The Hindu : I have failed Kashmiri Pandits: Sajjad Lone

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 18, 2004

National

National

I have failed Kashmiri Pandits: Sajjad Lone

By Kalpana Sharma

MUMBAI, JAN. 17. Sajjad Lone of the People's Conference startled a small audience at the World Social Forum when he apologised to Kashmiri Pandits. At one of the many intense discussions being held in rooms scattered across the vast NESCO grounds in Goregaon, Mumbai, Mr. Lone said: "As a Kashmiri Muslim, I admit my shame and guilt at not being able to do anything to stop the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits." He was among a panel of speakers at a seminar entitled: "Kashmir: Culture and Identity Formation".

"I somehow failed them," he said, "but Kashmiri Pandits should understand that if I failed to save my own father from bullets then how could one do anything for them." He added: "The pain of the past must not become an impediment for the future. At some stage, they will have to bring us under the debt of magnanimity by forgiving us".

Speaking against the backdrop of 14 years of violence, Mr. Lone said: "No cause can be sacred enough to justify violence because the first casualty is the cause itself."

Later during the discussion, Mr. Lone modified his apology to Kashmir Pandits by adding that their return to Kashmir would work "provided they stay away from the radical right in India because that will create serious problems." Mr. Lone spoke after S.A.R. Geelani, the professor from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi who had been charged with conspiracy in the attack on Parliament in December 2001 and had only recently been cleared of the charge.

Speaking to , Mr. Geelani said that he believed that the divisions that were taking place within Kashmir's composite culture were not on religious lines but had political overtones. Even today, he said, a Kashmiri will first visit a Pandit when he returned to his village. These things have not changed. He suggested that the Government had a direct hand in pushing Kashmiri Pandits out of the valley. He acknowledged, however, that both media and civil society had failed the Kashmiri Pandits by not highlighting the atrocities against them.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National