By Dr. M. K. Teng & C.L.Gadoo
Joint Human Rights Committee for Minorities in Kashmir
Chapter 1
Secessionist Movements
The present crisis in the Jammu and Kashmir State is a continuation of the Muslim struggle in India for an independent Muslim homeland, which culminated in the separation of the Muslim majority provinces of Sindh, North-West Frontier Province, and Buluchistan, the Muslim majority areas of West Punjab and East Bengal and the Muslim majority division of Sylhet of the Hindu majority province of Assam, to form the state of Pakistan. The All-lndia Muslim League, which spearheaded the Muslim struggle for Pakistan, claimed all the Muslim majority provinces, including the whole of the provinces of the Punjab and Bengal, along with the Hindu majority province of Assam. Among the Princely States, which were organised into a separate political organisation by the British, outside British India and which were governed by the British Paramountcy, the Muslim League claimed the Muslim majority Princely States, as well as the States which were ruled by the Muslim Princes, the former on the basis of their Muslim population and the latter on the basis of their treaties with the British Government.
The British divided India, separating the contiguous Muslim majority provinces and divisions to constitute the state of Pakistan and left the Indian States intact, restoring to their rulers, the powers which they exercised by virtue of the Paramountcy. The Indian States were not brought within the scope of the partition and with the lapse of the Paramountcy their rulers wcre accorded technical independence to determine the future affiliation of their States. The last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was entrusted with the task of dividing India insisted upon the application of the partition to the States, and he told the Princes in unequivocal terms to accede to either or the two Dominions of India and Pakistan, keeping in view the geographical contiguity and the demographic composition of their States. The British had far-reaching interests, political as well as strategic, in the Muslim crescent, which spread from Sindh, Kutch stretching along to Sinkiang, on the western fringes of China. Jammu and Kashmir State was the most vital link in the Muslim crescent, which the British, after they had withdrawn from India, would depend upon, for the protection of their interests in Asia and the security of their maritime commitments in the water ways of the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the high seas opening into the South Pacific.
The League rejected the extension of the partition of India to the States, lest the Muslim-ruled States with Hindu majorities, were lost to Pakistan. Indeed, the Muslim rulers had lavishly funded the League movement for Pakistan and the League won the referendum in the NorthWest Fronlier Province with the help of the huge funds, the Muslim rulers of Hyderabad, Bhopal, Junagarh and Rampur made available to the League leaders. The League leaders insisted upon the acceptance of the lapse of Palamountcy and the rights of the rulers to accede to the Dominion they considered to be in their interests.
The Indian National Congress too, rejected the application of the partition of India to the States, but demanded that the people in the Indian Princely States, a quarter of the total Indian population, inhabiting one third of the territories of India, be assured the right to determine the affiliations of their States. Except for the two large States of Kalat and Bahawalpur, which were Muslim States and fell within the geographical boundaries of Pakistan, and the major State of Jammu and Kashmir, which was situated on the borderland of both the Dominions, all the other Indian States were Hindu majority States. In the Jammu amd Kashmir State, the Hindus and the other minorities, which formed a quarter of the population of the State and the Kashmiri-speaking Muslims, who formed more than half the Muslim population of the State, were opposed to the League demand for Pakistan and had fought side by side with the All-India States Peoples Conference for the independence of a united India. The Congress presumed that the people in the States, including the Muslim-ruled States and the majority of the people in the Jammu and Kashmir State, would vote to join India. The inclusion of the Jammu and Kashmir State in the Indian Dominion, the Congress leaders anticipated, would lessen the rigours of the communal divide, the partition had caused and go a long way to consolidate the secular political organisations, India had opted for.
The British did not conccde to the people of the States the right to determine their future, and instead restored the powers of the Paramountcy to the Princes, vesting them with the power to determine the future disposition of their States. The British Government, however, made it clear to them that they would not be admitted to the British Commonwealth as British Dominions. The Viceroy, however, assured them that the British Government would consider any offer of bilateral relations the States made, perhaps leaving open the options for any State to seek British protection to remain out of India. By the time the British quit India, all the Indian States except Junagarh, Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir, acceded to India. The few Muslim States within Pakistan and the Hindu majority State of Junagarh acceded to Pakistan. The accession of Junagarh was shortlived, the people in the State revolted and the Nawab fled to Pakistan uith fabulous treasures and his vast seralgio. A referendum upturned the decision of the Nawab and Junagarh joined India.
Right after the British withdrawal, Pakistan claimed the Jammu and Kashmir State on the basis of the Muslim majority character of its population and its contiguity to Pakistan, though the League leaders recognised the right of the Princes to determine the future affiliations of their States. In the initial phases after independence, Pakistan with an eye on the Muslim-ruled States of Hyderabad and Junagath, conveyed to the ruler of the Jammu and Kashmir State, Maharaja Hari Singh that the Government of Pakistan would support him if the State assumed independence. The All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, which led the Muslim movement for Pakistan in the State, apparantly on the instructions of the Muslim League, openly declared its support for an independent Jammu and Kashmir State. However, immediately afler the Maharaja concluded a stand-still agreement whh Pakistan, the Government of Pakistan changed its tone and claimed the State for Pakistan.
Maharaja Hari Singh offered a standstill agreement to the Government of India as well, but the Government of India refused to countenance any proposals of a standstill agreement, so long the State Government would not send its accredited representatives to the Indian capital to negotiate the terms of the agreement. Hari Singh probably, weighed down by the changes the British withdrawal had brought about in India and unsure of the consequences of his accession to India waited, perhaps to seek political balances, which could retain him a measure of the prerogative he had enjoyed under the Paramountcy.
As time went by, Pakistan prepared feverishly to reduce the State and the Maharaja was not unaware of what was happening around. Pakistan fomented a rebellion in the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province against the State government, in which thousands of Hindus and Sikhs were killed and upturned from their homes. Neither Hari Singh nor the Indian leaders, who claimed their commitment to secularism and on that basis claimed the accession of the Muslim majority State of Jammu and Kashmir to India, paid any heed to the depredations, Pakistan spread in the State. Perhaps, the Indian leaders were still frightened of the British and, therefore, balanced their interests in Hyderabad, where the Nawab clandestinely sought to seek help from Pakistan to remain out of India. The Indian leaders lacked the courage to face the Nawab and the leaders of Pakistan while the British benefactors had not gone very far.
