. The security of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley in the totally Islamised social, political and economic order cannot he ensured and guaranteed as the very presence of Pandits is deemed to dismantle the Islamic state that is under the shaping out processes.

The hopless Pandits, budding and old, were brutally murdered to disperse the message that Kashmir as a Muslim state purged of the vestiges of Hindu Kafirs remains paramount and cannot be compromised with. The trumpet that was beaten about the return of natives was silenced through the gory and macabre killing of persons, who had been left to their fate and fortune and were not provided a protective shield, a fool proof security cover, even-though perpetually vulnerable. The desire on part of Pandits to return to their natural abode in Kashmir was smothered and the same had suddenly burgeoned with a government coming to saddle.

With the perpetration of death and destruction on the defenceless targets Muslim killers of the indigenous brand which fact is testified to by the survivors of the victims made good their escape into safe havens and have eluded arrest so far. It can be stated without fear or dither that they succeed to escape the noose only with the connivance and tacit support of the perfidious elements that infest various levels of governance. The staying back Pandits after the mass stampeding of their co-religionists had tied their lot with the Muslim majority, submitted to its tyranny and accepted the status of servility in the hope that they would be spared from the atrocity of being hounded Out and thus earn a reprieve. Little did they know that the Muslim terrorists with tremendous support from Pakistan and emboldened by the insensitivities and visceral hatred of the state government unto them were hatching conspiracies and executing game-plans to drown them in a bloody holocaust through which they proved their high potential to strike at will and exposed the falseness of the much-touted claims of Farooq Abdullah that normalcy though elusive had already dawned and what was needed was to reinforce it zenith the return of the exiled Pandits. But objectively normalcy is a self-created illusion on part of rulers who refuse to realise that the ground realities are in conflict with their illusory perceptions. The nagging worry obsessing the anti-insurgency operators and their command structures is that war waged by Kashmiri Muslims has vet to exhibit convincing symptoms of diminishing and vanishmg levels of abatement.

The Sangrampora massacre has a telling message that the exiled Pandits who are accused as the betrayers of the terrorist movement cannot return to their land of genesis even after the Muslims out of fatigue and frustration decide upon normalizing conditions and investing them with a look of stability. It also puts the fate of beleaguered Pandits in the valley in doldrums bringing it amply home to them that they can be gobbled up any time by the Muslim hounds to satiate their ravenous thirst for the much-coveted blood of Kafirs and cannot save their bacon. The two-pronged strategy that was achieved through the gory massacre of Sangrampora was to stone-wall the return of natives and obliterate the last traces of Hindus in Kashmir.

Without probing the entire gamut of the problem in depth and preparing a transparent blue-print some futile and inconsequential shrill yells about the return of displaced Pandits proved a catalyst in the Sangrampora massacre which re-affirmed the implaccable hatred of revival of socio-cultural milieu informed of catholicity and resurrection of inter and intra-community trust and goodwill. The very idea of transplantation of Kashmiri Pandits back into their original ambience is deemed as inimical to the Muslim separatist instinct and separatist movement in the larger objective context. As part of a long range strategy the Sangrampora carnage setting new records of mass massacre was enacted not only to reverse but abort the measures though cosmetic and half-hearted to restore them in their habitations which Muslims have wiped out and decimated. The discourse and agenda-setting Muslim think tank destructive in approach and premis has amply made it known that Bud Shah in any case will neither be re-enacted nor resurrected to fritter away the unprecedented gains to Islam in Kashmir with the cleansing of Hindus and their heretical practices. The deep scars and concussion implanted on the ideological and cultural personality of Kashmir are valued as Islamic gains which at all costs have to be consolidated and entrenched.

More than most the harrowing blood-bath at the distant outpost of Sangrampora has blasted the dubious myth of Muslim tolerance as a vital ingredient of hazily defined Kashmiriyat which has been trumpeted and glorified by Balraj Puri and men of his ilk. It has equally deflated the balloon of a sham that Jagmohan as the State Governor conspired the migration of Kashmiri Pandits and armed conflict, internal strife, violation of human rights and other hateful forms of violence were not the keel factors in inspiring their mass exodus. What transports Balraj Puri into rapturous joy is that the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has also condemned the killings at Sangrampora ignoring that the said-organisation as a conglomerate of despicable, murderous and fanatic groups with communal fangs has initiated the doom and destruction of Kashmir in general and Kashmiri Pandits in particular through export of Muslim youth to the camps in POK, Afghanistan and Iran for arms training and indoctrination.

