Sanatan Mission has embarked on a campaign to resettle and restore to the Kashmiri Pandits the properties owned by them that were left behind when they were forced to leave the Kashmir valley.
Sanatan Mission has been founded by leading journalist Lalit Shastri. As a journalist, he has written extensively about the rights of the Kashmiri Pandits and against the separatists, secessionists and the terrorists who have held the life of the Kashmiri Hindus to ransom for long years.
Lalit Shastri has a long-standing and close association with Jammu and Kashmir. His father, the late Anant Maral Shastri, established the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan in Jammu in the decade of the 70s of the 20th century.
Do read: Who will protect the rights of the Kashmiri Pandits
By 2011, following the last census, only an estimated 2,700-3,400 Pandits were there in the Kashmir Valley. According to Indian government, more than 60,000 families are registered as Kashmiri migrants including some Sikh and Muslim families. Most families were resettled in Jammu, NCR and other neighbouring states.
9 January 1990 is widely remembered by Kashmiri Hindus as the tragic “exodus day” of being forced out of Kashmir.
In July 1988, the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) began a separatist insurgency for independence of Kashmir from India. JKLF targetted a Kashmiri Hindu for the first time on 14 September 1989, when they killed Tika Lal Taploo, an advocate and a prominent leader of Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu & Kashmir in front of several eyewitnesses. This instilled fear in the Kashmiri Hindus especially as Taploo’s killers were never caught which also emboldened the terrorists. The Hindus felt that they were not safe in the valley and could be targeted any time. The killings of Kashmiri Hindus continued that included many of the prominent ones.
On 4 January 1990, Srinagar-based newspaper Aftab released a message, threatening all Hindus to leave Kashmir immediately, sourcing it to the militant organization Hizbul Mujahideen.
Walls were pasted with posters with threatening messages to all Kashmiris to harshly follow the Islamic rules which included abidance by the Islamic dress code, a prohibition on alcohol, cinemas, and video parlors and strict restrictions on Kashmiri women. Unknown masked men with AK-47s used to force people to reset their time to Pakistan Standard Time. Offices buildings, shops, and establishments were colored green as a sign of Islamist rule. Shops, factories, temples and homes of Kashmiri Hindus were burned or destroyed. Threatening posters were posted on doors of Hindus asking them to leave Kashmir immediately. During the middle of the night of 18 and 19 January, a blackout took place in the Kashmir Valley where electricity was cut and inflammatory messages were sent across asking for a purge of Kashmiri Hindus
In the year 1990, both the J&K and Central Governments silently watched the massacre and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley and in the process hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus became refugees in their own country.
Sanatan Mission has launched a campaign to resettle and restore to the Kashmiri Pandits the properties owned by them that were left behind when they were forced to leave the Kashmir valley.
For this purpose we are making an appeal to the Kashmiri Pandits to fill our form and give their consent to Sanatan Mission to pursue their case with the Governments at the Centre and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. If need arises, we will also seek legal remedy even at the level of the Supreme Court of India.
Drop us a line
sanatanmission@gmail.com
Sanatan Mission 