Families living in camps say they need a united front
Despite being badly affected by Pakistan-supported militancy in J&K, displaced Pandits living in camps in Jammu see themselves as becoming “irrelevant” in new political initiatives being taken to bring peace in the Valley.
As Centre’s special representative Dineshwar Sharma recently visited the state. Thousands of families living in camp township of Jagti and housing units built by the government at Purkhoo, Muthi and Nagrota expressed their doubts about any positive outcome regarding rehabilitation of the community in their homeland.
Further, the failure to build a collective political platform in the past 27 years, to fight for the rights of militancy victims has left the displaced Hindus rudderless when dealing with the complexities of the process to find a solution to the seven-decade-long Kashmir conflict.
“We are fighting individual battles which will take us nowhere. We have dozens of organisations and representatives following different agendas but no notable resistance to fight to fulfil our political aspirations,” said MK Raina, who runs a shop at the Jagti camp.
Constructed under the Prime Minister’s rehabilitation package announced in 2008, Jagti was projected as a satellite town to provide liveable space for the displaced Hindus who shifted to the area in 2011. However, about 4,000 families living here face problems, like lack of medical facilities, clean drinking water and erratic power supply.
The dismay of the Pandit community can be gauged from the fact that when inhabitants are asked about who represents them, they jokingly say, that every lane and bylane has a leader who claims to be a true representative of the people.
“The entire focus of our rehabilitation has been diverted to economic doles and employment package. This is because our representatives who were given the mandate by 3.50 lakh people in 1990 failed us. Until a united leadership emerges to represent us, nobody will take Pandits seriously,” said Sushil Dhar, who lives at the Nagrota camp.
Even senior officials in the Relief and Rehabilitation Department say disunity was a major issue when it came of Kashmiri Hindus. “During the visit of important government functionaries or interlocutors in the past, we found it difficult to find true representatives of the community. Every day we have a new organisation and a representative,” complained a senior official.
After the exodus in 1989-90, prominent journalists, social activists and intellectuals raised the demands for Panun Kashmir (our Kashmir). They wanted creation of separate homeland on the East and North of the Jhelum in December 1991.
A Margdarshan resolution was passed, which become a political statement for a generation brought up in squalid camps of Jammu as a dream of a union territory in the Valley for the minorities. However, within a few years the original Panun Kashmir got divided, leaving lakhs of people dejected.
