Modi government on backfoot as Kashmiri Pandits seek to flee again

The latest spate of targeted killings of members of the minority community in Kashmir has sparked panic, with many members of the Kashmiri Pandit community who had returned to the Valley over the last decade seeking to flee again.

Over 4,000 migrant Kashmiri Pandits had returned to the conflict-torn region to take up government employment under a rehabilitation policy announced by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008.

While they are still considered to be ‘displaced’, as many of them belonged to different parts of Kashmir before their exodus in 1990 when they became targets of various militant groups, their return was seen as part of a broader attempt to encourage other displaced Pandits to return and live alongside the average Kashmiri Muslim as they did previously.

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There are also hundreds of Hindu employees from Jammu, recruited under the Schedule Caste quota and posted in the Valley. The latest spate of violence, claiming the lives of seven civilians, including four from the minority community, brought back the ghosts of 1990 when thousands of Pandits fled Kashmir fearing for their lives. The calls for a second ‘mass migration’ by Pandits now has pushed the Narendra Modi government on the backfoot.

In fact, hundreds of panic-stricken Pandit employees and their families, who lived in transit accommodations in the Valley, have already fled to Jammu despite assurances by the J&K administration of their safety and security. In recent months, threatening letters, purportedly by militant organisations, have been issued to Pandits, and they are in circulation on social media. Once again, Pandits find themselves abandoned to their fate, stranded at their own homes, gripped by fear.

This has put the oft-repeated claims of Prime Minister Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior BJP functionaries that the momentous decisions of August 5, 2019, had marked the end of militancy and terrorism in the Valley to a stern test. For over 30 years, the BJP has always blamed the Congress and other secular parties for failing to safeguard the Pandits in 1990 and held it out as an example of weak governance, never mind that it was the BJP that was an ally of the V P Singh government that was in power then.

After August 2019, the Modi government had flaunted that it would show the terrorists that their business was over. But month after month since then, the terrorists have demonstrated that they do not think so. The recent killings have caused fear amongst the whole minority community in Kashmir. If the killings and exodus of Pandits from the Valley in 1990 was because India had a “weak and cowardly” government then, what would you call the current one?

The question arises, what prompted militants to target members of the minority community in Kashmir after 2019? The killing of non-Muslims by militants had stopped from 2003 to 2019. It began again two months after the abrogation of Article 370 when 11 non-locals, including truckers, were killed in South Kashmir.

The Resistance Front (TRF), described as a front for the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, is believed to be behind the recent targeted killings. The TRF was formed in the aftermath of the revocation of Article 370.

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In December 2020, a jeweller named Satpal Nischal was killed. The TRF justified it by accusing him of aiding the “settler-colonial project” in Kashmir and of being an RSS agent. Similarly, after the killing of the chemist Makhan Lal Bindroo, the TRF released a statement accusing him of “posing as a medical professional” and “conducting secret seminars” organised by the RSS.

The TRF has time and again warned that everyone other than indigenous Kashmiris would be treated as “occupiers” if they purchase property in J&K, and they will be targeted. The terror organisation has even warned that it will target the upcoming Amarnath Yatra “if it is used for political and demographic gains.”

Kashmiri Pandits are a group of local Hindus and a part of the larger Saraswat Brahmin community of India. They belong to the Pancha Gauda Brahmin group from the Valley and are native to the region.

According to Sanjay Tickoo, who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, the situation in Kashmir is returning to what it was like in the 1990s, and the safety of minorities is at stake. “In 1990, the then coalition government (VP Singh’s Janata Dal, the BJP, etc., were part of the anti-Congress alliance) failed miserably in securing minorities in Kashmir, which led to the mass migration of the community,” he said.

Tickoo, who represents the Pandit families who decided not to migrate in the 1990s, said that in the last three years, the same government (meaning, the BJP) failed again in securing minorities living in the Valley “which indicates that Kashmiri minorities will again have to leave Kashmir Valley due to the failure of Kashmiri society as well as administration.”

Since December 2020, at least 18 members from the minority communities have been killed in targeted attacks by militants in Kashmir.

These include five displaced Kashmiri Pandits, two Sikhs, some non-local workers from UP and Bihar, three resident Hindus and two Dogra Hindus from Jammu recruited as teachers from the Scheduled Castes, and one Hindu bank manager from Rajasthan.

According to National Conference president and former Chief Minister of the erstwhile state of J&K, Farooq Abdullah, the “ostrich approach” (of the government) will push the situation in the Valley to a point of no return. “The killing spree and the pervasive fear among civilians, minorities and other soft targets gives a lie to the claims of the government that everything is OK in Kashmir,” he said.

In August 2019, those who hailed the decision on Article 370 and expected that it would end terror, violence and alienation were indulging in wishful thinking. The recent killings are a reminder that in the absence of a comprehensive political settlement that involves all parties, no coercive measures can bring peace. The promises of early elections and restoration of statehood continue to be mere promises and distant dreams for J&K.