From The President's Desk Koshur Samachar

Niranjan Nath Kaul   President Kashmiri Samati 1995

Dear Brothers & Sisters,

So we were finally spared the agony of a July election to the Jammu and Kashmir State Assembly An inept government finally came to terms with its own folly. The carnage at Charar-e- Sharif was allowed to be used by the secessionists, the perpetra- tors themselves of the carnage, to paint our Security Forces as the villains So much for the bravado of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, and his handpicked Governor in Kashmir, retired General Krishna Rao Charar-e-Sharif itself should have convinced the governments in Srinagar and in New Delhi that elections would not be possible so soon after the mausoleum of Sheikh Nuruddin Wali (Nund Rishi) was burnt down. It was an occurrence that had disturbed every Kashmiri, Hindu and Muslim alike. The Kashmiri Pandits, though, had to face a double tragedy. The men who were bemoaning the burning down of Nund Rishi's mausoleum, the secessionist militants, lost no time in burning down any number of Hindu temples in the valley, some of these very sacred to the Kashmiri Pandits. It was not for the first time that the pro-Pakistani militants had razed Hindu temples in the valley They had done it in the past

The tragic part of the current phase of burnings is that it was done in the name of a man who epitomised religious tolerance. Not content with mere burning of Hindu temples, the Pakistani militants also targeted hundreds of untenanted homes of Pandits who have been forced out of the valley. The houses were chosen with vicious precision. One estimate puts the number of Pandit houses torched in the current phase of secessionist frenzy at about a thousand. Add to these the several thousand that have been burnt down during the past five years and you are confronted with a situation which in any civilised society would be described as part of a determined campaign of ethnic cleansing And to go by the response of the Governments in New Delhi and Srinagar, Kashmiri Pandits might as well accept their fate. How else does one explain the Government's exemplary promptness in promising to rebuild the houses of the residents of Charar-e Sharif and its readiness to turn a Nelson's eye to burnt down temples and houses of Kashmiri Pandits.

We do appreciate the government's concern for the townspeople of Chrar whose houses were gutted in the crossfire that followed and preceded the torching by militants of the mausoleum of Nund Rishi How come the government doesn't show similar concern for the thousands of Kashmiris Pandits ren- dered homeless by militancy in Kashmir? Must the Pandits continue to rot in tattered tents in Jammu and elsewhere? Must the properties they left behind in the valley go unprotected? Must their shrines and temples be left to the mercy of Pakistani mercenaries? Double standards, did you say?

Yours sincerely

Niranjan Nath Kaul

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Courtesy: Niranjan Nath Kaul and June 1995, Kosher Samachar