Through this letter, I - The Kashmiri Pandit, aboriginal of the valley living in a state of perpetual exile for last more than 700 years, scattered across the globe with a hope that someday I will return to my abode to settle permanently and peacefully upholding the spiritual, social and literary ideals established by me before turmoil broke in valley.
It is this Kashmiri Pandit who was listening to your speech in K K resort , Jammu on January - The Fifth of this year with rapt attention trying to understand the crux of your speech. This Pandit appreciates your addressing the community with the salutation so dear to our heart ... Namaskar! Since we have buried any expectations from the majority community long back, but you seemed to break the ice well with this address. In the opening remarks when you said, “If I really deserve your Ashirwad and I have not done enough to deserve this Dastar (Head gear) you were more candid and truthful. Your candid and truthful expression was at its zenith when you admitted that the return of 1500 unemployed youth of the community is not the barometer of peace.
However after this statement you changed tracks and switched over to accusative mode without applying logic to your statements you contradicted most of your thoughts in the rest of your speech. To Begin with you were in a sort of hurry to denounce and negate the preceding speaker Pt R K Bhat-your host, who said, he doesn't have any mandate from the community for return, adding return must go through the process of consensus and the whole community should be involved in this act. I am sure this comment didn't go well with you and you hastened your reply by saying that our community is using the word ‘consensus’ to evade return. This seemed to be utterly unjustified for the reasons well known to you. You further went ahead and said; KP community in entirety does not wish to / will not return.
This statement pierced my heart since not even a singe day elapsed in last 23 years when I didn’t have visions of my Homeland. I further received a shock when you said, ‘we cannot wait for consensus’ thus dashing all my hopes of a dignified return. I firmly believe the decision of leaving the valley was my own and I reserve the right to set of terms and conditions of my return now. Thus with this remark you exchanged tracks from a truthful person to a dictatorial entity who for all obvious reasons wants to prove that your government has brought back peace in valley and return is an important component in that claim.
I second you over the fact that most of the community members do not wish to return now, even though in the heart of their hearts they long to, but with your hastened conclusion you did not lay even a single thought as to why, this pandit is not willing to go back now. Did you place your “evasive” comment in the context of the historical records and evaluate the rejection of return formula by our community. Nay! Mr Abdullah you did not, you evaded instead to venture into troubled waters of time since in your innate self you know the answer to this as I believe you have surely read Mahroom Sheikh Sahib in Aatish-e-Chinar when he equated Kashmiri Pandits as fifth columnists. I will not dwell into past history since I don’t wish to make this letter rhetorical otherwise there is ample to convey.
Then as your speech progressed, you seemed to realize the folly and tried to correct it by saying , ‘No one can take the community back forcibly as it is the lacking sense of security which is keeping the pandits away from valley’ This was another truthful admission that you have not been able to improve the security scenario of the valley, which in your thoughts will be the barometer of return, though I beg to differ. You lambasted your won arguments with your truthful admissions, since you have already taken 1500 youth back to valley and the same number is in offing. Should we construe that those taken back to valley are being used as guinea pigs in your experiments of bringing peace.
In your address you made a very illogical and insensitive reference towards the pitiable condition of Jagati Dwellers. It seemed you were lying when you said, ‘we never wished to put jagati in trouble’ since as per your admission just after making the above remark you said that you were told by your officials that there are “FEW AIRCONDITIONERS” in jagati . How do we justify making 95% of dwellers suffer just because there are few air conditioners in there? Alas! You never knew that this hapless lot belongs to the cold climes and living life in hot and humid climate is not in our blood. You could have been more humanist while dealing with these few air conditioners.
I – The Kashmiri Panit congratulate you for completing 5 years in governance and appreciate your gesture of celebrating this day amongst this exiled community. However, I would humbly request you to leave this battered community in their current state of uncertainly and agony, since I firmly believe that this state is far batter than the state of repeated and forced exiles. We donot not wish to continue with this vicious cycle of EXODUS and RETURN. We want a permanent settlement of fate through the realisation of this Geo-Political Aspiration. We want Homeland! Nothing less; Nothing more!
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