WHILE the government as well as the human rights brigade has taken up the cause of Bhopal gas victims with gusto, they should not forget their terrible record of ignoring the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. Indeed, the Bhopal gas tragedy is a nightmare that cannot be erased from our memory. Yet, there is no denying the fact that the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits is the worst tragedy of contemporary times. The suffering of this hapless community is one of the most understated among refugees worldwide. Two decades down the line, the community still lives as refugees in its own country. Battered by Kashmir’s secessionist violence which forced them to flee the Valley in 1990, security and rehabilitation have been at the centre of the displaced community’s demands. But even after two decades of displacement, nothing has changed for them. More than 1,000,000 are still living in filthy camps in different parts of the country. Attempts to ensure their return also failed for many reasons. The state govt. has only doled out meagre cash compensations and has not made serious attempts to rehabilitate them. The economic package from the Union govt. to the state has done nothing to meet the urges and aspirations of the exiled pandits. Neither have any CBMS initiated to facilitate their return to the Valley in the past two decades. Of today KPs’ are mentioned at all, they are done so in a perfunctory manner. The people who are shedding tears over Muslims in Gujarat have not even shed crocodile tears with respect to more than 4 lakh pandits who have been labeled as “migrants” in their own land. All kinds of fictitious stories were planted in newspapers with the largest circulations on Gujarat riots, but not even one of them tried to go into the KP issue in depth and dare to publish the real motivations behind such a horrendous human tragedy. While the judgment in the Bhopal gas disaster case has stirred up a hornet’s nest why is there a selective silence on the brutal massacre of lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits looted and killed by Islamic Jehadi terrorists in Chhattisinghpura, Doda district, Poonch, Rajori, Nademarg in Jammu & Kashmir and other states also?  Inarguably, both the problems involve the loss of human lives surely, they do not call for different treatments.
The Bhopal gas calamity in December 2, 1984 led to the killing of 4000 people immediately and thousands thereafter. Also, many more were left dealing with the after effects of the poisonous gas. What is saddening however, that while widespread protests were registered in the aftermath of Bhopal gas leak verdict, we are yet to hear anyone in Delhi taking out a protest rally in memory of KP victims who went through unspeakable terror. No one mourned them. No one wrote about them. It is as if they have no human rights. When entire families of Pandits were brutally killed in villages, they mourned their tragedy alone. Nobody sympathized with them. No demonstrations were organized for Pandit cause in India, let alone the world. Nor had any eminent secularist the decency to acknowledge that Kashmiri Pandits who fled the state were victims of a systemic campaign of ethnic cleansing and did not abandon their home and hearth for the dubious pleasure of a life in exile. This is not surprising. For sadly,India has a history of the skewered application of the concept of human rights. The Bhopal tragedy which took a toll of 20,000 lives happened overnight. The murmurs of protest could be heard everywhere, on the other hand the KP persecution, a homegrown tragedy unfolding over the years of neglect and betraying a total callousness on the part of the govt. hardly raised a stink.
Equally disappointing is the fact that the plight of this beleaguered community has been aggravated by bankrupt and opportunities politics and state policies. A lot of political cake has been baked over the issue Kashmiri Pandits have been abandoned to their pitiful fate by successive governments at the centre. Their plight is of no concern to any political or secular organization. The NDA regime headed by the BJP which made tall promises to fulfill its pledge to the displaced community failed to deliver on the same during its six years in power. The Congress has proved more callous in contrast to its efforts to mollycoddle terrorists and pander to them in the most craven manner. Hurriat and other mainstream parties which dance to Pakistani tunes also pay only lip service to the Pandit aspirations of returning to their homeland.
Over the past two decades, not only has the Pandit issue become tangled with the larger Kashmiri crisis, but their return is also being viewed with much skepticism. The UPA govt. harps continuously on its resolve to bring back the Pandits but it is nothing short of waving a red tag to this inured community. Even when the governments both at the centre and the state are drumming the normalcy mantra it is obvious that reversal of exodus is no option in the present circumstances. In that case, rehabilitation of those living in Camps should be the first priority of the government to address their sense of hurt.
Just as the Bhopal gas victims have to deal with the ill effects of the poisonous fumes for the rest of their lives, the same also holds true for the displaced Kashmiri Pandit community which is struggling to come to terms with the physical and mental pangs of homelessness. The unprecedented crisis has resulted in the physical toll by the summer heat of the plains coupled with a sudden upsurge—— in afflictions like diabetes, heart problems and other trauma related diseases. They also face a bigger challenge of ethnic extinction. The community fears losing their cultural and linguistic identity. Even twenty years after the tragedy , the KP community lives as a “ nowhere People” in their own land without any hope or rights only pathetic amounts of relief and compensation are doled out to the victims. But different yardsticks will not serve the interest of the nation. The exiled community is waiting for the govt. to make amends.