Towards the beginning of September, Pakistan army and nationals began to nibble at the borders of the State. By the end of September, they had infilterated into the sensitive border areas of the State to soften its defences. During the night of 21 October 1947, thousands of Pakistani army personnel, disguised as local Muslim and Afiridi tribesmen invaded the State. As the invading armies spread into the State, Hari Singh acceded to India. On 27 October, air-borne Indian troops arrived in Srinagar in the morning. Hari Singh transferred the state power to the National Conference two days after.
Though the British had withdrawn from India they still cast their shadow on the Indian freedom. Inspite of the accession of the State to India and the military operations India launched against the invading armies, Pakistan truimphed. The intervention of the United Nations, which India had invoked against the aggression of Pakistan, ultimately led to a ceasefire in hostilities leaving a large part of the State, including the districts of Mirpur and part of Poonch along with the Poonch Jagir in the Jammu province, and the district of Muzzafarabad and a part of the district of Baramulla in the Kashmir province, the entire district of Baltistan, the district of Gilgit and the Gilgit Agency, with all the Dardic dependencies, under the occupation of Pakistan.
Had the Government of India resisted the pressure to allow Pakistan to occupy a part of the territories of the State, Pakistan would have been denied the base, inside the State, which it effectively used to deepen the uncertainity, the cease-fire had created, and destabilize the Indian positions in the State.
The occupation of a large part of the State provided Pakistan logistic advantage and in linking up its political interests in the State with the strategic interests of its Western allies to neutralise Soviet influence all along, from Afghanistan to the western most fringes of China in Sinkiang. Ayangar, who represented India in the United Nations had little experience of diplomacy and lacked the diplomatic background, to deal firmly with the Security Council. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who was specially deputed by Jawaharlal Nehru to argue for India took pains to convince the Security Council of the sincerety with which India had come to the rescue of the Muslims in the State, to save them from the Muslims of Pakistan. Quoting scriptures, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, made strenuous efforts, to prove that he and the Muslims in the State were more Islamic than the Muslims of Pakistan and it was precisely for that the Indian Dominion had gone to the help of the Muslims of the State.
As Pakistan consolidated its hold on the occupied territories, it went back on its commitments on demiliteraisation, refused to withdraw its troops from the occupied territories and claimed a parity in the deployments of the troops with the strength of the Indian army, which it had agreed would remain in the State for its defence. Pakistan insisted upon the retention of thirty thousand Muslim militia, which it claimed, had been raised in the occupied territories. The militia was actually a part of the regular force, which Pakistan had orgainsed from the Muslim deserters of the Dogra army, Muslim ex-servicemen of Mirpur, Poonch, and Sudhunti, who were demoblised from the British imperial troops after the end of the Second World War and recruits from the adjoining districts of Pakistan, who had brought up the rear of the invasion into the State and tasted blood and booty in their adventure.
While Pakistan launched a propaganda campaign charging India of having usurped the freedom of the Muslims in Kashmir and demanded a plebiscite to determine the future of the State, it entrenched itself in the occupied territories. A local government called 'Azad Kashmir Government' was established in the occupied territories, ostensibly to conduct their administration. The invading army had already wiped out the Hindus and the Sikhs from the occupied territories, around thirty thousand of them had been exterminated in the invasion and more than a hundred thousand, who had survived, had been thrown back into Srinagar and Jammu. Incidently, it will be of interest to note that these displaced persons are still awaiting rehabilitation in the State, though Muslim refugees from wherever they have come into Kashmir, Sinkiang, Tibet or even Azad Kashmir, have been settled in Kashmir with hereditary State Subject rights.
In a short time, Pakistan converted the occupied territories into a citadel of Muslim crusade against India, dedicated to the liberation of the State from the Indian dominance and the unification of the Muslims in the State with their brethren in Azad Kashmir, within the Muslim homeland of Pakistan. Pakistan adopted a three-pronged strategy to destroy the Indian support-base in the State:
• to reorganise the cadres of the Muslim Conference, who had supported the League demand for Pakistan and who had provided tactical support to the invading armies, and who were still active all over the State and the Muslim middle class factions, along with the sections of Muslim burareaucracy which had opposed the accession of the State to India, into a widespread and powerful movement for the disengagement of the State from India;
• to establish a widespread network of its intelligence agencies in the State to coordinate the activities of the anti-India Muslim elements and organisations in the State, organise infiltration of pro-Pakistan cadres into the political organisations which supported accession of the State to India and sabotaged these organisations from inside, provide finances and other material help to induct their agents into the State Government to capture its decisional units;
• to launch a propaganda campaign addressed to the Muslims in the State to organise them against India on the ground that Muslims in Pakistan and the Jammu and Kashmir were one nation imbibed by Islam and since the Muslims in the State were a majority, the State rightfully formed a part of the Muslim homeland of Pakistan;
• Pakistan was a Muslim State based upon the law and precept of Islam which accepted the preeminence of the Muslims in its social, economic and political organisation;
• India was a Hindu nation and the Muslim majority in Kashmir would be subjugated to the dominance of Hindus;
• commitment to secularism was unIslamic because Muslims could not accept equality between the Muslims and the people who did not profess Islam;
• the National Conference which supported the accession of the State to India, aimed to divide the Muslims and weaken them;
• The Hindus in the State, particularly the Kashmiri Pandits, were ceaselessly working to perpetuate the consolidation of the Indian forces in the State in order to perpetuate Hindu rule over the Muslims and it was, therefore, necessary to isolate them socially as well as exclude them from the economic organisation of the State and the processes of its government and politics.
Inside the State, the cadres ofthe Muslim Confernce, who had been considerably subdued after the accession of the State to India, the volunteers of the Muslim Guard, who had been organised in both the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir during the fateful days which followed the transfer of power in India in 1947, the cadres ofthe smaller Muslim organisations which supported the accession of the State to Pakistan, the Muslim intellectuals and middle class factions, including the sections of bureaucracy which opposed the accession of the State to India and a section of the Muslim leaders and cadres of the National Conference, which disapproved of the accession of the State to India, organised themselves into a closely-knit and widespread movement for the disengagement of the State from India and its merger with Pakistan. With active political support and enormous funds received from Pakistan, the Muslim movement against India, widened its reach rapidly. The claim to a separate Muslim nation which was not subject to the dominance of the Hindu majority in India, and which was committed to the ideas of the Muslim brotherhood and Islamic law, had a far reaching effect on the Muslims in the State. The Muslims could achieve ascendance in a State which was Muslim in majority and outlook. The secular organisation of India, which underlined the equality of all people irrespective of their religion could not be reconciled to a Muslim state, which in principle accepted the pre-eminence of the Muslims in all social, economic and political forms. In the Muslim homeland, Muslim precept would prevail over all other religions and social forms which would be subject to Islamic law and injunction. Since the United Nations had opened fresh options for the Muslims in the State to exercise in respect of its final disposition, the Muslims could repudiate accession to India and join the Muslim nation of Pakistan.
