KASHMIRI PANDITS VS. KASHMIRI PANDITS

The tormentors of the Kashmiri Pandits (KP s) have been Kashmiri Pandits themselves—Kashmiri-Pandit-Converts like Sheikh Abdullah, or Kashmiri-Pandits like Nehru who created the Kashmir problem in the first place; and then, rather than solving it, made it more complicated, and almost insolvable.
Wrote B Krishna in his book ‘Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’:
“Nehru’s bias in favour of Abdullah was evident from what he said in August 1945 at the annual session of the National Conference at Sopore in the Valley, ‘If non-Muslims want to live in Kashmir, they should join the National Conference or bid goodbye to the country…If Pandits do not join it, no safeguards and weightages will protect them.’”

Nehru threatening his own people! And, not for any wrong committed by them. But to undemocratically force them to back a person [Sheikh Abdullah] who turned out to be a bigot, and an anti-national. Half a million Kashmiri Pandits would, some forty-five years later, pay for Nehru’s sins, and be ethnically cleansed out of Kashmir—their home for thousands of years.

Sheikh Abdullah himself was a Kashmiri Pandit convert. The second- generation-convert Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal, one of the main promoters of the idea of Pakistan, had a major influence on Jinnah in gradually turning him from a liberal, advocating Hindu-Muslim unity, into a bigot. As per the article “Iqbal’s Hindu Relations” by Khushwant Singh in ‘The Telegraph’ of 30 June 2007, Iqbal’s (1877–1938) father was one Rattan Lal Sapru, a Kashmiri Pandit. He was the revenue collector of the Afghan governor of Kashmir. He was caught embezzling money. The governor offered him a choice: he should either convert to Islam or be hanged. Rattan Lal chose to stay alive. He was named Nur Mohammad after conversion. The Saprus disowned Rattan Lal and severed all connections with him.

Those who drove out the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley also happen to be Kashmiri-Pandit-Converts. Fundamentalist Islam is supremacist, intolerant, inhuman, and cruel like the ISIS.

That KPs have been their own worst enemies is highlighted by the following interesting historical episode: Rinchin was a Buddhist from Ladakh. Hinduism (Shaivism) was then the dominant religion in Kashmir. Islam was on the fringe, and was at the time being propagated by Saiyyid Bilal Shah, popular as Bulbul Shah. After Sahadev fled and Dulacha left, Sahadev’s Army Chief, Ramchandra, occupied the throne of Kashmir. But Rinchin, who had a key post in Sahadev’s administration, plotted and eliminated Ramchandra, and sat in his place in 1320 CE. To pacify the public provoked by the misdeed, Rinchin married Kotarani, daughter of Ramchandra. At Kotarani’s behest, discarding Buddhism, Rinchin adopted Shaivism to become acceptable to the public. But the Kashmiri Pandits refused to accept him in their fold, saying that his conversion was not feasible—a legend says they couldn’t decide which caste to put him in. As a reaction to the rebuff, and at the instance of Shah Mir, Rinchin then approached Bulbul Shah, who converted him to Islam, and gave him the name Sultan Malik Sadruddin. Rinchin later built a mosque called the Bodro Masjid, venerated both by the Ladakh Buddhists and the Kashmiri Muslims. With the king converted to Islam, many others followed. And thus Islam spread in the Kashmir Valley.

This is how Pandits scored a self-goal. So, in a way, the Kashmiri Pandits have themselves to blame for inadvertently giving a push to the Islamisation of the Valley, though it was the later state-backed campaign—through preaching, patronage, incentives, torture and forced conversions—that reduced the Pandits from an overwhelming majority to a minority.