LET POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT DRIVE OUR SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT HOME

While appreciating the concerns of our community about the dire state of our places of worship in Kashmir, we must understand that our temples or the monuments of faith cannot be isolated from our political struggle. All the issues which mire our community be it the places of worship, pitiable living conditions, education, health care, employment and other allied issues are directly related to our schemed marginalization in political sphere of Kashmir. I appreciate the efforts of all those who are putting up a brave affront for these issues, and in past 25 years various small and big time organisations took these issues as per their convenience and style.

We are at a juncture where we need to assess why our efforts on various fronts have borne least positive dividends, why are we no better if not worse than what we were 25 years during the times of our exodus, inspite of various positives at individual fronts, why the community is still unable to strike the best blow.

 

I believe, it is not the realisation of the goal but the path which leads to the goal which determines the success or failure. It is the path which must be perfected to attain the desired result. And based upon this universal truth, I say with finite accuracy that our path was never right. We always tried to isolate our political struggle from social issues like living conditions, health care, relief, education, temples et all, least bothering to analyse that these social issues were always connected with our political marginalization. Most of the organisations be it APMCC, AIKS, JKVM, YAIKS, various KPSs, all Ashrams and other small time organisations dealing with social issues treated politics as a taboo and carried non political or apolitical approach all their life.

The result is in front of us, we have miserably failed on all fronts purely because our path / approach was never right. Whatever little we have achieved is purely due to efforts of few individuals. While working upon social issues we allowed our energies to wither away striking against the system which has always been biased against our community. Had we encompassed our social struggle which has multiple contours and where our energies were sure to get withered away considering the magnitude of work and established marginalisation under Political struggle which has only one contour, we would have converged our energies upon one goal of realising our political empowerment which in turn would have empowered us socially as well.

Having said this, I donot deny that efforts were not made by the above organisations in their respective fields, but since these efforts have not produced desired results they have produced counter results and proved detrimental for the general good of the community. A general message has gone to the masses of the community that our community has gone to dogs, and we have miserably failed which I do believe is not true. But the sentiment of failure has caught the nerve centre of masses, and the community is seeing negativity all around.

Unity, is most abused word in Kashmiri Pandit community, and I attribute the hue and cry about unity to the same reason of treating social and political contours of our struggle separately. While talking about hundreds of organisations, we must know we are talking about hundreds of socially radical groups working upon social issues which I have explained above has multiple contours where our energies were sure to get withered away wastefully, considering the magnitude of work / parameters and established marginalisation of our community. So, it will not be improper to say that path which we choose has brought our community to the current levels of desperation.

At this juncture when things are slipping out of our hands and sinister designs are shaping to end the resilience of our community by way of forcible return to ghettos or original habitations, we must reassess our strategy and do some sincere course correction. We must now reaffirm our resolve and faith in the only political idiom of  a Separate Geo-Political dispensation as envisaged in Margdarshan Resolution 1991. Let the community with one voice reject all means and mechanisms of our return which do not encompass respect, dignity and non Refoulement. Let this political idiom drive us into realisation of unity and let the political empowerment drive our social empowerment home.