The response of the National Conference leadership to these events was pathetically sterile. In due course of time, while the Conference leaders consolidated their hold on the state power, they adopted almost the same ideological prepositions which formed the basis of the secessionist movements inthe State. The Conference leaders sought to create a Muslim State within India, placed outside the Indian constitutional organisation. A Muslim State, the Conference leaders believed, would ensure the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, a political organisation which was based upon the Muslim majority character of their population in the State and their pre-eminence in the society, economic organisation and the government of the State. The Conference leaders conveyed to the Govermnent of India, in unmistakable terms, that:
• Muslims of Kashmir required to be ensured a separate and independent political organisation to protect them from the dominance of the Hindu majority in India;
• the political organisation of the State could not accept secularism as its basis, because secularism was not reconcilable to Muslim precedence;
• the State of Jammu and Kashmir could only be organised on the basis of the Muslim religious precept which accepted the pre-eminence of the Muslims;
The Conference leaders conveyed to the Government of India that the Muslims in the State would support accession to India, only if they were guaranteed a separate state, in which they were not subject to the dominance of the Hindu majority in India and which recognised their religious precedence, throwing its own ideological commitments to sccularism to the winds. Thc Government of India agreed. Secularism was restricted to Hindu India: the Muslim majority State of Jammu and Kashmir could not be integrated in a secular India, because Muslim precedence could not be reconciled with the right to equality, which formed the basic postulate of the Indian constitutional organisation. The Separate political organisation of the State was embodied in Article 370 of the Constitution of India.
The Muslim League had also fought for the separate Muslim homeland of Pakistan to save the Muslim nation in India from the dominace of the Hindu majority and the establishment of a Muslim political organisation which was based upon the religious precedence of the Muslims. Why had the National Conference; which also was commined to similar ideclogical postulates, opposed the Muslim League demand for Pakistan? The contradictions in the outlook of the Conference, broke it up quicker than expected. The high propaganda of religious indoctrination poured into the State from across the cease-fire line and widespread pro-Pakistan underground in the State accelerated the process. The final denouement came in August, 1953, when the Interim Government headed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was dismissed.
Chapter2
Muslim Militancy
The militant violence in Kashmir is an ideological struggle which is fundamentalist in outlook and basically communal in character and which is aimed to:
• disengage the State from India, and secure its integration with the Muslim homeland of Pakistan.
• demolish the secular, social and political organisation of the State and convert it into a Muslim theocracy governed by the precept and preredent of Islam.
The terrorist violence is not a local eruption of political dissent or discontent, nor is it a political movement geared to objectives which involve change in the instruments of power or processes of political participation. It is a religious crusade, the continuation of the Muslim struggle for the separate Muslim homeland in India, to complete the partition of India by securing the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir for the Muslim State of Pakistan. While terrorism took its toll in Kashmir, the leaders of Pakistan demanded that the India be divided again and the partition be carried to its logical conclusion by ceding Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan.
The ideological commitments of Muslim movement in Kashmir include:
Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir form a part of the Muslim nation of Pakistan and since they constitute a majority of the population of the Jammu and Kashmir State, the State must form a part of Pakistan; the integration of the Jammu and Kashmir State will complete the process of the Indian partition, which was thwarted by India, inspite of the United Nations intervention in the Kashmir dispute; the Muslims in the State do not accept accession of the State to India and since India has denied them the right to exercise their option to join Pakistan, they have taken up arms to force India to withdraw from the State; in their struggle against India they are aliied to Pakistan, the Muslim homeland in Indian subcontinent; while the religious war against India is in process, social, economic and political organisation in the State must be transformed to correspond to Nizam-e-Mustafa or the state governed by the law and precept of Islam; the Hindus and the other minorities should be eliminated because:
they form the frontline of the resistance to the secession of the State from India and its integration with Pakistan. they do not accept that Jammu and Kashmir forms a part of the Muslim homeland of Pakistan; they do not accept the reorganisation of State of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of Muslim law and precedent into a Muslim polity the Nizam-e-Mustafa; they are not prepared to subject themselves to the social, religious, economic and political preeminence of the Muslim majority in the State; they refuse to participate in the Jehad against India.
A wide range of strategies was employed by the militants and Pakistan to achieve their objectives. These strategies were:
Building a campaign, supported by the press and the electronic media of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir and the vernacular press inside the State; distort facts about the demographic, economic and political organisation of the State; its history and its political culture; malign India by accusing it of aggression and arouse the feelings of the Muslims inside the State and exhort them to rise in revolt against India; take advantage of the Muslimisation of the State Govermnent its political isolation from the rest of India to destroy the framework of the political institutions established in the State and demolish all power structures like the political parties, pressure-groups and other alignments of interest articulation; capture the security structures of the State by infiltration and undermine their normal function to compel the Government of India to deploy national security forces and the army in the State; to use the deployment of the national security forces in the State to :
prepare the Muslim psyche for an ultimate battle with India; arouse international opinion against India by charging its security forces of oppressing the Muslims in the State;
eliminate the Hindus in Kashmir in order to:
destroy the most stable support base India had in the Kashmir province; wipe out all communication linkages, feedback channels and flow of information to the Government, a process in which the Hindus in Kashmir played a factoral role; to demolish the balances of population and convert the province into a purely Muslim populated region and consequently remove the traditional patterns of religious coexistence which formed the basis of the social organisation of the province; complete the process of fundamentalisation of the Muslim masses in the State to forge them into a monolithic communal force against India;
extend the militancy to the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province, and consolidate the Muslims to the west of Chenab into another militant flank against India, and use it as a lever for a probable settlement on the division of Jammu and Kashmir along the river Chenab; unleash a low profile civil war in the State to exhaust India and force it to surrender and simultaneously solicit intervention of the third powers to compel India to accept a settlement more favourable to Pakistan.
