Wailing Shadows in Kashmir

For 22 years (1953-1974) Shaikh Abdullah considered the accession of Jammu and Kashmir State with Indian Union as his greatest blunder and demanded the right of self-determination for the people of Muslim-dominated Kashmir, but ignored the Hindu-dominated Jammu and Buddhist-dominated Ladakh regions. The legendary Kashmiri Pandits were humiliated and terrorised as they represented pseudo-secularism, incognito-socialism and flowering democracy of India. The Kashmiriyat changed from mutual coexistence to political vandalism and fundamentalism. The prospects of disloyalty and sedition began to haunt the Saffron Valley. But the whole political scenario changed in 1975 when Indira-Shaikh Accord was signed and the sophist Shaikh became the Chief Minister of the State. Ignoring the great expectations he had created among the people by his vicious campaign for plebiscite, Shaikh Abdullah began to spoke the language of Indian democracy and secularism. The slogans of self-determination and plebiscite evaporated into thin air. But the hate-India virus infused by him was exploited by other small politicians, who had big egos. A political vacuum was created because the people of Kashmir were betrayed, disillusioned, politically raped and left in wilderness. The reports by intelligence agencies were ignored, administration criminalised and communalism encouraged. Pakistan exploited the sentiments of the people and sponsored malevolent terrorism in the Valley, resulting in the accursed turmoil of 1989-90. In this satanic adventure, about 45 thousand people- Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, have been brutally killed; Kashmiri Pandits hounded out of their homes and completely exterminated; property worth billions destroyed; and mutual confidence between various communities virtually fractured.