Historian slammed for saying 'return of Kashmiri pandits will be like cancer for Valley'

An article in 'Kashmir Narrator' has said that return of Kashmiri pandits to the Valley would be like cancer.

Delhi: Reacting strongly to a recent article published in a Kashmir-based magazine, 'Kashmir Narrator', a Kashmiri pandit has said that his community was chemotherapy to jihadi cells.  

Writing in The News Minute, Chakreshwar slams article written by Aashiq Hussain who says that "if Pandits are resettled (in proposed enclaves), it will be like cancer”.

As per Hussain, Pandits who may return will “sit as idlers, and some of them may venture out to spy for the state” and at the same time, "they will provoke Kashmiri Muslims by protesting against Pakistan and hurling abuses at it" and thus would be like “cancer” if they return.

In reply, Chakreshwar questions those "who draw salary from the Indian state but act as pompom girls for Pakistan."

Following are excerpts from his article written for the website:

"...Twenty-seven years have passed since we left our homes in Kashmir. There is no day in our lives when we do not remember it or the gods we left behind. No matter where we are, we carry the memory of our land like a talisman."

"Almost since the time we left, we have heard one thing repeatedly, like notes from a broken record, from those who watched in glee our departure or those who took part in our brutalisation: Kashmir is incomplete without you... But what is this Kashmiriyat, really? What does it mean to us – the exiled lot, banished from the land of their forefathers, into the oblivion of alien territories? Like an author among us says: This evocation of Kashmiriyat is as insulting for us as a Nazi salute."

"Why would we have a problem with a word that stands for syncretism, that stands for brotherhood of sorts, not to be found elsewhere? It looks good on their inner CVs, it shows them as custodians of secularism while we, always complaining about what happened to us in 1990, are supposedly communal and an impediment to the process of reconciliation. But, pray, how will this reconciliation happen? Do we forget everything and sing paeans in favour of Pakistan? Will that make the likes of Aashiq Hussain happy?"

"That is not going to happen. We paid a price in Kashmir for two reasons: for holding the national flag (sometimes hiding it in our pherans, as the writer Maharaj Krishan Santoshi wrote) and for not losing sight of our Dharma, not forsaking our gods. We are not cancer, Aashiq Hussain. We are chemotherapy to your Jihadi cells."