By and large, Pakistan and the secessionist forces in the State succeeded in achieving their targets. The media mechanics in Pakistan as well as in Azad Kashmir manufactured volumes of false stories about the bloody battles the Muslim Mujahidin fought with the Indian troops and the heavy casualities the latter suffered. Inside the State the secessionist forces, already in a state of preparedness picked up the cry Pakistan raised and launched a virulent attack on the security arrangements. The local vernacular press, which depended for financial support on the Muslim middle class and which had always supported Muslim separatism, communal precedence of the Muslim majority and a settlement with Pakistan, joined the tirade against India. A large section of the vernacular press controlled by the secessionist partisans, mainly the Jamait Islami, openly committed themselves to the unification of the State with Pakistan.
As the militant violence increased towards the fall of 1989, the security structures of the State, heavily infested by the secessionist elements, crumbled rapidly. Partly because of the inadequacy of the local security forces and partly because of their ineffectiveness to deal with the terrorist violence, the State Government was compelled to deploy the Central security forces in the State. Both by consititutional precept and agreement, to which Jammu and Kashmir is not an exception, the federal police forces are deployed in the Indian States on security duty to deal with any law and order situation, which the local police is unable to control. Besides, the contingents of the Central Rescrve Police, the State Government deployed Border Security Force and elements of Indo-Tibetan Border Force on internal security duty. That was actually, what the secessionists aimed at. They sought to force a confrontation between the Indian security forces and the militants in order to create the psychological impression of a state-wide Muslim revolt against India. The two news journals,owned by the National Conference and the Congress had no credibility. At this juncture of crisis when these news journals should have been toned up to rebut the false propaganda poured in from Pakistan, their columns uere filled by self-condemnator profiles which sought to explain why the state power had failed to attain the state of Islamisation promised to the people of the State by the Indian leaders.
The Muslimisation of the various political and economic processes had begun during the tenure of the First Interim Government, constituted in 1947, and continued even after. Within the broad framework of the special status envisaged by Article 370, which isolated the State from the rest of India, it was far easy for the secessionist elements to infiltrate into the administrative cadres of the Government. In fact, the entire administrative organisation of the state had since been undermined by the secessionists and converted into a major bulwark of resistance against India.
The Muslim bureaucracy played a major role in the demolition of the power structure of the State to pave the way for the functional atrophy of the State Government. Right from the time of the Interim Government, the Muslim bureaucracy had been built as a flank of the National Conference, but after the disintegration of the Conference, it had grown into a powerful instrument of Muslim separatism. It was actively assisted by the secessionist flanks in the political parties, which constituted the Government and the nexus between them completed the destruction of whatever semblence of institutionalisation had survived the ravages of the movement for plebiscite in the State.
The strategies adopted by the militants to demolish the security structures of the State achieved their aim with devastating effect. With the onset of the militant violence in the State, the security structures in Kashmir, heavily infested by secessionist elements and led by personnel, deeply indoctrinated by Muslim fundamentalism crumbled rapidly. The flanks of Kashmir armed police recruited mainly from among the Muslims of the border districts of both the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir, struck work and mutineed, allegedly on being treated indifferently by the Government. This happened at a time when the militant violence had entered a decisive phase.
The obdurate strike of the State police forces, aroused fears of an internecine scuffle between them and the Indian troops and many rumours spread that the State police forces had fraternised with the militants, distributed arms among them and attacked the Central Reserve Police personnel and dealt heavy damage upon them. Rumours also spread that the State police had been ordered to be dlsarmed but it had refused to lay down arms. Whatever happened behind the scene, the elements of the local police, stoodbye, every where indeliberate indifference, without any meaningful direction, to deal with the situation.
The media machines in Pakistan as well as Azad Kashmir along with the vernacular press in Kashmir, poured out volumes of abuse and invective against the Indian security forces. Allegations were made that they were being used to oppress the Muslims, who were fighting for their legitimate right of self-determination. Stories were floated about the inconvenience, imposition of curfew caused to the people, about the shortage of cooking gas and soaps the failure of the State Government to provide transport for the export of fruit, the breakdown of the industry etc. But there was little or no reporting of the death and destruction and the atmosphere of fear and terror, which was rapidly prevading the life in the State. Kashmiri Hindus killed by the militants, were condemned as traitors to cause of the Muslim struggle and informers of the Government of India, who had been justly punished for having betrayed the Muslim Jehad.
While the secessionist forces consolidated their hold on Kashmir, they extended their operations to the Muslim majority districts in the Jammu province. The secessionists aimed to militarise the Muslims in these districts, in order to provide wider conduits for infiltration of the trained rnilitants from Pakistan and secondly, to drive out the Hindus, who formed a more sizeable minority in these districts. If the Hindus in the Jammu province were isolated in the two districts of Jammu, Kathua and the fringes of the Udhampur and Doda Districts, lying east of the Chinab, a basis could be provided for Pakistan to accept the division of the State along the Chinab? A widespread campaign of subversion was launched in these districts, to consolidate the secessionist forces and organise the despatch of Muslim volunteers for arms training, across the Line of Control. Evidently, with the Hindus thrown out of the Muslim majority districts, the secessionist operations could easily command the features behind the Indian defences.
The terrorist violence in the district of Doda intensified with the induction of the foreign mercenaries into the State. The administration in the district did not take long to crumble, leaving the terrorist flanks operating in the district, to establish a militant regime there.
The Doda district was carved out of the Hindu majority district of Udhampur by the National Conference Government, to seggregate the Muslim rnajority regions of the Jammu province, contiguous to Kashmir. It is situated in the outer hills of the Jammu province and is bordered in the north by the valley and in the south and south west by Udhampur and Kathua districts. In the east and south east Doda is contiguous to Ladakh. The total population of the Doda district is 4,25,262, of which the Muslim constitute a majority of 55 percent.
The militant operations spread to Doda from Kashmir and followed the same tactical pattern to fundamentalise the Muslim society in the district that the militants had adopted in Kashmir. The public address system, in the mosques, were used to exhort the Muslims to prepare for the crusade against India. The State government reluctant to recognise the spread of terrorism to the Jammu province, took no effective measures to meet the threat the terrorists posed in Doda. As planned, the terrorist offensive in Doda, unfolded in several phases:
the terrorist launched a widespread man hunt of the Hindus, killing than wantonly in large numbers; they warned the Hindus to evacuate from the district to complete their ethnic extermination; they smothered the last resistance against secessionism, among the Muslims who were opposed to Pakistan, by force and intimidation; after the Hindus were eliminated and the society fundamentalised they launched a major military offensive against the Indian security forces; having established a terrorist regime in the district, they extended their operations to the entire Jammu province.
