No signs of return to homeland for them

M Aamir Khan

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, January 18

Thirty years ago when most of the Kashmiri Pandits migrated from the Valley, Chunni Lal Bhat too left his ancestral home at Naidkhai village in Bandipora district. Though he continues to stay back in the Valley till date just like over 600 Pandit families, he never returned to Naidkhai in north Kashmir.

Bhat says he remembers January 19, 1990, vividly when migration started and when several members of the community got “internally displaced”. He regrets that 30 years on, there were no signs of the return of migrants, while the non-migrants too were feeling neglected.

“That was an unfortunate day when a majority of our community members started leaving our homeland Kashmir. It is more unfortunate that nothing was done to bring them back for the last 30 years. We will welcome our fellow community members with open arms if they return. Unfortunately at present, we see no signs of their return. Successive governments could not even rehabilitate us....non-migrants who stayed back in difficult times. How will they bring back the migrants?” said Bhat, who now heads the Hindu Welfare Society Kashmir. "The families that did not migrate were mostly living in the Pandit-dominated areas. I could not return to Naidkhai as others had migrated. Our house is in ruins now, as we then shifted to rented accommodations in Srinagar that I felt were comparatively safer. Now, we are residing in Indra Nagar, where many internally displaced Pandit families continue to live in rented accommodations,” Bhat added.

Bharat Raina, another non-migrant Pandit, said if the government was serious towards their return, temple premises would not have turned into “garbage bins”. “No serious effort was made for the return of Pandits and we continue to hear mere slogans. As many as 417 temples in Kashmir are in a shambles and their premises have turned into garbage bins. If the government was serious in preserving our identity, this would not have been the condition of our temples,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Pandit families willing to return to the Valley say the Centre had no roadmap. “There is no roadmap at all. We have a 5,000-year-old history. We are a special race and the government has not taken any initiative to protect us. Even though 419 families are willing to return, we are still getting lip-service only,” said the coordinator for Return and Rehabilitation Team for Kashmiri Migrants Satish Mahaldar.