Kashmiri Pandit Protest

On 25th March, 1997 the Kashmiri Pandits in utter shock and anguish converged on the Rajendra Park in Jammu and were vociferous in condemning the mass massacre of innocent Hindus who were presented to the media inside and outside the country as models of defiance. A procession of twenty-five thousand Kashmiri Pandits protesting against the wanton killings passed peacefully through the city thorough-fares leading to the civil secretariat where as per plans a memorandum was to be presented to the Nero of Kashmir whose father had dreamt of the state as his personal fiefdom. The demonstrators who were angry and indignant raised anti-Farooq Abdullah slogans who as per his bistro Kashmir has been instrumental in whipping up anti-Pandit hysteria through his frivolous and unsavoury statements and has been Justifiably accused of shirking responsibility for protecting the unarmed patriotic citizens from the terrorist onslaught. They raised anti-ISI and anti-Pakistan slogans as well. The demonstrators led by their sane leaders had to face unprecedented columns of' police troops who resisted and thwarted their onward march to the Civil Secretariat. Before negotiations could be concluded between the Hindu community leaders and the police troops the latter pounced on the demonstrators in Nazi style fury and rage perhaps at the behest of Nero himself. All demonstrators, men, women and children, were mercilessly beaten at the Shalimar Crossing and Indira Chowk with lathis and rifle butts. Smoke-shells without number were rained on the demonstrators with the intention to kill them. Some demonstrators, passers-by and scholars returning from schools got trapped inside the Rameshwar Temple. The policemen under the orders of a Muslim Officer gate-crashed into the Temple and kicked, beat & inflicted grievous injuries on the trapped people. More than hundred rounds were fired in air and three hundred smoke-shells hurled on the peaceful demonstrators. One hundred and fifty people including women were fatally wounded and eighty-three of them bore severe head injuries. All the injured demonstrators were admitted to the Emergency ward of the Medical College, Jammu for treatment. Scores of women injured in the brutal police action included Kirti Kalla, Vice-President of ASKPC and Shyama Jee, an activist of Vishwa Hindu Parishad. A young man was shifted to the Medical Institute in Chandigarh in an unconscious and critical state as he was grievously wounded in the head.

The deputy commissioner on duty, an IAS officer, added a new feather to the Farooq Abdullah Government when he in full public view was visibly seen hurling stones and shells on the demonstrating mob of Kashmiri refugees.

On 26th March, 1997 the BJP issued a call for Jarmmu Bandh to register protest against the police action on peaceful demonstrators in front of Civil Secretariat. The bandh-call vitas supported by all the Kashmiri Pandit outfits and Jammu Organisations. Roopnagar, Janipur and Tope Sherkhan areas in Jammu emerged as flash-points when bearded policemen and Kashmiri Pandits Were seen locking horns in ding-don" battles lasting for hours togetllcr. The Muslim employees and their women-folk flanked be police troops provoked the demonstrating Kashmiri Pandits for retaliatory acts. An SRTC bus used for transporting the Muslim employees to the secretariat was said to hive been set on fire. There were some violent incidents at Janipur said to be the aftermath of police provocation. The government quarters at Tope Sherkhan were pelted at when Muslim women-folk yelled pro-Azadi and pro-Pakistan slogans. Some shops belonging to the Kashmiri Muslims were put to flames when Muslim police desecrated a Temple. The residences of Kashmiri Pandits were broken into, inmates kicked and beaten with lathis and rifle butts. Scores of Pandits were fatally wounded. A retired INCAS officer was not spared either and was left with profusely bleeding wounds. A budding boy was chased to the rooftop where he was caught, given merciless beating and hurled down the roof leaving him with his legs broken. The Kashmiri Pandits, mostly students, who were taken into custody were mercilessly beaten and let off reportedly after paying off huge sums of money.

Condemnation of Police Action on Kashmiri Pandit Refugees

The brutal police action on Kashmiri Pandit protectors was widely condemned by all sections of Indian populace.

