New Deli, Feb 25: Kashmiri Pandits will flourish as individuals wherever they go but there may be no Kashmiri Pandit (KP) community as such in a decade or two, People’s Democratic Party MP Muzaffar Hussain Baig has said while highlighting their plight.
He was speaking at a recent conclave – ‘The Kashmiri Pandits: Right the Wrong in Kashmir’ — which was also attended by former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister and senior National Conference leader Abdul Rahim Rather, among other panelists.
The Kashmiri Pandit community faced an exodus in 1990 from the state. The community has been demanding a peaceful return to their homeland.
“The year of 1990 will go down in the history of Kashmir and perhaps the rest of India as the one of the darkest days of our history,” Baig said. “It was in this year that the mass exodus of the KP community who were the original inhabitants of Kashmir took place in the wake of a mass uprising.”
The community was made to feel so insecure that some of them left only with the “clothes they were wearing”, he was quoted as saying in a statement on Monday by the ‘Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora (GKPD),’ an organisation of KPs.
“As individuals they will flourish wherever they go, but I am afraid in a decade or two or three there will be no KP race as such,” Baig claimed.
Rather said, “I have immense love and respect for the KP community and KPs are an important and integral part of our society and culture.”
He pointed out challenges faced by the Kashmiri Pandit community.
“The best thing I like about this community is that even in the most difficult conditions, this community never compromised on the education of its children,” Rather said.
“The issues being faced by KP community is not their issue alone, it is our composite issue, considering this community is an inalienable part of the larger composite society and this community has immensely contributed to the entire society of Kashmir,” he added.
