SRINAGAR: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has asked members of Kashmir’s Pandit community to return to their homeland as violence is on its “historic low” across the Himalayan state.
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits left their ancestral homes in droves after simmering discontent against New Delhi turned into a full blown rebellion in 1989.
Now tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits live in country capital Delhi and other parts of the country while many live in migrant camps in the state’s winter capital, Jammu.
As violence tapered after a peace deal between India and pakistan in 2004, authorities have been vocal about persuading the migrant Pandits to come back.
In 2008 Prime Minister Manmohan had announced a rehabilitation package of 750,000 rupees besides 6,000 jobs for the migrant youth.
‘Time ripe’
But the sops have achieved little success as the migrants say they are still weary about the security situation in the region.
“I do not feel that there has ever been a time as conducive as now for the Kashmiri Pandits to begin to explore the possibility of coming back,” the Chief Minister said during an interaction with mediapersons at an event organised by the Press Club in New Delhi.
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Abdullah, while promising to restore a sense of security in them, acknowledged that “in the case of the Kashmiri Pandits returning home, words are not sufficient”.
“It is the action that will speak. And the action will speak much louder than the words,” he said.
“No matter how much one speaks about it, those words should be followed by actions and those actions must result in Kashmiri Pandits feeling a sense of security to come back.”
Although militancy-related violence has been gradually decling over the recent years, there has been a paradigm shift in the mode of expressing resentment against New Delhi in the valley.
In 2008 and 2010, massive popular uprisings resulted in the killing of more than 67 and 111 young protesters in police or paramilitary firing.
(But) there has not been any targeted attack on the community, Abdullah said.
“I can’t remember the last targeted attack against Kashmiri Pandit community in spite of difficult summer in 2008, 2009 and 2010”.
