It took Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani 18 years to break his silence over the mass exodus of Kashmir pandits.
Syed Geelani asks Kashmiri pandits to return to the Valley
SRINAGAR: It took Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani 18 years to break his silence over the mass exodus of Kashmir pandits.
For the first time since the forced migration of the pandits in 1990, Geelani issued an appeal for their return to their homes in the Valley.
“Pandits are our brothers and they should return to their roots in the valley. They should live in their homes and not in the security zones as proposed by the government. They should live along side Muslims,” said Geelani, head of the hard-line faction of the Hurriyat Conference, in a statement to a local news agency.
Official figures reveal that around 34,878 Kashmiri pandit families comprising 1,34,755 people are registered as migrants in Jammu. Around 2,684 pandit families are living in different states as migrants. More than 5,000 Kashmiri pandits are still living in Kashmir and did not migrate with others in 1990. Around 565 temples were burnt in Kashmir since the pandits migrated from Kashmir.
Most of the Kashmiri pandits have welcomed what they call “change of heart” in the hard-line separatists’ camp. “We hope other separatists too will fall in line and help in the process of our return to the valley.
We belong to this place and want resettlement on sound basis and not mere rhetoric. We want to live with out brothers and sisters as we used to prior to 1990,” said AK Deewani, president of National Democratic Front, a body of Kashmiri pandits.
Deewani agrees with Geelani that pandits should stay in their homes. “We do not want to live in covered zones. We want a respectful return where in we can live in our homes which we had left in 1990,” he said.
Mainstream parties too have called for the honourable return of the pandits. “It is very good that Geelani has called for the return of the pandits. They are inseparable part of our composite culture called Kashmiriyat,” said Mehbooba Mufti, president of the ruling People’s Democratic Party.
h_ishfaq@dnaindia.net
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