A Long Forgotten Community

The suggestion made by the PM's Working Group on J&K that the right of Kashmiri Pandits to return to the valley be made a part of state policy is a welcome but long overdue one. It is indeed a sad irony which reflects very poorly on our society that thousands of Pandits,whose ancestral homeland is Kashmir, have been living as refugees for so many years in their own country, having been forced to flee Kashmir due to the fear of terrorists who have killed so many Pandits. Their plight has almost been forgotten by the civil society, very many NGO's and 'human rights groups' who waste no time in talking about 'minority rights' in different parts of India,that of terror suspects and convicts, but who are conspicuously absent when it comes to talking about protecting the rights of Kashmiri Pundits. I fail to fathom this dichotomy. The government has clearly left them in the lurch and even those few Pundits living in the valley, instead of being provided adequate protection,are targets of terrorist 'ethnic cleansing'. Even while debating the peace process, Kashmiri Pundit representatives are rarely called in to express their views. It is about time that we took concrete steps in all fields to redress blunders of the past and help out the Pundits.