The Hindus were subject to torture and barbarity, which do not have a parallel in the annals of history. The following local account gives a description of the inhuman practices, brutal torture and physical assault to which the Hindus in the district were subjected.
Two youths named Shri Rakesh Kumar (24) and his brother Rattan Lal (22) were taken as hostages for raising the alarms. After four days their dead bodies were found near a nallah. They were brutally killed - the breast of Shri Rakesh was opened to take out his heart. After slaughtering Shri Rattan Lal, his skin was removed from the face; private parts of both the brothers were cut off.
After a week of this horrible incident of gruesome killings, the "Mujahids" killed another youth of Kishtwar town. His name was also Rakesh Kumar. He was also kidnapped alongwith another youth Gambhir Chand who managed his escape despite being hit by a bullet. The dead body of Shri Rakesh was found near Bhagana village 40 kms. from Kishtwar town. His eyes were removed and different parts cut before killing.
On 25/26 March 1994, two Hindu youths from village Puneja (Bhaderwah) were kidnapped and tortured to death.
On 30. 4. 1994 an Ex-Serviceman, Shri Om Raj R/O Sinerra (Bhaderwah) was gunned down in his house and his property looted.
On 2.5.1994 Rangil Singh, Gulab Singh and a gujjar boy Abdul Gani were kidnapped and mercilessly tortured by Afghans at village Sumbar. Their parents were forced to eat the flush of their children and some of the villagers were forced to take beaf.
On 27.5.1994 three Harijan boys were killed mercilessly in Adall village of Kishtwar. They are Shri Kishore Lal, Jeevan Lal, and Ravinder.
Two militants were killed by villagers at Kote village. Later the whole village was burnt and the inhabitants forced for migration to Himachal Pradesh. Thousand of terrorists, including foreign mercenaries, were camping at the higher reaches of Doda district.
Militants have looted all the police posts at Chatru, Marwa, Warban, Dacan, Paddar and Thathri and hence snatched 118 rifles (303), 14 pistols, 16 uireless sets and a large quantity of ammunition from Jammu and Kashmir police without firing a single shot - later on State government withdrew these police posts, which have been recently restored after protests.
14 Jawans of B.S.F. were trapped and killed in Desa area because of the misguidance of local guide who had informed the militants before and the guide was the S.H.O. of the area. Militants laid ambush and killed all of them.
A steady exodus of the Hindus from the Doda district and several Muslim majority regions of the Jammu province is now in progress. The objective is to push out the Hindus from the regions east of the Chenab, to prepare ground for the separation of the Kashmir valley and the larger parts of the Jammu province from India, more or less on the basis of a modified form of the plan, when Sir Dixon, the united Nations representative, proposed as a basis for settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
This was what the secessionist forces were able to accomplish in Kashmir. The Hindus in Kashmir, hundreds of them killed and tortured to death and thrown out of their homes by terror tactics, were eliminated as a factor in the process of resistance against the secessionist movement in the State. If the Hindus from the Muslim majority districts of the Jammu province were also uprooted from their homes, they too would cease to be a factor in the resistance against secessionism?
Chapter 3
Disinformation Compaign
All over the post-independence era, incessant efforts were always made by the State Government and the Government of India to conceal the ugly face of Muslim communalism in Jammu and Kashmir. Deliberate attempts were always rnade to provide cover to the evoluition of Muslim fundamentalist and secessionist movements in the State right from the time of its accession to India. The various forms of Muslim communalism and separatism which rampaged the life in the State, during the last four decades and which imparted to the secessionist movements in the State, their ideological content and tactical direction, were camaflouged under the banners of sub-national autonomy, regional identity and even secularism. Largely, perceptional aberrations, misplaced notions and subterfuge characterised the official as well as non-official responses to the upheavals which rocked the State from time to time. More often, the real issues, confronting the State, were overlooked by deliberate design and political interest, a policy which in the long run operated to help the secessionist forces to consolidate their ranks and their hold on the people in the State. The shrill cries of "Jehad" against India and the Hindu infidels, to undo the wrong they were accused of having done to the Muslim majorty in the State by usurping its right to join Pakistan, were always underestimated.
The mass massacre of Hindus and the Sikhs in the territories of the State occupied by Pakistan in 1917, the uncertainly which followed the exclusion of the State from the Indian constitutional organisation, the dismissal of the first Interim Government, the virulent secessionist struggle led by the Plebisicite Front that followed, and the induction of thousands of armed infiltrators into Kashmir to 1ead a Muslim rebellion against India, were events which went unheeded. The real import of these events was deliberately ignored. Even after widespread militant violence struck Kashmirin 1989, and thousands of innocent people were killed in cold blood along with hundreds of Indian security personnel and the whole community of the Hindus in Kashmir was driven out of the valley, the disinformation campaign to cloud the real dangers the terrorist violence posed to the nation continued to dominate the flow of information about Kashmir. Indeed, efforts still continue to be made to sidetrack the basic problems of terrorism, secessionism and the role of militarised Muslim fundamentalist forces in the whole bloody drama enacted in the State and divert the attention of the Indian people to trival concerns, which have no bearing on the developments there. The disinformation campaign, has been aimed to confuse the Indian public opinion about dangerous import of the militarisation of Muslim separatism in Kashmir and its implications for the unity of the whole country.
There was a subtle effort, which was coordinated at various levels, both official and non-official, to divert the attention ofthe Indian people from the menacing threat presented to the security of India by (a), the militarisation of pan- Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia with its epicentre in Pakistan and (b) the induction of militalised fundamentalist flanks into Jammu and Kashmir to wage a war of attrition against India. The broad scheme of the disinformation campaign spread into several propaganda formats, based upon the following themes:
• Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir were alienated by misgovernment and oppression, which India and the Hindus in Kashmir, perpeterated upon them.
• Muslims in the State were excluded from political participation in the exercise of state power by the Government of India and the Hindus.
