There are things I feel strongly about. This collection of short stories came into being because of that feeling. There are no appropriate words to describe the hardships that the Kashmiri Pandit community went through because of their expulsion from the valley, and the last twenty eight years of their life in exile.
In Kashmir they were threatened and terrorized mentally and physically, maimed and murdered. Young girls were raped and dumped in gutters. Young men were shot dead, alleging them to be the spies of the central govt. People indulged in extortion, looting and grabbing the property of the pandits.
There were people who did not approve of this mayhem, but they did not raise their voice either.. Ellie Wiesel feels that people should take sides. Not taking sides benefits the perpetrators and never the victims. Silence encourages them and not the victims. When people’s lives are in danger, and their dignity is at stake, boundaries and sensitivities become meaningless. Forgetting the dead is like killing them twice.
Pandits were told that there was no place for them in the valley. According to them Kashmir was for Kashmiris. They conveniently forgot that pandits too were Kashmiris, they being the original inhabitants of the land of Kashyap Rishi, rest being converts.
The questions that people ask are_ why there was nobody for them when such grave injustice was being done to them? Why was the country as a whole and the international community silent on this issue? Why? Why? Why? But we still haven’t got the answers.
