No regional or national political party has an agenda to mitigate the sufferings of Saraswaths of Kashmir, regretted Kashinath Pandit, retired director, Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University. Political parties have also not shown any inclination to take Saraswaths back to their 6,000-year-old homeland in Kashmir, he said.
Delivering the keynote address at a one-day conference on “A Confluence of Saraswaths Worldwide” organised by Vishwa Saraswath Federation here on Sunday, Prof. Pandit said that the genocide and complete ethnic cleansing of Saraswaths of Kashmir took place in the 1990s. It has forced the nearly four lakh Kashmiri Saraswath Hindus to live as refugees in their own country for the last 32-years. The present situation calls for introspection among the scattered Saraswath community, which must unite and contribute to national identity. The Saraswaths are inheritors of a great civilisation, which must be taken forward, he said.
Prof. Pandit said that the 4,000-year-old Hindu Kingdom of Kashmir declined and fell to the Muslim invaders around 1339. The sultans replaced the rajas and ruled over Kashmir from 1339 to 1819. The only task that these Kashmiri Muslim sultans, including the Mughal and Uighur rule during 1586-1751, had was to destroy all traces of ancient Hindu civilisation of Kashmir and decimate the Saraswath Hindu community, he said.
The decimation process ended in 1990, Prof. Pandit said and added that the Saraswaths must know their true identity like never before. The community is a big economic and social if not political power, he said, while exhorting the Kashmiri Saraswaths not to be bogged down as a minority.
The entire Saraswath community in India has to understand the plight of their Kashmiri fraternity expelled from their homes at the point of a sword. He urged Sri Samyamindra Thirtha Swami, head of Sri Kashi Math, to constitute a five-member committee to examine and analyse the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Saraswath Hindu community.
Earlier, Sri Samyamindra Tirtha released Saraswath Awakening, a pictorial representation of his recent visit to Kashmir. The yatra acted as a unifying bridge for an emotional connection between the Kashmiri Pandits and the Saraswath community.