• The Government of India and the Hindus deprived the Muslims of their due share in the political processes of the state by,
• rigging elections;
• excluding the Muslims from the administrative organisation of the State;
• denying them their share in the services of the State Government and the offices of the Government of India, in accordance with the ratio of their population.
• the Muslims were subjected to economic deprivations, which resulted in widespread poverty among them and unemployment among their youth.
• Hindus in India and the Indian Government refused to recognise the right of the Muslims in the State to religious precedence and their religious obligation, polity based upon the law and precept of Islam.
The disinformation campaign succeeded to provide a smoke-screen to the war of attrition waged in Jammu and Kashmir. Evidently the campaign was aimed to obscure a clearer perspective of the import of the secessionist struggle in the State and obstruct the evolution of a national response to deal with the danger it posed, effectively and purposefully.
Chapter 4
Genocide of Hindus
After the Independence of India, the one community in India which suffered for its commitment to patriotism and Indian unity, was the minority community of the Hindus in the Jammu and Kashmir State. The Hindus constantly faced the accusation of the Muslims that they had conspired with the Government of India to secure the accession of the State to India against the will of the Muslims. They suffered the charge that in l947, they had, with the help of the Hindu ruler of the State, Maharaja Hari Singh and in connivance with the leaders of the National Conference, treacherously sabotaged the Muslim endeavour to achieve the integration of the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir with the Muslim homeland of Pakistan. They were also indicted for having opposed the Muslim resistance against the accession of the State to India. They bore the brunt of the Muslim precedence, the National Conference established in the State and after the National Conference broke up in 1953, they were proclaimed the enemies of the Muslim movement, the Plebiscite Front led in the State. Even after the Plebiscite Front was wound up in 1975, the condemnation to which the Hindus were subjected, did not end. They continued to be charged of being the arch enemies of the Muslim nation of Kashmir, a threat to the Muslim religion and its political solidarity and the motive force behind all secular processes in the State which obstructed the Muslim stluggle for Pakistan. In fact, they faced the first crucifixion for their loyalty to their country. The first shots fired by the militants were received by the Hindus.
Among the accusations piled upon the Hindus in Kashmir, the following were the prominent:
• that they misled the leadership ofthe Muslim Conference in 1939, and ensured the Muslim Conference leaders to accept secularism as the basis of the Muslim struggle against the Dogra rule,
• that they supported the accession of the State to India and actively worked to consolidate the Indian hold over the Muslims in the State;
• that they subotaged the secessionist movement aimed to disengage the State from India;
• that they supported the merger of the State in the constitutional organisation of India;
• that they were severely opposed to the Muslim precedence; and
• that they did not accept the primacy of Islam and obstructed the Muslimisation of the society and Government of the State.
The accusations were not unfounded. The Hindus in Kashmir fought for Indian unity and freedom from foreign rule, shoulder to shoulder with the people in the Indian States. The first ever held Conference of the Indian States People, convened in 1927, was presided over by a firebrand Kashmiri Pandit, Shankar Lal Kaul, who had left Kashmir after having been removed from the State services on the advice of the British Resident. Kaul demanded the right of the States People to repudiate the princely order and called for a united struggle of the people in the Indian States and the British Provinces against the British rule. A decade after, the All- India States Peoples Conference, in its session at Ludhiana, reiterated the demand Kaul had made for the repudiation of the Paramountacy and the end of the princely rule in the Indian States.
Pandit Dwatika Nath Kachroo, a veteran Kashmiri Pandit freedom fighter and a close associate of Jawahar Lal Nehru, served the States Peoples movement, asthe Secretary General of the States Peoples Conference, during the most formative years of its development. He was arrested in Kashmir along with Nehru in the 'Quit Kashmir' movement. Later, Kachru represented the All-India States Peoples Conference in the historic meeting of the Working Committee ofthe National Conference held in October 1947, in which the Conference decided unanimously to support the accession of the State to India.
The Hindus of Kashmir extended their support to the Indian national movement right from its revolutionary days and demonstrated their fraternal solidarity with the people of India in the Civil Disobedience, which followed the Rawlatt legislation in 1919, the Khilafat Movement in 1921, and the Salt Satyagraha in 1931. Many of them, including Pandit Kashyap Bandhu, joined the revolutionary underground in India which actually shook the roots of the British empire.
The Muslims of Kashmir inspired by Pan-Islamism, which prevaded the Muslim outlook in India till the British left, adopted an attitude of active opposition to the Indian struggle. The Muslims in the State never lost sight of the identity of their interests with the British and spared no efforts to help them to undo the Dogras and provide them support in their endeavour to smother the liberation movement in India. They strongly opposed the State-Subject movement led by the Kashmiri Hindus, which was mainly aimed to forestall any attempt the British made to acquire land in the State. Infact, the Muslims in their Memorial, submitted to Maharaja Hari Singh in the aftermath of the Muslim agitation of 1931, blamed the State Government of having connived with the Hindus in organising demonstrations in the State in support of the Congress movement, which, they alleged, went against their loyality to the British empire.
In truth, it was the Hindu community in Kashmir which by its exhibition of tolerance and forebearance and a long campaign of education in secular values, laid the foundations of a secular, non-partisan and non- communal movement in the State. The declaration of the National Demand, which was issued by Hmdus and Muslim leaders of Kashmir in 1938, and which in the later days, formed the basic groundwork of the movement for self-government in the State, uas drafted by the Kashmiri, Hindu leaders. The Decleration of National Demand became the basis of the emergence of the National Conference in 1939.
The Muslim Conference, which spearheaded the Muslim agitation against the Dogra rule in the State, was converted into a secular organisation,the National Conference in l939,with active collaboration and support of the Hindus in Kashmir. The Hindus joined the ranks of the National Conference on the terms which the Muslim leaders laid down. The Muslim leaders who did not join the National Conference broke away to continue their struggle for the Muslims and aligned themselves with the Muslim League movement for Pakistan. They accused the Hindus of Kashmir, particularly the Kashmiri Pandits, of having divided the Muslims of the State on the instigation of the Congress and other Hindu leaders of India. This accusation was never washed away. The ideologues of the Muslim terrorism repeated the indictment.
The Hindus allowed the escheat of their landed estates, the confiscation of their properly, and their exclusion from the administration of the State and accepted political change which sought its legitimacy in the primacy of Islam, to provide the Government of India support in the United Nations, where the Indian representatives were seeking hard to prove more Muslim than the Muslim nation of Pakistan to justify the accession of the State to India. The Kashmiri Pandits went as far as to applaud the long harrangues delivered by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in the Security Council, which in substance, embodied the Muslim claims to the nationhood of Kashmir on the basis of the Muslim religious injunction.
