Kashmiri Pandit groups have locked horns with each other after a large group of visiting Pandits, many of them NRIs, made conciliatory gestures towards local Muslims, with Jammu-based Pandits criticising the visit as a government-sponsored tour intended to promote what they called a "fake narrative of normality".
Seven Pandit groups led by the Global Kashmir Pandit Diaspora (GKPD) are touring the Valley, calling it the first community initiative to the region since their displacement beginning in 1990. At a two-day conclave at Srinagar's SKICC, they adopted a Pragaash (the first light) resolution on Sunday, presenting a "comprehensive blueprint demanding justice, recognition and a permanent return to the Valley".
GKPD head Surinder Koul told a media conference in Srinagar on Monday that the blueprint includes creating a township centred on universities, healthcare and medical tourism, designed for members of all communities. He said there would be no colonisation but something in which every Indian would take pride — mindful that such proposals are seen by local Muslims as magnets for settling non-locals to change the region's demography.
Surinder said the decades-long insurgency exacted a heavy price from both Muslims and Pandits, claiming that while Pandits were targeted because of their faith, Muslims were targeted for being part of the Indian apparatus.
Utpal Koul, another organiser of the event, said Kashmir was so peaceful before militancy that the place recorded one murder in 20 years. He said nobody ate for days when that killing took place. Speaking about the bonhomie that existed between the communities, he said Pandits in Sopore played a key role in the election of Syed Ali Shah Geelani twice to the Assembly because they thought he was the "most gentleman".
Geelani was a key leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which favoured Kashmir’s accession to Pakistan, while also fighting elections. The group has been banned multiple times, the last in 2018 ahead of the abrogation of Article 370.
The visiting group was targeted by Jammu-based Panun Kashmir, which has been fighting for the creation of a separate homeland for Pandits in the Valley. Its convenor Agnishekhar said the visiting Pandits had echoed the recent statement of LG Manoj Sinha in which he exonerated ordinary Muslims from culpability over the community’s displacement.
"(Then) who did it? Who are you fooling? It (visit) was a government-sponsored and facilitated move. We reject it. They have no representative character. These NRI groups are not representatives of Kashmiri Pandits," he said, calling Panun Kashmir the only “geopolitical voice” of Kashmiri Pandits.