A conspiracy of silence

Madhav Godbole

Former Union Home Secretary and Secretary, Justice

IT has taken 32 years for India to open to the world The Kashmir Files. Its reception has been as mixed as the highly polarised polity in the country. The rightist parties, such as the BJP, have welcomed it, while the so-called liberals and leftists have criticised it as propagandist, creating a divide among the Hindus and Muslims, the film taking many liberties with the truth, and so on.

Holding political executives responsible for their actions, inaction and lapses has never been a strong point of Indian democracy.

It was nothing but a conspiracy of silence by the government of J&K, the Centre and all political parties. The PM, VP Singh, and his Home Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, seemed to be least bothered. The atrocities committed against the Kashmiri Pandits and their forced exodus by extremist elements, supported by the ISI of Pakistan, and its local supporters and sympathisers, were kept away from public so far — not only from the rest of the country, but more importantly from the western world. A golden opportunity was lost to haul up Pakistan before the international community.

In the Muslim majority in the Valley, Pandits were the minority Hindus. Nearly 60,000 families are registered as migrants. For the last 32 years, they are leading the lives of refugees in their own country. But, there is still no authentic data about the number of people (Pandits, Sikhs and Muslims) killed during the carnage, rapes committed of Kashmiri women, and Pandits who are living outside refugee camps, on their own, in the country and abroad. This brings out the callousness of the successive governments over the years.

Sheikh Abdullah has devoted a chapter in his book, Flames of the Chinar, to ‘The Role of Kashmiri Pandits’. He has stated, ‘Although they constitute a microscopic minority, their influence is widespread. In fact, during different periods of history, they were used as instruments of tyranny... The Mughal rulers of India won over the loyalty of the Kashmiri Pandits and used them as informers and spies against the Muslim nobility... They bitterly opposed the Quit Kashmir movement against the Maharaja...’ Some Kashmiri Pandits were also large landholders. Reading this account, one gets the impression that Kashmiri Pandits were viewed with the same kind of animosity, as were the Brahmins in other parts of the country.

Treating insurgency with kid gloves for too long was one of the main reasons for the continued violence in J&K. Farooq Abdullah, the erstwhile CM, and Rajesh Pilot, the then Minister of State for Internal Security in the Ministry of Home Affairs, were fond of describing the terrorists as ‘misguided youth’, though they were being properly trained, financed and guided from across the border by Pakistan. Foreign funding which was largely responsible for the insurgency, stone-throwing episodes and agitations was, till recently, not put down with a firm hand. The anti-India activities of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) were overlooked for years together, mainly to not antagonise public opinion in Kashmir.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s term as PM has gone down in history for the concerted efforts made by him to build bridges not just with Kashmir but also with Pakistan. AS Dulat, former special director of Intelligence Bureau, in his book, Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years, has dealt at length with the efforts made by Vajpayee to commence a dialogue with the Hurriyat Conference, which was anathema till then. Unfortunately, in the historical accounts of insurgency in J&K and the quest for finding solutions, the Kashmiri Pandit tragedy was forgotten, or to put it mildly, glossed over. Neither did it figure in any strategy on the subject.

There are diverse interpretations of the exodus of Pandit families. The late Justice Rajinder Sachar has written in his autobiography, In Pursuit of Justice: ‘A large number of Muslims told us that Kashmiri Pandits had been deliberately bundled out of the Valley by [Governor] Jagmohan’s order and sent to Jammu. Jagmohan’s policy was to evacuate non-Muslims… I personally think that Jagmohan’s strategy was a mistake. It made it all too easy to communalise the situation...’

Farooq Abdullah, who was three-time CM of the state, has demanded a probe by a retired judge of the Supreme Court into the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. ‘It will clear many minds around the globe that it was not Kashmiri Muslims who threw them out.’ But it is not just the question of their exodus. It is also of the atrocities committed against them. As I had written in my book, India-A Federal Union of States: Fault Lines, Challenges and Opportunities, several questions arise from his statement. Why is he talking about such an inquiry now? He could have easily appointed such a committee during his long tenure as CM. Why could he not help create congenial atmosphere for the return and rehabilitation of the Pandits?

He is now demanding a high-level truth commission to inquire into the whole affair. The past experience of judicial commissions of inquiry, set up soon after major tragedies, namely, anti-Sikh riots in Delhi (1984), demolition of Babri Masjid (1992), Godhra riots (2002) and Enron power project (2003) shows the futility of doing so. As I had underlined in my book, The Judiciary and Governance in India, this potent instrument of public accountability has been blunted and made useless due to delays in finalising reports, stays granted by the high courts and the Supreme Court, the reluctance of the public functionaries concerned to depose before the commissions and so on. In the case of the tragedy of the Pandits, 32 years have already elapsed. To access reliable evidence at this stage will be next to impossible.

Better course will be to pursue the criminal cases vigorously by establishing a special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of the Supreme Court and setting up special courts for speedy trials. Even if this is achieved in a time-bound manner, India would have redeemed itself, at least partially. Holding political executives responsible for their actions, inaction and lapses has never been a strong point of Indian democracy. Let us hope the voters will do this job in the coming elections.

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