The Bharatiya Janta Party state unit strongly condemned the latch) charge, police firing and tear gassing on peaceful demonstrators. In a statement the party vice-president and incharge of Kashmir affairs alleged that instead of solving their pressing problems and redressing their genuine grievances the government in saddle has unleashed a reign of terror against them. He also alleged that the National Conference Government has totally failed to meet the challenges of militancy and is suppressing the loud voice of nationalist and patriotic forces. Dr. Nirmal Singh, the general secretary of BJP, termed the attack on the heads of processionists as a murderous assault which rebuffed the secular claim of the government in power.

While condemning the police action the All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference warned the government to desist from such brutal assault on the Hindu community members. It also made it known that the militant and anti-national elements have unleashed a reign of terror against the community in the valley by putting innocent community members to bullets and the state government was harnessing all its brute might to silence and stifle the voice of nationalist forces. It also demanded a thorough probe into the police action that was uncalled for and brutal.

The state Vishwa Hindu Parishad was unequivocal in its condemnation of unprovoked firing, tear-gassing and lathi charge on Kashmiri Hindus by the police. In a statement the working president of the organisation strongly criticised the police for pelting stones on Rameshwar Temple and beating people after chasing them inside the Temple. He demanded a probe into the sacrilegious act of police.

The State Bajrangdal warned the government that it should desist from harassing tile patriotic forces and take decisive steps to eliminate the militancy from the valley. It strongly condemned the police action on the peaceful Kashmiri Pandit demonstrators.

The All India Kashmiri Pandit conference condemned the uncalled for and unprovoked police action on the processionists. In a statement the senior Vice-President and Chief Organiser alleged that instead of pacifying the demonstrators the government gave a brutal show of its strength through police action.

The State Durga Vahini expressed grave concern over the police action on peaceful Kashmiri Hindu demonstrators. It demanded a probe into the action.

In a statement the state president of ABVP warned the state administration that the brutal police action against the Kashmiri Pandits will have serious repercussions.

There were scores of statements issued from numerous organizations that have condemned the police action on Kashmiri Pandits who were protesting against the mass massacre of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley by the Muslim terrorists. The organizations included All India Kashmiri Samaj, Kashmiri Fire Sufferers Forum, Youth Wing of Kashmiri Pandit Sabha, Non-camp Kashmiri Migrant Manch et al.

Farooq Abdullah Thunders

Disturbed by the massive protest of Kashmiri Pandits against the carnage at Sangrampora and wide-spread condemnation of police action on the peaceful demonstrators Farooq Abdullah giving full and unbridled plan to his trait of ranting and railing, bluffing and blustering thundered on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, "Kashmir will always be a Muslim state and the status wouldn't be allowed to dilute." And the National Conference members including the terrorists of yester-years expressed their vigorous approbation of the communally stanced statement of the Chief Minister through loud thumping of desks. The statement having touched their inner chords was said to have been rephrased, "As Kashmir is a Muslim state, it, therefore, cannot form a part of the secular constitutional structure of India."

In his specific reference to the Kashmiri Pandit protests he said, "no one mourns the death of those Muslims who are being killed daily in Kashmir. Whether the blood of Muslims is not red or they are "bekar" who had to be finished. Is the blood of a Muslim cheap?"

Without commenting upon the innards of the statement a UP legislator, Hans Raj Dogra, asked as to who w as spilling the red blood of Muslims. Pat came the reply, "OUTSIDERS." "Outsides" is duplicitous in intent and content, pregnant with double meaning which required to be divined and intuited.

At a function in the Central Hall of legislature the Chief Minister vented out his morbid wrath against tile Kashmiri migrants (not displaced persons as per his statement in Bombay) for unleashing disinformation against his plans (which he has none) for their return to the valley. He veiled his lungs out, "I am afraid only of God arid not Kashmiri Pandits. I am not going to be scared about their processions and rallies. Farooq Abdullah will do float is the demand of the situation."

A man in the gallery was heard whispering, "And demand of the situation is not to dispossess the grabbers and looters of their landed estates and residential houses but to perpetuate the loot, grab and appropriation of their left-behind properties and carry them not to their homes but to transit camps."

