Kashmiri Pandits. 11

             I must congratulate my community brothers and sisters  and express my gratitude to God that we have come a long way since leaving our ancestral place twenty six years ago in much agony and achieving our settlement in a dignified manner.  As there is always scope for improvement and learning , we have every right to protect our community and guard it against any misadventure.  Moreover, we have obligation towards our ancestors as well as our progeny.  We have to learn from our past  history by introspecting our shortcomings and failures and we have to shun the myopic outlook which our ancestors have adopted from time to time. We  have also to learn from other communities who have established themselves sagaciously.
Aharya Kriplani a seasoned leader of India was told once , by his community members I.e. sindhis, after independence of India, that they should fight for their independent homeland. But Acharya replied to them that whole of  India belongs to them. They should spread in whole of India and enjoy the benefits of free economy and democratic set up of India. Sindhis agreed with the advise of their  Leader.  Rest is history. Sindhis are most well off and patriot community of India nowadays. These are the results of strong leadership and faith on leaders. We have created a leadership crisis in our community. We don't believe in  our leaders. May be we have genuine reasons for that.  But we have to come out of it and change our outlook towards our leaders now. If we learn from our history we have been always marginalised by every one  due to the lack of unity in us. Unity is basis of good leadership also. Leaders  are also ordinary human beings like all of us. They are only a medium to bind the whole community together and act like a single mouth piece of whole community. Our leaders should also learn that they are the creation of time who survive under the aura of public image wielded around them. No sooner the public image is tarnished than they loose the magic of influence they may have created on the general masses.
On the idea of social Reforms in our community, some  of my friends confront me with the plea that most of our community members are well off now and therefore, giving dowry or spending extravagantly on marriage functions is not a problem these days for an average Kashmiri pandit.  But I personally feel  that spending money on marriage functions is simple waste of it, which could have been  utilized otherwise,  for  some productive purposes. We should learn from other communities of India, who are far richer than us , but they go ahead with only one function to celebrate marriage ceremonies  and even  the  expenses of function is contributed by both the parties jointly.
Our community has many obligations. They can employ excess funds with them for construction of old age homes, free or subsidised hospitals which has now become a necessity in our community as our children are living very far away from us. We can not stop them from going ahead in life  but at least we can assure  to meet  our old age problems with much dignified manner. We  may even  create a fund, contributed by every community member, under the proper management of our leaders,  to help our not so privileged community brothers  or those patients suffering from killer deceases.
After migration from Kashmir, it was a need of time to send our wards to engineering colleges on reserved seats,  to ensure their future in private or Multinational companies. But now we can send them for competing in other professions also.
We are presently the. custodians of our mother tongue I.e. Kashmiri language  and therefore, we have the responsibility of passing  it on to our next generations. We should also try to discourage inter caste marriages the rate of  which is increasing sharply in our society.
Our community has large number of professionals and intellectuals who are living a retired life now with out adding anything useful  to the society or community. They should be requested to come forward and form committees to make decisions suitable for our community. They will definitely come forward and can be the torch bearers of our community.
I personally feel it may not be feasible for us to resettle again  in Kashmir. Moreover our children may not like to return Kashmir because of meagre opportunities of jobs there. It would have been better to resettle Kashmiri pandits in any other part of India, where they can live in congregation  and preserve their heritage and culture with out any problem.
But if our leadership has decided that they will carve their homeland in the heart of  Kashmir itself with union territory status, my view does not hold ground.  I will have to respect the decision of my Leadership which is obviously representing majority point of view. I should wholeheartedly support the decision of my Leaders even if I have to swallow a bitter pill. That is how the leadership works. It is important to be rationale but excess of rationality does not work in  leadership. Sometimes in order to boost our leadership we should also have blind faith on it.
"There is not to reason why. There is but to do or die."
The great wars have not been won by arguing of  soldiers with their generals. They have been won by will, perseverance and discipline of solidiers. Same is the case with big revolutions.
It is now evident  that neither politicians nor separatists  in Kashmir are interested in our  return to Kashmir. They make lame excuses that Kashmiri Pandits can not live in separate homeland in Kashmir, but they are not able to answer how they can live in old houses which are either in dilapidated condition or sold by kashmiri pandits at throw away prices. Moreover, if shia' s can live separately in Srinagar or Sikhs can live separately in both Jammu and Srinagar. Muslims can live in separate colonies at Jammu. Why Kashmiri Pandits can not live separately in Kashmir. This is the  hypocracy on the part of Politicians and Terrorists of Kashmir who don't want. us back.