Chapter 4
Genocide of Hindus
ETHNIC CLEANSINGThe consolidation of Pan-Islamic fundamentalism
and its militarisation by Pakistan was aimed to destabilize the northern
states of India. It was effectively used to export the "Islamic Revolution"
to Jammu and Kashmir. The first phase of the Muslim crusade in Kashmir
sought to eliminate all Hindu resistance to the "Islamic Revolution". The
Hindus were the first targets of the Muslim onslaught and they were marked
out for extermination out of deliberate design. The Hindus had all through
the crucial days, which followed the partition, offered stubborn resistance
to the secessionist movements in the State and the Muslimisation of its
government and society. The ethnic extermination of the Hindus was, therefore,
the first strategic objective of the militant flanks, which formed the
vanguard of the crusade, for the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir from India.
After the war of liberation triumphed, Jammu and Kashmir would, as a part
of the fundamental unity of the Muslim brotherhood, join the commonwealth
of Pakistan.
The terrorist violence in Jammu and
Kashmir, as it spread, unfolded several of its aspects, which were characteristically
original to it. The terrorist violence had a wider portent: the expansion
of Pan-Islamic fundamentalism and achievement of the Muslimisation of Jammu
and Kashmir. The extermination of the Hindus in Kashmir was a part of the
revolution, which the armed struggle aimed to accomplish.
Genocide is presumed to invoke a
hundred or more killings of an ethnic group. It is generally accepted by
the civilised nations of the world, and recognised by the carnos of the
law of nations that genocide is the destruction in whole or in part of
a national ethnic, racial or religious groups. The United Nations General
Assembly approved a resolution on 11th December, 1946, declaring genocide
a crime under International Law. A convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly, came into effect on 12th
January 1951. The Convention proclaimed genocide as a crime against International
Law. The Convention listed destruction of an ethnic, racial or religious
groups as genocide. Specifically, genocide includes:
1. killing of the members
of a community or a group because of their affiliations;
2. causing bodily or mental harm
to the members of a community or a group;
3. deliberately inflicting conditions
on the community or the group to bring about its physical destruction;
4. imposing measures to prevent births
in the community or the group;
5. forcibly transferring children
from one group to another.
In Kashmir, terrorist violence involved
the liquidation of thousands of the Hindus. A computation of the data of
the massacre of the Hindus on the basis of the reports in the local press,
newspapers published in Srinagar and other townships in Kashmir reveals
that the number of the Hindus killed by the terrorists run into several
thousands. The Hindus among them, mainly the Kashmiri Pandits, were killed
in large numbers irrespective of their age, profession and political commitments.
The press reports are supported by several surveys and inquiries undertaken
to assess the loss of the Hindu lives in Kashmir.
Among the dead were several hundred
Hindus who were reported missing. Among the missing were many Hindus whose
bodies were never identified and were disposed off by the State Government
agencies at their will. Many of the people killed and still unidentified
were Hindus. The terrorist assault on the Hindus in Kashmir commenced in
the fall of l989, and by the onset of Summer 1990, more than seven hundred
of them had been assassinated in cold blood. Most of the victims were innocent
people who lived in poverty and persecution in the Muslim dominated constitutional
organisations of the State. Among those killed were people from all sections
of the Hindu society: teachers, lawyers, political activities, mediamen,
intellectuals, errand boys and men of small means.
The terrorist killings were accompanied
by torture and atrocities, unheard of in the annals of human history, which
tantamount to grave crime against all ethics and against humanity. In sheer
disregard of the norms of political behaviour, recognised by all nations
and now embodied in several international covenants, including the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights,
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, the terrorists
inflicted grievous hurt, injury and torture on hundreds of Hindus. Torture
deaths were brought about by inhuman practices which include strangulation
by using steel wires, hanging, impaling, branding with hot irons, burning
alive, lynching, gouging of eyes before assassination, slicing, dismemberment
of limbs, drowning, dragging to death, draining of blood and slaughter.
Brij Nath Shah was kidnapped on 27th
April, 1990 from his home at Sadhu Ganga, Kupwara in Kashmir. Two days
later, his body was found hanging by a tree. His lips had been stitched.
Sham Lal of Chiragam in Anantnag,
Kashmir, was kidnapped in May 1990. The hands and the feet of the unfortunate
man were chopped off and his skull battered. Sham Lal's dead body was stuffed
in a sack and left on the threshold of his house, where from it was recovered
by his brother.
Pran Nath of Uttarsu in Anantnag
District, Kashmir, was kidnapped on 27th May, 1990. His body was found
impaled; his chest and feet nailed.
Three officials of the Life Insurance
Corporation of India were kidnapped in Srinagar. They were subjected to
torture and then confined in an abandoned Kashrniri Hindu house. The house
was set ablaze. Two of the officials were burnt alive while the third official
escaped with more than 50 percent burns.
Bhushan Lal of Ompura in Budgam,
Kashmir,was kidnapped on 27th April 1990. He was tortured, and then strangulated
to death. His body was found the next day.
Girja, a School teacher in Bandipora,
was kidnapped from the house of a Muslim colleague. The unfortunate woman,
after being gang-raped, was sliced on a mechanical saw.
Scores of the bodies of Hindus were
recovered from River Jhelum. Most of them were drowned.
Brij Nath Kaul of Hermain, Shopian,
an employee of the Agricultural Department, and his wife were tied to a
speeding vehicle. Their mangled bodies were recovered ten kilometres away
from their home.
The dead bodies of several Kashmiri
Hindus were salvaged from various places in Kashmir. Their heads had been
severed off.
Several dead bodies of Kashmiri Hindus
were recovered which had been branded by hot iron before death. Several
bodies were found with eyes gouged out.
The most dastardly and inhuman acts
of terrorism were those committed in hospitals, where the Hindus brought
in for treatment after being injured in terrorist attacks were either allowed
to die for want of treatment or brutally murdered by the doctors and others
who collaborated with the terrorists. A number of cases were reported where
the injured Hindus were allowed to bleed to death. Scores of cases were
reported where kidnapped Hindus were drained of their blood and their lives
were terminated.
The worst sacrilege to which the
Hindus were subjected, and which continues still, was that the kith and
kin of the Hindus killed in Kashmir were not allowed to carry the dead
to Jammu for cremation according to their religious rites. The dead bodies
of the Hindus killed in terrorist violence were actually disposed off by
the State police on its own and in total disregard of the injury and hurt,
it caused to the religious feelings of the bereaved families.
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