“The whole world was worried about 9/11, but nobody cares about the genocide in Kashmir valley in which the death toll was many times higher than that of 9/11,” these words from the mouth of a Kashmiri Pandit was accompanied with tears tinkling down his eyes.
   A middle aged Kuldip Pandit has fled from Kashmir with his family in the early 1990s and has been living in Karnataka since then. But still, his heart is there, in the valley were he and his ancestors were born. Mr Pandit’s is one among 3,50,000 families that left Kashmir Valley since 1990.
   Speaking at the inaugural function of ‘Terror unleashed,’ an exhibition on Kashmir, organised by the Mangalore unit of Hindu Janajagrathi Samiti at Canara College in Mangalore on Sunday, Mr Pandit found it difficult to put in words the sufferings he had undergone.
   According to him, the Kashmiri Pandits are the original inhabitants of the region. But they were forced to convert and to marry off their daughters to the invaders who came later. “The sacred threads that floated on Dal lake after the Pathan invasion weighed a ton,” he said adding that the community gradually became a minority and vulnerable to the threats from the majority communities. They were forced to leave their place of birth for fear of death and their women’s honour. “We are not a vote bank. Hence nobody is concerned about how we live, not even the media. The first PM of India was a Pandit himself, but none of us have made it to the J&K Assembly yet, through proper channel,” he said and added that the Indian government was busy helping people from Afghanistan, Burma and Tibet while the Pandits were neglected. “We became refugees in our own land. We are surviving only because of our educational background,” he said.
   The Pandits who were not used to temperatures above 25 degree Celsius became vulnerable to heat and diseases like Malaria on their journey down South and quite a number of them died thus. Now there are around 400 Kashmiri Pandit families in Karnataka who have no hope of returning home, because the Constitution of India is against them purchasing any property in Kashmir, even if all the problems are settled.
   Earlier, Mangalore Nagarika Hitarakshana Vedike Convenor Hanumanth Kamath inaugurated the exhibition which features photographs, statistics and other details regarding the atrocities against Hindus and their culture in Kashmir and Bangladesh.
   Delivering his address, Mr Kamath said that Bangladesh is thankless to India that played a key role in its formation. He also flayed the government’s policy of dividing people on the basis of caste whenever a documentation is needed and urged the Hindu community to unite for their better future.
   Kolya Mutt seer Ramananda Swami, Satyanarayanapura Mutt Seer Muktananda Swami and Janajagrathi Samiti South Indian Zonal Convenor Shivananda Prabhu spoke on the occasion.