Hope and Despair

T N Dhar  Kundan

March is the month of hope and expectations. During this month begins our New Year which we are looking forward to as a year of prosperity and fulfilment of our aspirations. This is the advent of Spring, the blossom and the flowers of all hues and colours. It is in this month that Shri Rama has taken birth to uphold the Righteousness. and destroy the Evil. But we the Kashmiri Pandits fear that this may be yet another year of despair, dejection and disappointment. This fear is not ill founded but based on our past experience of many decades, particularly the last ten years.

We were proud, self-satisfied and perhaps complacent, feeling secure in our country, not because we were Hindus in a Hindu majority State but because we were symbols of the age-old tradition of India, of tolerance, secularism, respect for all faiths and universal brotherhood. We preached and practised these tenets and, therefore, believed firmly that if anytime we were threatened, it would endanger the very soul of the Nation and consequently the whole nation would be up in arms; the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej, the Narmada and the Cauvery would be on fire. But we were sadly disappointed and dis-illusioned. What to speak of these great sacred rivers, not even the dirty drains flowing through Delhi stirred when our lives and properties were threatened, when our honour was at stake, when systematic cleansing of the valley, of this community, this symbol of Indian secularism was underway. Nobody cared, nobody came to our rescue, with the result that religious fanaticism, intolerance and brutal violence gained the upper hand. The authorities thought that their job was done once paltry doles were thrown at this dis lodged hapless community. They remained oblivious of the fact that it was not this community that was in danger but the very edifice of this secular nation the pioneer of Panch Sheel and Non-align ment.

Look at Pakistan. How many state sponsored strikes and demonstrations have been organised there to express solidarity with mercenaries that they themselves sponsor, with militants that they themselves train, arm and brainwash. They have. inflicted grievous injuries on our culture and our creed and yet are seeking sympathies by posing as the aggrieved party. In contrast, our country is in deep slumber. Let alone the world at large, even our own people are not apprised of the ground realities. If anyone does venture to tell the truth, he is branded as communalist and reactionary. The authorities at the Centre ignored the timely warnings of well meaning citizens about the impending storm that was brewing and the clandestine axe cutting the very roots of our principles. They played into the hands of local cunning regimes in Kashmir who made a fool of them with the result that Indian secularism was systematically eroded, religious fanaticism was encouraged and hatred was spread through organised disinformation and lies. Not only was the culture crucified at the altar of religious chauvinism but even the Kashmiri language, our own mother tongue, fell prey to this ideological conflict. This language was butchered deliberately as it was the living monument of our composite culture.

As the saying goes, it is never too late. The whole nation has to rise, the entire country is to be electrified. We have to organise conferences, demonstrations, seminars, processions and use every available forum, every platform, every organisation, to put forth the truth of the matter, to expose and to fight these reactionary forces so that our culture, our values, our principles and our secular fabric triumph, and our community called the Kashmiri Pandits, the crusaders of these tenets, is saved from extinction and annihilation. Is our community not the real title-holder to this land of Kashyapa? It is only when the whole Nation rises as one man that the Upanishadic adage adopted by it as its cardinal slogan viz, "Satyameva Jayate" (Truth alone triumphs) will be established and will have meaning for the whole mankind. May our hopes be fulfilled and may the despair vanish in the New Year that will dawn on the 20th day of this month.

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Courtesy: T N Dhar ‘Kundan’ and March 1996 Koshur Samachar