FairPoint: Jammu protests ‘dangerous’, Kashmiri Pandit ethnic cleansing acceptable?
New Delhi: Mehbooba Mufti, the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and President of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), recently associated certain protests in Jammu with the decision made by the Muslim-majority region of J&K to join India in 1947.
It was profoundly disheartening to witness one of the most outrageous remarks from a leader who has held a constitutional position. Referring to the Jammu groups as “right-wing Hindus”, she stated, “Recent developments championed by right-wing Hindu groups like BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and others have negated the decision of our leaders to have joined the Gandhian secular India by rejecting the two-nation theory of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”
Mufti said this while criticising the revocation of permission to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Medical College by the National Medical Commission (NMC), describing it as ‘dangerous and unfortunate’.
She went on to say that voices are being raised for giving statehood to Jammu on the basis of religion, and if this happened, the reason for Kashmir to have joined secular India would be proven wrong.
Such rhetoric raises an unavoidable question: how can a leader reduce a protest to a communal provocation and then invoke the very legitimacy of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India? A mere protest — however one may disagree with its demands — has agitated her and others, and resorted to a tone of ideological blackmail. However, it is not the first time that she and other leaders in the Valley have spoken this way.
Former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, warmly embraced by the INDIA bloc and its constituents, has frequently invoked Pakistan in domestic political discourse and even demanded autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir.
If a protest by a largely Hindu-majority group in Jammu can provoke such alarm and revive questions about accession, then a far more serious issue demands attention and answers: the persecution and forced exodus of Kashmiri Hindus. If the Muslim-majority population of the Valley chose to align with secular India, how were the two per cent Hindu minority subjected to violence, intimidation, and eventual displacement? Was Gandhiji’s vision of secular coexistence not brutally undermined then?
It has been over 35 years since the indigenous inhabitants of the Valley — the Kashmiri Pandits — were forced to flee their ancestral homes. They were expelled through deliberate terror, intimidation, and organised violence.
Figures such as Mehbooba Mufti and Farooq Abdullah, who are quick to express concern for secularism when protests arise in Jammu, have seldom — if at all — demonstrated comparable indignation regarding the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus.
The hypocrisy becomes starker when one recalls that both political dynasties — the Abdullahs and the Mufti — were in positions of power when terrorism gained a firm foothold in Kashmir.
During Farooq Abdullah’s tenure in the late 1980s, kidnappings, assassinations, arson, and sexual violence against Hindus became widespread. The state machinery failed catastrophically, allowing religious extremism to flourish unchecked.
In fact, the two political dynasts — Muftis and Abdullahs — and many others chose silence when Hindus were targeted in the late 1980s, 90s, and even post-2000. None of these Kashmiri Muslim leaders even once tried to raise the banner for the persecuted Hindus.
In fact, terrorists were released from jails, which further emboldened the terror groups and their sponsors in Pakistan. Farooq Abdullah, as the CM, did nothing and let the religious bigots unleash cruelty on a hapless community.
It was not just Abdullah alone, but Mehbooba Mufti’s father, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who was equally responsible for failing to protect the Hindu minority in the Valley.
As India’s Union Home Minister during that critical period, he presided over a security and administrative collapse that left minorities defenceless. The combination of Farooq Abdullah as Chief Minister and Mufti Sayeed at the Centre proved disastrous for Kashmiri Hindus. Although Abdullah resigned in January 1990 and Governor Jagmohan assumed charge, the damage had already been done.
Abandoned by the then Central government, the J&K government, by the Muslim neighbours, colleagues, friends, and the political leadership, social and human rights bodies, the Kashmiri Pandit community had no option but to leave to save their lives and dignity. Even after their exodus, their suffering did not end. Abandoned properties were forcibly occupied or appropriated under coercion, while justice remained elusive.
In all these 35 years, Mehbooba Mufti and other valley leaders have never declared Gandhian secularism to be under threat because of the persecution of Hindus. They have not demanded accountability, investigations, or meaningful rehabilitation.
Despite repeatedly holding power, neither the Abdullahs nor the Muftis initiated any efforts to facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits, prosecute perpetrators, or even officially acknowledge the scale of the tragedy. The question is why?
And the answers lay in their continued silence — at the time of persecution and in all these 35 years — and in their rhetoric of selective secularism.
Both the Abdullahs and the Muftis could have initiated steps to get the Hindus back during their rule. But none have taken any step. They did not find the exodus grave enough to be investigated, nor have they ever shown any inkling to identify those who killed, raped, looted, set properties to fire or desecrated the temples, and give justice to the minorities. And yet, Kashmiri leaders do not find Gandhi’s secularism killed in the ethnic cleansing of the minuscule Kashmir Hindu community.
This contradiction is not subtle — it is glaring. That such leaders continue to be welcomed and legitimised by so-called secular political formations across India only deepens the irony.
By staying silent on Hindu persecution, it is these very leaders who have taken further the evil dream of Jinnah’s Muslim-based two-nation theory.
And this they have done not stealthily but openly, and still are welcomed by so-called secular groups and parties in the country. Their politics is far more dangerous because they let the Jinnah theory become successful while being inside India.
