Blasphemous Faux pas committed By “The Times of India”

Blasphemous Faux pas committed

By “The Times of India”

September 17, 2010

Today morning I was shocked to spine, when I happened to read the Chronology of events that have been responsible to shape the events of the valley of Jammu & Kashmir after 1947, in my most favorite Newspaper  “The Times of India”….!!

For once I again looked at the top of the page that I was reading and also the front page of the paper to confirm whether by mistake I had been reading “The Times of India” or “The Times of Pakistan”…!!

This has reference to the article printed today in the “The Times of India”, on the page of “Times Nation”:

Jammu and Kashmir: Faultlines over the decades

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Jammu-and-Kashmir-Faultlines-over-the-decades/articleshow/6563148.cms

It was a matter of real disappointment and excruciating jolt to my psyche  that the reputed national Paper like “The Times of India”, could have dared to  commit such a blunder and should have deliberately ignored the year 1990; the year when final barbarous, ruthless and vindictive ethnic cleansing of the whole community of 7 Lac Kashmiri Pandits materialized, from at the behest and vicious call of the Kashmiri Muslims, completely ignoring the Human Rights violation of the Hindu Pandit Community and the Government of India loosing complete control of the situation as they could not dare to arrest even a single terrorist from the mosques who were openly operating from those edifices’ of Islamic Jihad and of course  completely obliterating the whole  law and order situation . The whole Police force of J&K Police , C.R.P.F. and the might of Indian Military became a mute spectator and silent witness to the gory genocide and annihilation of the Kashmiris Pandits’ community at the malicious and hateful attitude of the Kashmiris Muslims in that year .

Height was that the editorial board of the paper considered a minor event like the Rigging of the elections in 1987 to be important enough to be considered as the reason enough to change the course of the History of the valley but the event of the complete ethnic cleansing of the whole community of 7 Lac Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 that shook the whole world by surprise was considered to be insignificant.  

January 19, 1990, marked twenty years since what is generally recognized as the beginning of this process of ethnic cleansing as a result of which the Kashmiri Pandits were hounded out of the Kashmir Valley. On this day in 1990, a Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was raped and later killed by Pakistan-backed terrorists. The incident was preceded by massacres of Pandit families in the Telwani and Sangrama villages of Budgam district and other places in the Kashmir Valley. The story of Human rights violation being exercised by the Kashmiri Muslims, against the peace loving community of Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir Valley is very long and historical .

While the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) claimed a ‘secular’ agenda of liberation from Indian rule, the terrorist intent was clearly to drive non-Muslim ‘infidels’ out of the State and establish Nizam-e-Mustafa (literally, the Order of the Prophet; government according to the Shariah).

Accounts of Pandits from this traumatic period reveal that it was not unusual to see posters and announcements – including many articles and declarations in local newspapers – telling them to leave the Valley. Pandit properties were either destroyed or taken over by terrorists or by local Muslims, and there was a continuous succession of brutal killings, a trend that continues even today.

Among the worst victims of this conflict are the Kashmiri Pandits, descendents of Hindu priests and among the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley, with a recorded history of over 5,000 years. Over the millennia, this community has been integral not only to the cultural and intellectual life of the people of this region, but the bulwark of its administration and economic development as well.

The Pandits have now become the nasty targets and cruel victims of one of the most successful, though little-known, campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the world. Pogroms of a far lesser magnitude in other parts of the world have attracted international attention, censure and action in support of the victim communities, but this is an insidious campaign that has passed virtually unnoticed, and on which the world and the authorities of the GOI remains silent.

Among the complex reasons for this neglect is, perhaps, the nature of this community itself. Where other campaigns of ethnic cleansing of comparably lesser magnitudes across the world have invariably provoked at least some retaliatory violence, the deep tradition and culture of non-violence among the Kashmiri Pandits has made them accept their suffering in silence, with not a single act of retaliatory violence on record.

Ethnic cleansing was evidently a systematic component of the terrorists’ strategic agenda Islamic Jihad in J&K, and estimates suggest that, just between February and March 1990, around 140,000 to 160,000 Pandits had fled the Kashmir Valley to Jammu, Delhi, or other parts of the country. Simultaneously, there were a number of high-profile killings of senior Hindu officials, intellectuals and prominent personalities. Eventually, an estimated 400,000 Pandits – over 95 per cent of their original population in the Valley – became part of the neglected statistic of ‘internal refugees’ who were pushed out of their homes as a result of this campaign of pure Islamic Terror.

Point to be noted here is that not only did the Indian state and the GOI completely fail to protect the community of the Kashmiri Pandits in their own homes within the confines of their own country, even the successive governments have provided little more than minimal humanitarian relief, and this exiled community seldom features in the discourse on the ‘Kashmir issue’ and its resolution.

The GOI, even after twenty years is still not able to rehabilitate the law abiding citizens of its own country in their own homes with dignity and honor that is the fundamental right of every citizen of the country as per the constitution.

And now this so called national Paper of our country has done more harm to the interests of the community than even the enemy of the nation. I would like to question the Management of the TOI whether they have dared to do this as a part of the propaganda war that is being already propagated by the Government of Pakistan, ISI and the Pakistani Media against the Kashmiris Pandits in particular on all international forums. Possibly tomorrow the Government of Pakistan may use the clippings of the “Times of India “in the UNO to prove their point that there has been no Human Rights Violation against the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits at all in the valley of Kashmir.

If the management of the TOI realizes its fault then why shouldn’t they tender an apology to the Kashmiris Pandits openly in its own paper for the faux pas committed against the basic interests, integrity, respect and emancipation of the community and as a proof of their acceptance of the serious information blunder; should again print the whole page in the very next issue with the necessary corrections.  

INDER KRISHEN WALLI