‘Striking down Article 370 tipping point’ Says Kashmiri Pandit

Jammu: Striking down of Article 370, which gave Jammu and Kashmir a sense of specialness, is the tipping point as it can further escalate the communal tension in the state, says Shadi Lal Pandita, a Kashmiri Pandit, who was forced to migrate along with his family to Jammu in 1989 in wake of terror attacks. According to him and a section of others who were also forced to leave the Kashmir Valley due to militancy three decades ago, feel that doing away with Article 370 was done in haste, without taking violence-hit people into confidence.

They say the real challenge for the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is how to ensure the safe return of around 80,000 Kashmiri Pandit families, who are settled largely in Jammu and Delhi for the past three decades, to their hometown in the Valley. They feel the battle for the hearts and minds is the larger war which has to be won by Modi. And the hearts can not be won through dictatorial acts. Not impressed with the way Article 370 was revoked and its abrogation was not a solution to the ongoing turmoil in the Valley, Pandita, 60, said the Central government has no rehabilitation policy for them.

More important, the scrapping of the Article and the subsequent military buildup have created a fear psychosis or “we can say a deep rift between the Muslims and the Kashmiri Pandits”, and this could lead to graver problems for them, he said. Another Kashmiri Pandit migrant O.N. Raina added, “For quite some time, the rift between them and the Muslims was narrowed as they (the Muslims) had started feeling that something is missing in their normal life without them. For centuries, we were living together harmoniously.” “Now their anger is certainly against a particular community and we will be the sufferers again,” an anxious Raina added. (IANS)

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