Pakistan is deeply
involved in its attempts to subvert the constitutional and administrative
machinery of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in order to strain and snap
the relations between the State and the Republic of India. Its abatement
in the terrorist violence by lending moral, political and military support
is common knowledge. The terrorists operative in Jammu and Kashmir are
being trained in camps raised for this purpose in Pak held Kashmir and
the neighbouring states of Pakistan and then pushed into India to cause
large scale anarchy, destruction, arson, murder, molestation and rape.
The Kashmiri Hindus
have become the first victims of terrorism as a result of which they had
to flee the place of their abode. The Hindus in Kashmir have, right
from the dawn of freedom faced and fought communalism and fundamentalism.
They are a part of the Vedic heartland of India and have lived in Kashmir
from times immemorial. In fact, they are the original inhabitants of the
valley of Kashmir, now reduced to an ethnic minority, with a history of
more than five thousand years dating back beyond the “ Neelmat Era “ almost
contemporary to the Vedic civilization of India. The Hindu religious precepts
have borne the message of universal peace, brotherhood and coexistence
of all creeds and faiths. The Hindus of Kashmir are the progenitors of
“Shakt” and Shaivite Monism and Hinyan and Sarvastvadin Budhism, which
spread to Central Asia, Tibet and western China. They propounded the great
Shaivite doctrine of Trika and the theory of recognition. Kalhana,
Jonaraja, PrajBhat, Shuka and Shrivara, the great masters of History compiled
the historical chronicle of Rajatarangini. The Hindu Kingdom of Kashmir
reached its zenith with the ascendance of the Karkotas when Kashmir commanded
respect and tribute from its neighbouring Kingdoms till the fall of Utpalas.
The ascendancy of Muslim Sultans in the thirteenth entury witnessed fierce
religious persecution and attempts at conversion of Kashmiri Pandits who
resisted it with will, and determination, preferring death to surrender.
The Kashmiri Pandits
have played a major role in the liberation struggle against the British
and their colonial imperatives in the State. The secularization of the
various communal movements which rocked the State in the aftermath of the
growth of Muslim separatism in India was achieved, mainly due to the efforts
of Kashmiri Pandits. They authored and sponsored the famous declaration
of National demand in 1938, which later became the secular national movement
in the State. The political movement for National self-government received
its ideological content from the Kashmiri Pandits who gave the first call
for self-government.
Since the independence
of India and accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union, the Kashmiri Hindus
have continued to fight the religious precedence
as well as the separatism,
which accompanied the rise of Muslim communalism. They were reduced to
a plight of slavery, misery and servitude but they did not
react against Muslim communalism as a communal minority.
In spite of the forces arraigned against them viz. Muslim fundamentalists,
the Muslimised State-apparatus and the secessionist group, the Hindus suffered
at the stake to save the secular and democratic image of Kashmir and India.
While resisting the orchestrated moves fostered by Muslim communalists
inside the State and their mentors in Pakistan to Islamise the State and
snatch it from the Union of India, the Hindus became the victims of communal
hatred and faced hostility, ridicule and privation. The Indian leaders,
on the other hand, served their petty personal interests and party objectives
leaving the field open for the fundamentalists to carry out their nefarious
designs. The Kashmiri Hindu was the main obstacle in the attainment of
the goal of fundamentalists and became the victims of communal hatred and
faced hostility, ridicule was branded as the agent of the Government of
India. Even a leader of the stature of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah charged
them of acting as the fifth column of India. They, thus became the victims
of a dangerous irony, where on the one hand they were persecuted because
of their adherence to the values of secularism and democracy enshrined
in the Indian Constitution and on the other hand the rulers of India jettisoned
them. The Hindus of Kashmir, because of their minority and almost negligible
representation in the State legislature and bureaucracy, became helpless
onlookers to the manoeuvring, manipulation and distortion of the established
democratic, constitutional and legal institutions of the State which gave
rise to Muslim majoritarianism, Under this system Kashmiri Hindu faced
a deliberate, steady and relentless squeeze of his constitutional, political
and legal rights and was forced into a slow exodus. In the process nearly
three lakh Hindus have already left the valley during the last four decades.Muslim
majoritarianism is inherently communal in nature. The Indian partition
was not an accident of history nor was it contrived by the British to contain
the Indian freedom movement. It was the culmination of the Muslim
struggle for separate Muslim majority State where the pre-eminence of Muslim
Umah was recognized. During the last forty years of the history of Pakistan
the Hindus who constituted nearly thirty percent of its population at the
outset are reduced to only one percent as on today. The operative design
of Muslim communalism in Kashmir has almost been similar-the Hindus of
Kashmir who formed about nine percent of the population of Kashmir in 1947
are almost wiped out of the Kashmir Valley by now. As a part of the grand
strategy for the attainment of the Islamic and Fundamentalist State of
Kashmir, communal elements and terrorist are bent upon annihilating the
Kashmiri Hindus as a result of which their exodus has been made inevitable.
The terrorist violence
has taken a heavy toll of unarmed, peace loving and tolerant Hindus
of Kashmir valley. Hundreds of Hindus-men, women and children, were
brutally murdered and hundreds were subjected to inhuman torture and suffering.
The community was driven out of Kashmir valley by force or on the pain
of death. The properties left behind by them have been looted and their
houses burnt or destroyed by dynamite. Right at present a scorched-earth
policy is being followed by terrorists by systematically burning the Hindu
localities, Hindu Houses and Hindu shrines and temples. The Kashmir history
is replete with the contribution of Kashmiri Hindus to the Nation’s march
in general and that of Kashmir in particular. Kashmiri
Hindus have served as a beacon
light to the entire national polity and are the real founders of secularism
and democracy in Kashmir. In the modernization of the State of Jammu
& Kashmir, the Hindus have contributed much more than their share and
have imparted to the Kashmiri society its scientific, progressive and humane
outlook. Throughout their history, more specifically in the modern
times, they have tried their utmost to live at
peace with their Muslim compatriots. The secular facade, which Kashmir
has worn all through the last forty-three years, has been provided
mainly by Kashmiri Hindus. They have not reacted to Muslim communalism,
instead they have faced the rigours of Muslim dominance with the fervent
hope that the thrust on universal education and scientific progress
in the State would pave way for the free flow of democratic thought, recognition
of the human rights, the genuine urges and aspirations Kashmiri Hindu minorities,
religious tolerance equity and justice.
This hope is now shattered,
Neither his Muslim brethren in Kashmir nor the Indian Government
which swears by secularism came to the rescue of Kashmiri Hindus at the
time when they were being butchered and bounded out of their homes and
hearths, nor at this moment when they have been uprooted
and thrown into wilderness to face a life and death struggle for
survival. All the constitutional guarantees for the protection of their
limb, life, property, their status and dignity have been trampled with
impunity. The Hindus of Kashmir wherever they are, therefore, unequivocally
declare that:
