Preface

True to their cult, the fanatic Islamists fed on the fare of destruction, and bigotry wrought havoc not only on temples of learning and widely disseminated infrastructural base for human resource development but also targetted the talented and peace-loving Kashmiri Pandits as a specific ethno-religious group for their externment and subsequent Diaspora. Through their noxious and vile propaganda the Islamists rallied the Muslim majority for a religious war on the minority religious group which was charged with betrayal and called upon to justify itself.

While perpetrating murders on this religious minority the Muslim murderers have forged alibis and set themselves up as tin-pot judges. A farrago of canards, half-truths, accusations and distortions was concocted and set afloat against the miniscule minority with the sheer objective of effacing out the acts of foul murder. Crimes of barbarism and vandalism as the instrumentalities of genocide were committed on the members of the target group with a reckless abandon. The crimes were meticulously devised, programmed and executed in cold blood with the objective of scuttling their defences and finishing them off after bludgeoning and wounding them. The number of those who were mercilessly butchered loses significance but what assumes vital importance is the prior act of selection. The members of the religious group harbouring a non-Islamic faith were singled out from those who are to be preserved, thus eliminating a dissent, a difference with the sole motive of ensuring and preserving a homogenous unity. The annihilation of the Kashmiri Pandit community has been a camouflaged operation conducted by the Islamists convinced of the murderous crimes as the final condition for the emergence of a holy theocratic state for the ghettoised Muslims.

The Kashmiri Pandits are the Tutsis of Rwanda and Jews of Germany. They are in absolute ruins and ashes. Wherever they be, they are a horrendous prospect of pathetic people who are destructed not by plagues but by bigotry and intolerance. The storms of (manipulative have been ignored as non-events which did not happen because they do not suit) history. When massacred in groups, they have been cremated and in some cases buried in all dishonour and ignominy. Their habitations that they had assiduously built up are all in charred remnants. The places of their worship and cultural symbols specifying their faith and spiritual yearnings are in shambles. As victims to cruel forces of pan-Islamism, they are bereft of their territory, their material possessions, their roots and their identity as a distinct historical and cultural group with a background setting of a gargantuan culture and civilisation. A well-defined and co-ordinated aggression was launched against every characteristic of the indigenous group to destroy it and impose on the last outpost of the community in the natural abode the pattern of the oppressor.

As people externed from their natural abode, and milieu, the Kashmiri Pandits have been dumped as refuse in camps and one-room tenements with the pre-thought intent of breaking their resistance and facilitating their wholesale destruction investing it with the veneer of natural death. De-recognising their identities as purposeful and creative individuals, they have been lumped together under a doomed and dubious label of "migrants" which rubs salt into their bleeding wounds. The callous rulers and their buddies without a goulp of shame are at pains to dish out theories to legitimise their expulsion and diaspora with a view to managing the effect of genocide.

And now a word of indebtedness. I feel highly indebted to my colleagues and friends inside academe who have appreciated my efforts to delineate and highlight the genocide of my small community which has been forced to live an ugly life in squalid camps and rented slums.

I am extremely thankful to P.N. Kachru, Onkar Kachru, D.N.Dhar, B.L.Handoo, Prof. M.L.Raina, S.K.Koul, Shyam Koul, Pitambar Singh Bali and C.L. Chrangoo for their assitance and precious suggestions to put the genocide of a distinct ethno-religious community in proper perspective and focus.

I must express my sincere thanks to the bunch of dedicated workers of the Vir Bhawan, Raghunath Pora, Jammu who provided me photographs and biographical sketches of the Kashmiri Pandits who have been tortured and mercilessly killed and butchered. I have to offer special thanks to H.N. Revoo, my school friend and play mate, who has culled lots of material relevant to the devastation that the minority community of Kashmiri Pandits has suffered for its patriotism and positive thought.

My thanks are also due for Ramesh Haku who not only went through the whole mansuscript but also prepared a computerised version of it.

I also thank my wife Mrs Mohini Koul who has been prodding me to write about the community that is in ruins and while fleeing from the terror created by the Muslim terrorists she did not care two hoots for the materials stuffed in our home but brought all my notes and jottings that I had made about the developing situation. Those notes and jottings were profusely used in my first book, Kashmir: Past and Present - Unravelling the Mystique, which was published in 1996, by Sehyog Prakashan, a Delhi based coperative venture in publishing.

Last but not the least I must convey my sincere thanks to the Managing Director, the Gyan Sagar Publications, Dariya Ganj, New Delhi for publishing the book.
 

20.3.1998
Mohan Lal Koul
Rented slum, a migrant
Jammu.