Lest we forget the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus

The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley of Kashmir is by far the greatest moral calamity and administrative failure of modern India that dwarfs other comparable atrocities.

- VIVEK GUMASTE

The chargesheet filed by the State Investigation Agency (SIA) on Monday (June 29) against five operatives of the banned Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) for murder, including its jailed chief, Yasin Malik in the brutal murder of a Kashmiri Pandit nurse Sarla Bhat that took place nearly 35 years ago is a welcome step in the direction; a much needed moral course correction in the history of modern Kashmir; a case of “better late than never.”

It offers a glimmer of hope to the Kashmiri Pandits who were killed and driven out of Kashmir in the 1990s that justice may yet be done.

In a country like India that is ethnically diverse, religiously plural and linguistically different, sectarian conflict is inevitable, occasionally resulting in a major calamity. India has had its fair share of notable communal discords: the Gujarat riots of 2002, immediately come to our mind; to a lesser extent we remember the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, but completely forgotten from public memory is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir.

In such instances, the duty of a government is to ensure immediate law and order to prevent loss of innocent lives. Subsequently the government must investigate the root cause of the disturbance, arrest all culprits and determine whether action was taken in a timely manner to prevent recurrences.

Post the assassination of PM Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, an orgy of mob violence gripped Delhi in which close to 3,000 Sikhs were killed. An enraged Congress party deliberately delayed calling in the Army for 48 hours, allowing the killings to continue. Initial investigating bodies (Marwah, Mishra etc) commissioned by the Congress were merely eyewashes. The Nanavati Commission appointed in 2000, however, found clear evidence of culpability on the part of local Congress leaders and recommended the opening of closed cases.