Colossal Failure

Nadimarg was waiting to happen. There were ample signals, which the government refused to take note of. Soon after the Jehadi outfits announced the setting up of a 'Joint Command Council' the graph of the terrorist violence went up steeply. In the week that followed, the seven major incidents took a toll of 54 people killed. This included 23 security personnel and 19 civilians. The incidents in Rajouri, particularly the burning down of 37 houses of the minority community was enough warning that the ethnic cleansing of the minority groups was high on the agenda of the terrorist entrepreneurs.

Intelligence and media reports consistently referred to the rewards being announced by ISI to enact massacres. Didn't acts of stepped-up subversion and threats of massacres warrant a thorough review of the security set-up of the pockets where, despite all odds, remnants of the Pandit community were holding on? Not only the state government refused to act on the intelligence feed back, there were serious lapses on the administrative front as well. Armed with the evidence that the terrorists were upto some mischief, Nadimarg Pandits had approached District administration for beefing up the security. The cold-blooded bureaucrats had turned them away saying if nobody had harmed them during the past 13 years why should they worry then. Disheartened by the administrative apathy, the fear stricken people subsequently sought intervention of two local CPM MLA's. Even this did not help. With such a disoriented administration, how could Nadimarg have been averted.

The exiled Pandit community has also levelled charges that PDP-led government was insincere on the return of Pandits and was just creating a media-hype on the issue, which invited the terrorist back lash. The interaction of the different delegations of Pandits with the chief minister, the unprecedented supersession in promotion of Pandit employees in state education department and J&K Bank and non-inclusion of a Pandit representative in Upper House have been sighted as proof enough of PDP's endemic hostility to the aspirations of the displaced community. If the state government was sincere about the return process, why was it pursuing the return plan in a shadowy manner and avoiding a frank dialogue with the members of the Pandit community. What did PDP and the state government do by way of building political campaigns on this issue in the Kashmir valley itself?

Return of the Pandits cannot be de-linked from the larger issue of their ethnic cleansing. Attempts to do so have only invited massacres. Cross-border terrorism and indigenous factors have contributed in equal measure to the uprootment of Pandits. With Kashmir’s social milieu decisively altered to the demands of communalism and Talibanisation, there was very little left that could assure security to the Kashmiri Pandit community. A serious return plan by the Valley's political leadership or the government would not avoid addressing these ground-level realities. The Chief Minister has commented that such massacres have taken place in the past as well. Quite true. But then, aren't these repeated massacres an indictment of the destabilsing politics pursued by the Valley's entire mainstream leadership vis-a-vis Pandits on the return issue? The Valley's political elite is reluctant to create conditions that can facilitate the return of the exiled community. Yet it has compulsions to enact a tokenist return for its own legitimacy. This dilemma is best reflected in its attempts to delink the return issue from the dialogue process and trivialising the issue of Pandit's genocide.

The State and the Central governments have also involved themselves in a blame game on passing the responsibility for massacres to the other side. Successive Central governments and the national political leadership have totally failed in drawing lessons from repeated massacres and evolving a doctrine for survival of minorities in the terrible situation of J&K. Centre's penchant to indulge in semantics on the issue of cross border terrorism v/s indigenous terrorism and delinking Muslim identity politics from terrorism, has only served to confer immunity to the local support structures of cross-border terrorism, with terrible costs for the nation.

The Centre's calculated disregard for the exiled Pandit community and other minority groups in the state has not sent positive signals to the international community. Only a State that cares for its patriotic people and can go to any extent to defend its value system is taken seriously.

The Deputy PM, Mr LK Advani recently confessed that Central government has not done justice to the exiled Pandit community. Mr Yashwant Sinha, the External Affairs Minister went on record saying, "Nadimarg has resulted in a fresh thinking in dealing with the terrorist menace". One can only hope that politicians live up to their commitments, for Nadimarg represents the colossal failure and the utter helplessness of the Indian state to protect its own citizenry.