India’s consul-general to the city of New York told Kashmiri Pandit community members that the Modi Government will build settlements modelled after Israel as the final solution to rehabilitate the Pandit (Hindu) community of Kashmir.
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The Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was an unfortunate incident which took place in the beginning of 1990 when most of the Kashmiri Pandit families were compelled to leave the Kashmir valley due to the sudden outburst of terrorism.
According to the Indian government, over five hundred thousand people migrated from the volatile region after the pro-India Kashmiri Pandits were specifically targetted by Pakistan backed militants groups supported by local Islamists chanting ‘azadi’ or freedom.
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Hundreds of people were selectively killed, houses burned, women raped. Only a few hundred families of Kashmiri Pandits continued to live in the Kashmir valley comprising less than 0.1% of the population.
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Speaking to Kashmiri Hindus at a private event organised to discuss Indian filmmaker Vivek Agnihorti’s forthcoming project on the forced migration of Kashmiri Hindus in the early 1990s, Chakravorty asked those present to give the government some time to implement its plans in the valley.
“I believe the security situation will improve, it will allow the refugees to go back, and in your lifetime, you will be able to go back … and you will be able to find security because we already have a model in the world.
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“I don’t know why we don’t follow it. It has happened in the Middle East. If the Israeli people can do it, we can also do it,” Chakravorty said.
Chakraborty, the Indian consul-general, slammed international interest and interference into the matter. “[The issue is) getting pulled into the [UN] Human Rights Council. It’s getting pulled into the US Congress.
“A delegation wants to go. But go to other places. Go to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. No one is talking about taking photos there. So why do they want to come to our place? They don’t like it now that we are now asserting ourselves,” Chakravorty said.
As part of its justification for scrapping Articles 370 and Article 35A, which ensured that those from outside Kashmir could not purchase land in the state, the BJP-led government has repeatedly promised the return of the Hindu minority who left Kashmir during the height of the insurgency against Indian rule in the early 1990s.
Pro-freedom leaders in Kashmir have repeatedly called for the return of Kashmiri Pandits, but have urged them to return as neighbours and not settlers.
At the event on Saturday, parts of which was broadcast on Facebook Live, Bollywood actor Anupam Kher and visiting filmmaker Agnihorti praised the Indian government for taking the bold step to change Kashmir’s status.
Kher, known to be steadfast Modi supporter who previously described India’s actions in August as a “final solution”, said that it “took 70 years to abrogate Article 370; let’s celebrate that.”
Agnihotri, currently on a roadshow to promote his film on the experience of Kashmiri Pandits, which he describes as “India’s holocaust”, has faced a barrage of criticism and condemnation from Kashmiri activists and student groups for spreading right-wing propaganda.
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On Saturday, the consul-general also said that if Kashmiri Pandits were afraid of losing their culture, they needn’t look further than the experience of the Jewish people, who he said “kept their culture for 2,000 years outside their land, and [then] they went back.
“We all have to keep the Kashmiri culture alive. The Kashmiri culture is the Indian culture, it is the Hindu culture. I feel as much Kashmiri as anyone else,” he said to applause.