The Hindus bore the first impact of the upheaval which followed the dismissal of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1953, and in fact, they took to the streets in support of the second Interim Government, demonstrating their solidarity with the Government of India. For twenty-two years, they fought with dogged resolution, the movement for plebiscite, which Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and the Plebiscite Front led. After the Accord in 1975, they found themselves arraigned against the Pan-Islamic fundamentalism which assumed the leadership of the secessionist movement in the State after the Plebiscite Front was dissolved.
The secessionist forces charged them of obstructing the liberation of the Muslims in the State and the State Government charged them of acting on the behest of the Indian Government, to spread Hindu communalism in the State. The National Conference leaders charged the Kashmiri Hindus of acting as the agents of India. The Muslim wrath fell upon them, when widespread anti-Hindu riots broke out all over the south of Kashmir in 1986.
The Kashmiri Hindus earned the heaviest Muslim censure for their avowed opposition to the exclusion of the State from the constitutional organisation of India. They were openly branded the enemies of the Muslim identity of the State. Indeed, the Hindus all over the State, including the Sikhs and the Buddhists, did not approve of the exclusion of the State from the constitutional organisation of India. They implored with Nehru and the other Indian leaders not to allow the isolation of the State from the mainstream of the Indian political life. While a widespread agitation against the exclusion of the State from the constitutional organisation of India was launched by the Hindus in Jammu, the Hindus in Kashmir sent several communications to the Government of India, pointing out the dangers in excluding the State from the Indian political organisation and the damage that would be done to the evolution of integrated and secular political institutions in the State. The National Conference, the Plebiscite Front and the other Muslim organisations denounced the Hindus as the fifth column of Hindu communalists of India, who sought to end the Muslim identity of the State.
In the province of Jammu, the Muslim leaders of the National Conference cracked under the pressure of the dominant Hindu majority and frightened by the Hindu backlash offered to separate the Hindu majority districts of the province from the rest of the State. The Hindus of Jammu rejected the dismemberment of the State on communal lines and reemphasised their demand for the integration of the State in the secular political organisation of India. In Kashmir, however, they reduced the Hindus, particularly the Kashmiri Pandits, to a subject population, outcaste and branded them enemies ofthe cause of the Muslims and their religious identity.
Impoverished by their exclusion from the economic organisation of the State and their elimination from all the political processes, the Hindus lost their initiative and became the hostages to what was later called "the Muslim identity of Jammu and Kashmir". They were subject to religious persecution, their temples were desecrated; many of their temples disappeared completely, among them the famous temple of Vishnu located in the flank of Jama Masjid in Srinagar. As the secessionist forces gained the upper hand, pressure was mounted upon them and thousands of them abandoned their homes. No wonder that during the last four decades about two lakh of Kashmiri Hindus quitely migrated to the other pans of the country. The blitzkreig assault, the terrorists delivered upon the Hindus in the Valley in JanuaIy 1990, was the last blow, dealt out to them to uproot them completely and put an end to the last measure of resistance they still offered to Muslim communalism.
Chapter 5
Search for Refuge
The State Government, awoke to the tragedy, the Hindus faced, after the exodus had reached its peak. The entire administration, staggering under the shock of militant assault from outside and subversion from inside, was unable to provide protection to the Hindus particularly in the areas where their population was denser and where the militant attack on them was severe. In the penny-pockets, where the Hindus were spread in the remoter regions of the Valley, they were almost at the mercy of the militants and their Muslim neighbours. In fact, the abductions, kidnappings, torture killings and criminal assault on Hindu women, were more extensive in rural areas than in the townships, where the incidence of killing was higher. Most of the people killed were shot dead wherever they were found. In the townships, the attack was sudden and effective, because it was aimed at a quicker cleansing of the Hindus in the valley. The elimination of the Hindus provided the militant forces a logistic advantage over the Indian security forces.
In a situation, where a large section of the Muslims were armed with lethal weapons and had fallen upon their Hindu compatriots, the State Gavernment was under an obligation, to help the minorities, spread over the Valley, evacuate them to safer places and provide adequate transport to facilitate their safe movement. The state Government, however, undertook none of these responsibilites and left the Hindus to make good their escape as best they could.
For quite some time, while the migration of the Hindus from Kashmir rapidly increased, the State Government watched with stoic indifference the turbulations and the disaster the refugees faced. The upper echelons of the bureaucracy, dominated by the Muslims, were traditionally arrainged into two factions, the local Muslim officers and the officers of the Indian Civil Service, posted in Jammu and Kashmir. Incidently, most of the officers ofthe Indian Civil Service posted in Jammu and Kashmir were also Muslims. In the factional balances, the local Muslim bureaucrats, most of them having risen from very ordinary commissions to the high positions of responsibility, due to the political patronage of the National Conference, as well as the Congress Governments, enjoyed precedence over the rest. The Muslim bureaucrats of the Indian Civil Service, bereft of any roots in the State, sulvived by sheer craft and capacity to ingratiate themselves with the party bosses in power in the State or at Delhi. The Hindus, with their proverbial commitment to secularism, trudged in the fog.
Both the factions in the State administration supported the processes of the Muslimisation of the State and Muslim precedence. With the onset of the militant violence, both the factions assumed a demeanour of neutrality to the war of attrition that had been unleashed in the State, partly out of fear and partly aut of preference.
In Jammu, where the refugees poured in thausands, the State Government failed to rise to the occasion and provide temporary shelter and relief to the hundreds of thousands of the Hindus sprawling on the streets in the temple city of Jammu. Were it not for the yeoman service of the voluntary Hindu organisations, which immediately swung into action to organise relief for the refugees, hunger and disease would have taken a heavy toll of the unfortunate people, who had suddenly been thrown into the wilderness. No help came from any quarter. Silence of death fell on the liberals, the protogonists of secularism, the radicals and the rest. GitaBhawan, a temple complex situated in tlle heart of the Jammu city, adjacent to the Shiva Temple, was converted into a reception-cum-transit camp, where the Hindu refugees arriving from Kashmir, disembarked.