Farooq Abdullah sounded very secular with commitments to the restoration and revival of an ethos which virtually is eroded and decimated when he dilated on the imperative of the return of Pandits so that bells at KhirBhawani and Hari Parbhat were heard again.

Commenting upon his statement an elderly lawyer with tremendous political history and commitment to secular ideology aptly put "it were better for the Chief Minister to institute a judicial probe into his own contributions to the erosion and decimation of Kashmiri ethos which he feigns to lament and he should answer as to why the bells of Bhairav Nath Temple in Srinagar have remained unrolled and unrung for the last 30 years despite court directions and verdicts and if Pandits were vital to the Kashmiri ethos, why were they labelled as Kafirs, targeted for rape and massacre and forced to flee the valley?".

Kashmiri Pandits decry the Chief Minister's Statement

The leaders of the Kashmiri Pandit organizations accused the Chief Minister of declaring war on the minorities of the state. Terming his statement in the Legislative Assembly as superfluous and absurd, they made it amply clear that their protests against the lapse of the government leading to the blood-bath at Sangrampora had nothing to do with the dilution of the Muslim character of the state and what was expected of the Chief Minister was that he should respect and perpetuate the healthy principles that inform and regulate a participatory democracy leaving aside parochial views and devise and execute measures to ameliorate the lot of displaced Pandits. Hitting the nail on the head they termed the brutal slaughter of Kashmiri Pandits as a well-planned conspiracy to eject out the vestiges of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley.

Kedar Nath Sahni's Statement

The eminent leader of Bhartiya Janata Party and in-charge Jammu and Kashmir affairs Kedar Nath Sahni lashed out at Farooq Abdullah for making irresponsible statements about Jammu and Kashmir thus adding complicacies to an already complex problem and tensions to an already tense political situation. In a vigorous statement at Jammu he expressed his contempt at the communally tinted statement of the chief minister that Jammu and Kashmir will always remain a Muslim majority state. He tailed to understand the motivation that impelled him to issue such statements. He made it known that no fewer than ten organisations had complained that there were moves afoot to metamorphose the population complexion of Jammu.

The BJP leader having made his mark as a sagacious and astute politician spared no words in condemning the brutal lathi charge on Kashmiri refugees and violent incidents at Top Sherkhan government quarters. He saw a big conspiracy behind both the incidents and demanded a judicial probe to unravel it. He castigated the government for its sheer failure in appreciating the psyche and problems of Kashmiri Pandits and described the lathi charge as barbaric and inhuman.

He was astonished to learn about the Dcputv Commissioner on duty pelting stones on peaceful demonstrators.

Exposing the canard that the Chief Minister was figmenting and disseminating about the unwillingness of the Kashmiri Pandits to return to their native homes the BJP leader made it explicitly clear that they would return only after safe and conducive conditions were created through the elimination of terrorist menace ravaging Kashmir. He saw a sinister game-plan in the Sangrampora carnage which was to thwart and pre-empt the return of the natives.

Fresh Exodus

The canard about the normalcy having been restored in Kashmir valley was tattered to shreds when scores of Kashmiri Pandit families that had weathered the terrorist avalanche were forced to flee their native homes and hearths for the woeful life as camp dwellers. The Sangrampora massacre opened a new chapter of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits which commenced in the wake of 1989 killings and warnings to quit.

A number of causes with their cumulative effect can be attributed to the mass killings of Kashmiri Pandits and subsequent wave of fresh exodus from the valley. There are observers who attribute it to the irresponsible and worthless utterances of Farooq Abdullah about the displaced employees losing their jobs and getting scored off the government registers in case they fail to join their duties back in the valley. The hard and stark reality is that the landed properties, houses and even jobs on which they could have joined have been arbitrarily, and illegally usurped and grabbed by the Muslims with absolute compliance from the powers that be. There are many others who attribute the massacre and subsequent developments to the rabid frustrations and desperation caused among pro-Pakistan terrorists who stand in a large measure marginalised or eliminated through pro-India operatives. The commoners in general believe that Farooq Abdullah through his vacillatory postures has not been able to put up a stiff resistance to the terrorists who were encouraged and advised to cross borders for arms training by him only More so, he has been dabbling in frivolous issues like " greater autonomy " and "pre-1953 status" there-by missing the wood for the trees. There is a solid opinion that holds the Government of India responsible for the massacre as it as a matter of policy has been attributing all killings of Kashmiri Pandits to ISI and Pakistan thereby providing a shield to the local killers who arc responsible for the Sangrampora massacre. Faronq Abdullah employed the same tactic when he held foreign mercenaries responsible for the blood-bath.

