#dnaEdit: Justice for some

Last week, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley had said in Srinagar that all political groups in the Valley support the idea of return and rehabilitation of the Kashmiri pandits. He is correct — as the Narendra Modi administration is correct in moving to address their plight 24 years after they were forced to flee, particularly the hundreds of families that remain in migrant camps with poor infrastructure and few employment avenues. But the Centre misses the mark in the specific manner in which it proposes to rehabilitate the pandits: separate, self-contained settlements distinct from the warp and weft of Kashmiri society. This is a chancy proposition, and one with a number of implications for the reintegration of the pandits that must be considered. But an even bigger problem, perhaps, is the message the Modi administration is sending by choosing to focus on this miscarriage of justice to the exclusion of the numerous others that have taken place over the past quarter century or so.

Last December, the army decided to court martial six of its men for their involvement in the Machchil fake encounter case. It was the first time major action had been taken against a serving army official for human rights violations. At the time, it was touted as proof that the system works. Reality reasserted itself almost exactly one month later when the army closed the investigation against its personnel accused of killing five civilians in the Pathribal fake encounter case in 2000. It was the latest in a string of such systemic failures; Chattisinghpora, Shopian and Sopore are some of the other instances that come to mind. 

They are far from the only ones. Between 2003 and 2012, there were 163 probes, not one of which succeeded in ascertaining culpability. According to the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, over 8,000 people have gone missing in the state since 1989. And that’s at the lower end of the spectrum compared to the number of rapes and extrajudicial killings as per both international bodies such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and domestic activists; they estimate the victims to number in the tens of thousands. 

The ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri pandits is one of the great tragedies of independent India. But so is the treatment meted out to those who still live in the Valley today. Addressing one does not obviate the need for examining the other. Modi’s rhetoric after his electoral victory has been statesmanlike; he has stressed that he will be prime minister to all Indians. Yet, the mounting drumbeat of the Kashmiri pandits’ return — as far back as January this year, a delegation of them had submitted a memorandum to Modi asking for his intervention in the matter — has drowned out these other matters. There has been no mention of the killings and disappearances; the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation in the Constitution, remains an article of faith for the BJP. Throw in the first statement on J&K to emerge from the PMO — that the process of abrogating Article 370 had begun — and justice in the Valley begins to look exceedingly selective. By all means, the Modi dispensation must help the pandits return — but it must consider ways to do so that do not create a segregated society. And it must show that it governs for all the people of the Valley, not just a select group.