Despite Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah's offer of protection, Hindu government employees, who fled the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley, say that they will defy orders to rejoin their earlier posts till peace is fully restored.
Terming as inhuman Abdullah's warning to them to either report to their duties or quit, they said that the government should first create conditions that would enable them to return.
The government should first make the Valley trouble-free before forcibly herding employees or other migrants there, M L Kaul, a senior leader of the All-India Kashmiri Pandit Conference (AIKPC), one of the frontline organisations of Kashmiri Hindus living in Jammu, said.
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The Chief Minister had declared at a press conference in Jammu that all the displaced employees would have to return to the Valley. Either they report to their duties in the Valley or they go (from government service), Abdullah had said. The state government would soon issue orders to this effect, the Chief Minister added.
State government officials in Jammu say more than 25,000 Kashmiri Hindus, who have been living in Jammu for the past seven years, were drawing salaries and other benefits as employees of the state government without doing any work.
Abdullah argued: If others can work (in the Valley), why not them. The government will provide them security and adequate financial assistance to rebuild their damaged or burnt houses. Abdullah's announcement has also triggered a debate in the state on whether he would succeed in getting the Hindus back to the Valley, especially after renewed threats by the militants. Rakesh Dhar, a teacher who was forced to flee the Valley seven years ago when militants served notice on Hindus to leave, dreads the thought of returning.
He said: My house was burnt. All my relatives and friends are here. Someone else has been appointed in my post there (in the Valley). If I rejoin my duty there, the displaced native would be after my blood and what is the guarantee that militants will not hound us again? He said that he would prefer to beg on the streets here than go back to a life of horror there. Kashmiri Hindus began leaving the Valley from late 1989 when the separtist movement turned violent. The trickle of migration became a flood when several prominent Hindu political leaders and intellectuals were targeted by militants. Nearly 300,000 Kashmiri Hindus took refuge in Hindu-dominated Jammu region.
The separatists, however, blamed the then state Governor Jagmohan for causing an exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, better known as Kashmiri Pandits, as he had plans to launch a massacre of Muslims (remaining) in Kashmir.
It was all the doing of Jagmohan, said Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a senior leader of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC).