The Plight that the Pandits Faced!

“If there is a heaven on earth, it’s here, it’s here it’s here,” Moghul emperor Jahangir when once visited Kashmir; his admiration towards the valley hovered as words from his mouth. True, if Kashmir had contested in her scenic look with her fellow contestants, only she would have been crowned as the beauty queen. The valley, garbed in lush green velvet and wearing multicoloured blooms on her hair, grabbed the optical organs of the onlookers from everywhere. Now alas! The valley has been battered down turning her apparel to be red with blood-shed. The journalist Rahul Pandita unearths certain facts regarding the outrage of militants against Kashmiri Pandits. A terrific image has been unfurled by him in his book ‘Our Moon has Blood clots’. 

This write-up is my impressions about the quandary of Kashmiri Pandits, who fell in a fix when the revolt against them took roots in the soil of Kashmir. Kashmir- the word has a feminine sense and its origin is from Sanskrit, meaning soft and exotic. But Hindu mythology says it was sage Kashyapa’s mir (Kashyapa lake) because he had drained the erstwhile lake to obtain that land. Whatever the claim may be the land is a valley known for its glamour, attracting millions of people from all around the globe. The ranges of the Himalayas and Pir Panjal provide ample securities to the beauty-princess on either side.

The title heaven on Earth is true to its core as the eyes of the visitors become reluctant to retrieve from the valley’s mesmerizing exquisiteness. Gardens, forests, lakes, mountains, pine trees and scented blooms are synonyms of its exquisiteness and so itself Kashmir seems to be a special creation of God. He has mixed beauty and perfume together in a palette, painted a pretty landscape, named it Kashmir and placed it at the northern end of India. 

 

The people are blessed with bountiful comforts arranged by Nature in this valley. The only drawback found there is that it lies between two countries of which one aims at disquieting the quiet of the valley and the other supports the former. And hence there started the stir, stirring the sleep of peace-loving Pandits. The countries creating headache to Kashmir are said to be our neighbours, Pakistan and China. It is said that Pakistan began its way of training and conditioning Muslim youths of both Pakistan and Kashmir and it became fruitful in shaping them into well-versed militants(They claim that India also journeys on the same track, I am ignorant of that). Those militants were pumped into the valley with a view to crafting havoc and chaos among the natives. However, whoever the insurgents may be, they are wicked enough to display their smartness, executing terrific plans and achieve goals greater than what their trainers had planned and designed. The well-trained radicals launched a commotion of tall stature among the poor Pandits, who are very well the sons of the soil,  as per their birth and culture for generations. 

The misfortune of these Pandits was that they were non-Muslims. Pakistan’s main objective is said to be conquering Kashmir by crook or by hook and wash ashore all the peace loving Pandits from their own land. In accordance with the Accession Treaty signed in October, 1947, by Maharaja Hari Singh, that princely state became a part of the Indian Union. The lust of doing away with the natives, the militants launched many a martial art in that lovely valley.

It is said that the trained terrorists skilled in insurgency used utterly barbarian procedures to get their end and in no way such acts,  one can justify or support. They started hunting and hurting the Pandits, in very many ways for letting their souls be from their body. Innumerable Pandits (the official number is around four hundred-that is not the correct statistics) had to bid bye to their lives. The extremists spared not oldies, youngsters, ladies and even babies and many such had to part with their lives.

 Lakhs of them eloped to Jammu and Delhi leaving aside their beloved belongings. The palatial mansions, medium type houses, petite havens, etc. were encroached by the extremist groups so that the Pandits would not go back to their indigenous abodes. All the elopers had to live in petty and tiny rooms suffering from scarcity of water, food and other essentials.

 The demography of Pandits shows that their population has shrunken to thousands from voluminous lacks in their own motherland. The state government and the union government turned a blind eye to the Pandits, stretching no helping arm to them. Besides this beastly murder, they staged some other primitive performance like gang rape on ladies and that too in front of their kinfolk. Girl-children were also not let to go, instead subjected to sexual harassment. Clemency and respect were not in the attackers’ assassination dictionary, as they demonstrated utmost spite to the bodies by kicking them to dirty ditches and urinating on them.

Rahul Pandita’s book, ‘Our Moon has Blood Clots’ very vividly draws the picture of all atrocities implanted by the militants in the valley of Kashmir.  I was able to rather happened to read its Malayalam version. The words turned vague through a film of tears that filled my visual parts. Once you take the book in hand, you will not be willing to shelf it before completion.

In the heat of the impertinence they possess, these young people do not understand what they are and were doing. That much they are brainwashed to drain out the last drop of pity from their minds. Their parents may be normal peace-loving people, but they become helpless by the time they become aware of their dear offspring’s deed.

 Empathy etched in sympathy becomes a strainer that drains out all sorts of malice from one’s behavior.  If these young minds are well guided and well-advised right from their toddling age, they might have cultivated these human values in the field of their character. The militants are crooked ones and hence they sure bear a nimble brain. Such brains are utilized for good reason, many more paradises can be built on earth. We feel pity for these young blood because they don't have a fear-free life. Any time these militants may fall into military nets so that the rest of their life will rest in jails. May God help them to think with reason.

 Otherwise, they will gulp the result of their job. They have a human shape, though the commodity of humanity has turned to be seldom in their framework. But each one will obtain one’s wage of his work here on earth itself. A point of time will cuddle them when the conscience of each is awake continually reminding them of the sin they had earned in their pocket. And this conscience will spoil their calm of mind forever, providing sufferings and hardships.  Their ‘Karma’ will lash them severely in the form of ill-health or cash crunch or loss of the dear and near when the youth stage bids adieu to them and that severity will be unendurable.                                                                 

                           Reference from the aforesaid book.

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