Nirvana!

“ Freedom is not free, everyday soldiers give their lives so that we can live ours. ” 15 years ago, in the summer months of 1999, the Pakistan army with aid from terrorist groups had launched a military attack across the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and had threatened India’s territorial integrity. The Pakistani military establishment had become frustrated with India’s success in containing the militancy in J&K to within manageable limits and could not bear to see its strategy of ‘bleeding India through a thousand cuts’ evaporating into thin air. Its military aim was also to sever the Srinagar-Leh National Highway (NH) 1A and to isolate Kargil district and cut India’s lifeline to Leh and possibly occupy it. It is said that another aim was to infiltrate into the Kashmir Valley over the Amarnath Mountains and the Doda regions and physically occupy some territory on the Indian side of the LoC in Kargil district to use as a bargainin...

And the world remained silent! Since late 1989 J&K has been in the grip of a vicious movement of Islamist extremist terrorism. Thousands of lives have been lost in this conflict over 2 decades of a sub-conventional war that has inflicted enormous suffering on the people of the State.  Among the worst victims of this conflict are the Kashmiri Pandits, descendants of Hindu priests and among the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley, with a recorded history of over 5,000 years. The Pandits have been the targets and victims of one of the most successful, though little-known, campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the world. Pogroms of a far lesser magnitude in other parts of the world have attracted international attention, censure and action in support of the victim communities, but this is an insidious campaign that has passed virtually unnoticed, and on which the world remains silent. Between February and March 1990, 140,000 to 160,000 Pandits had fled the Kashmir Valle...

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) , also known as The UN Refugee Agency observes 20th of June every year as ‘ World Refugee Day ’.  The mandate of the UNHCR is to ‘provide, on a non-political and humanitarian basis, international protection to refugees and to seek permanent solutions for them’. The UNHCR proudly claims that it has won the Nobel Peace prize twice in 1954 and 1981. Such an organization which has a lofty mandate and has won several awards including the Nobel peace prize has somehow chose to ignore the plight of more than 2 million refugees of various denominations in Jammu & Kashmir who are living a life of penury in despicable conditions for the past several decades.  Neither has the organization raised the issue in its reports nor has it intervened with the concerned governments to address their plight and repatriate them.   UNHCR State of the Global refugees 2012 report released this month does not even mention the...

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