Kashmiri Pandits held a powerful demonstration outside the Raj Bhavan in Jammu on Tuesday, marking the day they left the Kashmir Valley in 1990, a year after militancy boomed in the region. Calling the day the 'Holocaust Day', the protesters also submitted a memorandum to Governor N N Vohra, demanding a judicial probe into the community's exodus. Ravinder Raina, president of the All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference said, “The names of those responsible for the mass exodus should be made public.”
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee from the Valley on 19 January, 1990, after repeated threats from different militant groups who blamed them for being “informers or Indian Agents”. “The BJP, during elections promised us that the day they will come to power, they would start immediate process of our return. Separate colonies and jobs under the rehabilitation process, nothing has happened till now,” Agni Shekhar, a Kashmiri Pandit writer and political activist, said. “To restore our dignity those responsible for the genocide should be held accountable and their names should be made public. That is the reason we have been protesting. If nothing the Parliament of India should immediately pass a resolution naming the events as religious genocide. For how much time do you think should we suffer?”
There are 37,128 Kashmiri Pandit migrant families living in Jammu currently. There are 19,338 families living mostly in Delhi and other parts of India, as per the state government's Revenue and Rehabilitation Ministry. In the Kashmir Valley, the Hindu minority in Muslim-majority Kashmir, shrivelled from an estimate 140,000 in the late 1980s to a paltry 19,865 in 1998. Today, there are fewer than 3,400 Pandits in Kashmir. “All those who have returned are primarily doing government jobs. You basically need a compact policy and political will, not just by the Centre but also by the State government. We have been suffering for so many years. We hope the Prime Minister will show some courage to address this issue,” said Ajay Chrangu, chairman, Panun Kashmir.
