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'What have you done for the displaced Kashmiri pandits?' It is a question faced by every person who campaigns for the rights of minorities. And it popped up again when a team from the National Commission for Minorities visited the relief camps for the victims of the violence in Gujarat.
It finally prompted the NCM to take up the issue of the more than 300,000 Kashmiri pandits, who migrated from the Valley with the inception of militancy in the late eighties.
"We decided to take an initiative on resettling the Kashmiri pandits in the Valley. We had deliberations with representatives of various Kashmiri pandit groups and spoke to PMO [prime minister's office] officials and the Deputy Prime Minister [Lal Kishenchand Advani] as well, whose response was positive," NCM Vice-President Tarlochan Singh said.
The NCM will lead a delegation of eight prominent Kashmiri pandits to the Valley. The visit was planned for Monday but was postponed, as the J&K government wanted it to take permission from the Election Commission. However, Singh said being an autonomous body it did not need the permission of the EC to visit the state.
The NCM vice-president plans to talk to all parties in J&K, including the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, regarding the issue of resettlement of pandits.
"At the moment every political party is framing its manifesto. So we are going to ask them what is their stand on this issue. If there is consensus among the political formations on this issue, we would press for a pilot project, wherein a group of pandits can be resettled in a particular area," Singh said.
But some pandits are cynical.
"From Congress to RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh], every party has exploited Kashmiri pandits for their benefit. But let us see what comes out," said Dr Agnishekhar, president of Panun Kashmir, an organisation of displaced pandits.
He agreed with Singh's assertion that resettling pandits would be a test of Kashmiri secularism. "By taking the pandits back, we will take secularism back to Kashmir. That way only we can restore the secular value systems of the Valley," Agnishekhar said.
Singh will meet J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on Monday evening to ascertain his views on the issue. "If not his week, then maybe next week, but we will be taking this delegation to the Valley. The delegation will meet their neighbours, check the state of their property and see for themselves how things are," he said.
But the major impediment to the resettlement of the pandits, he admitted, is the security factor. "It is a welcome move. Let us hope that the Centre and the state governments wake up to the plight of the pandits. But in the present situation the return seems unthinkable," Agnishekhar said.
Panun Kashmir, which has been campaigning for the creation of a "separate homeland" with a Union territory status within the Valley, however, is bitter that the NCM did not invite it to be a part of the delegation. The NCM denies the charge.
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