The various Hindu organisations of Jammu, which had organised relief for the Hindu refugees arriving in thousands from the Kashmir valley, established a broad-based relief committee constituted of several prominent Hindu leaders of Jammu and Kashmir. The organisation was named the Sahayata Samiti. Pandit Amar Nath Vaishnavi, a prominent Hindu leader and social activist, was appointed the Vice-President of the Samiti. Vaishnavi was actually put in control of the function of the Samiti. In Delhi, the other main place, where the refugees arrived in large numbers, the work af relief and rehabilitation was taken up by the Kashmiri Samiti Delhi, headed by Pandit Chaman Lal Gadoo, an indefatiguable social worker.
As the number of the Hindu refugees in Jammu increased rapidly, the State Government issued instructions for the erection of encampments to accomodate the refugees and sanctioned a cash relief of one thousand rupees per month, for every family of five or more members. The Government also sanctioned rations at the rate of 9 kilograms of rice and 2 kilograms of wheat-flour, per head, per month. The cash relief was a mockery for the great Indian republic, which claimed a prior obligation to social justice. The Indian Government could not afford to sustain lakhs of their nationals who were paying the forefiet of their natiion. The relief and assistance, provided to the refugees, fell far below the international relief that was provided to the people in war-torn Ethiopia and Somalia.
The refugees, who were in the employment of the State Government, were not provided any relief and rations. They were allowed to draw their salaries which were ordered to be disbursed to them in the irrespective offices in Jammu. Thirty-two refugee camps were established to accomodate the refugees. Refugee camps were also established at Nagrota, Riasi, Udhampur and Kathua in Jammu. In Delhi as well, refugees camps were established, several of them by Hindu voluntary agencies, to accomodate the refugees and provide them immediate relief. Almost sixty percent of the refugees shifted to rented accomodation comprising one roomsets in Jammu and the adjoining townships. The heavy inflow of the refugees into Jammu suddenly pushed up the housing rents to exhorbitant rates. Around fifteen percent of the refugees were temporarily accomodated by their relatives and friends. The rest of the refugees were shifted to be housed in the camps.
The administrative organisation for the relief and rehabilitation of the refugees was entrusted to a Commissioner of relief. The organisation established sub-offices at various places in Jammu province. Each suboffice was placed under the supervision of an Assistant Commissioner for relief.
Each refugee family, entered into the Government records as a "migrant family", was furnished with a rationbook on which the number of the family members, their names and their addresses were entered and duly certified by the Relief Commissioner. The amount of cash received by the refugees and ration drawn by them, were separately entered into respective columns on the ration books. Counters were established in various parts of the city from where the cash relief was disbursed to the refugees. The rations were distributed from the government run ration shops.
The disbursement of relief among the refugees was far from a smooth process. Within a few months the whole management of the distribution of relief degenerated into a hotbed of corruption and blackmail. The entire structure and function of the relief organisation was twisted to facilitate the collection of graft. More often, rules and orders were promulgated making the procedure of the distribution of relief more stringent and cumbersome and laying down severe conditions for the refugees to prove their claims. The conditions were changed from time to time to suit the caprices of the Relief Department. Driven from pillar to post, the refugees greased the cogs and wheels of the relief organisation to earn reprieve.
Exposed to various pressures and without any safeguards to invoke for their protection, the refugees were placed at the mercy of the capricious officers and their touts. A survey conducted among the refugees, who received relief revealed startling facts about the troubles and travails they were made to endure. About 62 percent of the refugees interviewed, accepted having paid various sums, at different points of time, to ensure regular payment of relief to them. About 26 percent of the respondents refused to answer any question about the disbursement of relief.
The distribution of relief had another and a more interesting aspect as well. The Muslims migrants who had fled away from Kashmir in the wake of the terrorist violence, were listed for relief separately. Strict secrecy was maintained in dealing out cash relief to them as they were not required to collect their payments from the counters established for the disbursement of relief. Nor were they required to fulfill any conditions or subjected to any rules and regulations, laid down to distribute relief. They were accomodated in separate lodgings and not in the camps and most of the lodgings were in the government owned quarters. The special priveleges were reportedly given to the Muslims for their safety, which the State Government believed, or at least feigned to believe, was greater than the danger and devastation, to which the Hindus dumped in desolate camps, were exposed.
The Hindus in Kashmir bad been used as a sheath for Indian secularism in Kashmir where Muslim communalism and separatism had persisted to thrive in one form or the other. Having been pushed out of the arena by the Muslim militant movements they had been left to their fate exactly as the millions of refugees who had come from Pakistan in 1947, had been abondoned unclaimed.
The Indian leaders never learnt any lesson fiom their experience. During the struggle for the independence of India, the Congress had promised the people of India protection from oppression, poverty and degradation. The promises were never kept.
The refugee camps in Jammu and elsewhere and the refugees were soon forgotten and left unattended. Soon the tents were torn but they were not replaced. The improvised sanitary facilities, drainage, drinking water pipes, broke up in a few months after the camps were established. No one in the State Government went to see the camps and the plight of the people living there. The Congress leaders who made a bee-line for Kashmir and the Muslim majority districts of Doda and Rajouri, evaded appeals, the refugees made to invite them to visit the camps. Towards the close of 1993, when the terrorists began to bite deeper and reached the outskirts of Jammu, Farooq Abdullah and then Ghulam Nabi Azad visited the camps. To the consternation of the entire Hindu community, they invitied the refugees to return to the valley, in view of the "political process" which the Government of India, proposed to initiate to bring peace to Kashmir.
Many functionaries of several foreign countries, who came to Kachmir primarily to have a first hand knowledge of the Muslim crusade against India, visited the refugee camps. They were horrified by the hellholes to which, a whole community had been consigned for the fault that they had opposed Muslim secessionism all along the years after India had won freedom. Many of them submitted detailed reports to their govemments on the plight of the Hindu refugees living in the camps.
Living in sub-human conditions, a large number of refugees died of disease, heart attacks and snake bites. Children and oldmen and women, contracted diseases and ailments which bred in filth and squalour and which were caused by exposure to tropical rains. A team of migrant doctors, conducted a survey of the gruesome conditions in which the Hindu refugees lived in the camps. The survey covered the health of the refugees, who lived in accomodation rented by them. The survey made revealing disclosures about the decay and death, which struck the refugees and the tropical diseases, squalour and poverty and psychological distress to which they were exposed.
No comments:
Post a Comment