WHITE PAPER ON KASHMIR -------Chapter 4 Genocide of Hindus----THE MINORITIES

Chapter 4
Genocide of Hindus

THE MINORITIES

Within the broad scheme of the militarised secessionist movement in the State, carried on by the Muslims, the elimination of Hindus from Kashmir had obvious tactical advantages. These were:

The elimination of the Hindus would destroy the groundwork of all secular institutionalisation in the State, which would render all ideological commitments to the secular unity of India utterly redundant.
The liquidation of the Hindus and their exodus would destroy the credibility of the Government of India among the Muslims of Kashmir.
The elimination of the Hindus would break the psychological contact, a large section of the Muslims, still continued to have with the Indian support structures in the State.
After having flushed the Hindus from the Valley, the Muslim psyche could be easily exposed to more persuasive fundamentalist indoctrination.
The elimination of Hindus would ensure the rupture of important communication and feedback channels of the Government of India, which the Hindus always endeavoured to keep open.
The helplessness of the uprooted Hindu masses, would break the resolve of the Hindus in India, as well as the government of India to hold any furthur in Kashmir.
The exile of the Hindus would mark the first step towards the conversion of Jammu and Kashmir into a Muslim State and its eventual separation from India.

By and large, the militants succeeded in their broad designs in eliminating the Hindus in Kashmir. They destroved the traditional population balances which formed the bases of the coordinate plurality of the State, replacing it by a communal identity of the Musiims, which found its legitimacy in Islamic fundamentalism. The psychological contact which had always been vital to the community relations in Kashmir as well as the Muslim support structures of India, were wiped out and the Muslims, who did not support the secession of the State, gave way after they saw the apathy with which the Government of India watched the death and destruction of the Hindus. The Hindus uprooted from their land, are now smouldering in exile, unburdened of their illusion about Indian secularism and Indian commitment to resist separatism and violence.

In utter irrespondibility and abject surrender to secessionism, the Indian leaders ran from pillar to post making wild offers to the Muslims, the militants, the subversives, whoever came their way, flinging to wind, their commitments to Gandhian values, communal harmony, secularism, socialism, democratic process and national integration. A delegation of the political parties, in which were included the Indian leaders of such eminence like Devi Lal and Rajiv Gandhi, and the doyens of the Left Front, went to Srinagar to be greeted by the worst ever invective heard by the most ordinary Indian citizen in Kashmir, besides the of repeated cry of "Indian dogs go back".

The terrorist organisations carried out systematic operations to massacre the Hindus and flush them out of the Kashmir Valley. As the death toll of the Hindus increased, they began to evacuate from the Valley in larger numbers. The State Government reacted to the elimination of the Hindus with utter passivity and indifference. The Janata Dal Government lacked the will to deal with terrorist violence. With the Home Department of the Government of India, placed under a Kashmiri Muslim, who too was committed to the precedence of the Muslim majority in the State, and who carried out the behests of the powerful Muslim lobbies in the Janata Dal, the State Government could not deal with the terrorist violence with any firmness. The ludicrous drama of the kidnappimg of Rubiya Sayeed, the daughter of the Home Minister and the consequent breakdown of the Central Government, had left little moral strength with the State Government to face the terrorist challenge. The brief spell during which Jagmohan tried to retrieve the situation, was a half-hearted endeavour, which ultimately ended in a fiasco.

QUIT KASHMIR	BACK TO CHAPTER 4	DARKNESS AT NOON
THE EXODUS		ETHNIC CLEANSING

QUIT KASHMIR	BACK TO CHAPTER 4	DARKNESS AT NOON
THE EXODUS		ETHNIC CLEANSING