KASHMIR and IDPs

By K.N. Pandita – Reports say that displaced Kashmiri Pandits have filed a petition before the Supreme Court asking for the rehabilitation. Reportedly, the SC has issued notices to the Government of India and the J&K Government. The Supreme Court has issued notices to the Union and the State governments.

It is ironical that the request for rehabilitation comes from those who are the victims of ethnic cleansing in their places of origin. Are they convinced that conditions in the valley are conducive for their return and rehabilitation? Only some weeks ago Dr. Farooq Abdullah the Patron of NC and his son Omar Abdullah visited a refugee camp of the Pandits in Jammu and publicly declared that conditions in the valley were not conducive for their return. How come the Pandits have discounted these views and undertaken to approach the SC?

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By K.N. Pandita – Fifty-nine years of protracted territorial claims and counter claims over the J&K have not lead the two contesting countries anywhere. Three short wars on Kashmir ended indecisively, and the fourth one, now a decade and half old, is as elusive as the previous ones. Pakistan cannot take and India will not give.

The people of Kashmir have lately staked their claim as a party to the dispute forgetting that at the end of their forty-year long struggle against the autocratic rule, and under the leadership of the baba-e qaum, they had, way back in 1947, decided to be a part of Indian Union. Now Pakistan, having sensitised them to the claim, gives them strong “political, diplomatic and moral” support to their separatist movement. India responds by brandishing the stick of six-yearly elections to the legislative assembly, which send in constitutionally formed governments. Pakistan terms the elections as fraud; India gets fairness of elections endorsed by international observers.

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