The Hurriyat Conference leaders, better call them killers, as their hands are sullied with the blood of Hindu Kafirs are not only suspicious of but opposed to the dialogue that India and Pakistan have initiated at secretary level. With a view to frustrating the dialogue the unscrupulous Hurriyat leaders could have master-minded the Sangrampora killings. As a matter of strategy the Hurriyat leaders do not want the dialogue to fructify through the resolution of the entire spectrum of problems that have assumed a wider dimension at the behest of a foreign U1trudcr that has its own geo-political game up its sleeves.

The residents of Sangrampora village even though the! were devastated through the mass Massacre had no intentions of shifting to Jammu or elsewhere but had decided to stay on despite government neglect and insensitivity. Inlet they could not stay on because of communal tension that was fuelled up and aroused by the communal utterances of the Chief Minister. The Muslim neighbours nacho had earned praises galore for tolerance and accommodation bluntly fated them to quit and before they abandoned their natural habitat, they had to face social boycott. The terror that engulfed Sangrampora and adjoining villages led to the exodus of twelve Kashmiri Pandit families residing in Lalgam village in the same district. They have a saga of woes to relate.

RSS Chief's Statement in Jammu

The RSS Chief, Prof. Rajinder Singh, felt sect and shocked at the brutal treatment that was meted out to Kashmiri Hindus languishing and wasting away in tooted colonies and other slums. He declared that Kashmiri Hindus were not alone in their bitter struggle against terrorism but the entire nation was behind them. In his address to the RSS cadres he bluntly asked as to how there could be communal harmony in a country where three lakh Hindus were forced to buzz off their native houses to seek refuge in their own state. He dilated upon the need to full protection and facilities to the migrants who had taken up refugee-like life at Jammu.

Hizb Maligns Sagar

In sharp contradiction to the statement of Farooq Abdullah, Ali Mohammad Sagar, the Minister of State for Home, held Hizbul Mujahideen responsible for the slaughter of Sangrampora Pandits. As per the statement of the Hizbul Mujahideen, the fierce armed Muslim outfit, denied its involvement in the incident and added that "malgning Hizbul Mujahideen in the tragic incident was sheer desperation on part of Sagar. Sager attributing the killings to the Hizb was only disseminating lies and his history in politics was that of a hooligan and rabble rouser" the statement added.

The Hizbul Mujahidden statement said that the government and the security agencies have been at cross-purposes making contradictory statements with respect to the involvement of the Muslim militants in the incident. The security agencies laid the blame on the Hizb by making a reference to the wireless message that was intercepted by them. But the army held Lashkar-e-Toiba responsible for the mass massacre and again the foreign militants gunned down in an encounter at Badgam were said to have been involved in the gruesome killings.

Holding the government agencies responsible for the killings, the Hizb statement claimed that it did not believe in killing innocent and unarmed civilians as it was engaged in a holy (unholy) war where there is no place for killing innocents .

Officials Hate Pandits

A five-member team visited Srinagar and Budgam districts to probe into the gruesome massacre of Kashmiri Pandits by the Muslim terrorists battling for secession and total Islamisation of Kashmir. The members of the team in a press conference stated that bureaucratic militancy areas the biggest hurdle in the normalization processes in Kashmir and the senior officers wielding levers of power not only harboured bitter and despicable feelings against the Kashmiri Bandits but in fact were out to torpedo any attempt by the Government or any section of Kashmiri society to encourage the return of the natives. They could not meet the Deputy Commissioner of Srinagar to know from him about the plight of the staying-back Pandits as he refused to give them an audience. They claimed that National Conference workers though their numbers had considerably depleted were operating in league with militants. They also blamed the government for concealing facts about the security scenario in Kashmir and said that seven Kashmiri Pandits were butchered by Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists and not by foreign mercenaries as was being claimed and given out by the government in power.