Veteran BJP leader, two-time Union Minister and former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, Shanta Kumar on Monday expressed shock and surprise over creating hurdles in the way of safe return of Kashmiri Pandits to their homeland after starving and languishing in different parts of the country for over 25 years. “It is agonising that those who are opposing their rehabilitation in safe and separate colonies seemed to harbour evil designs to again throw them in the jaws of death,” he said here.
Shanta Kumar had courted arrest at the age of 17 with a batch of Jan Sangh from Kangra Valley in March, 1951, during the nation-wide agitation launched by the visionary founder of the party, Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherji. Kumar said there was not even a single instance in the history of the world where lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits had been forced out from their ancestral homes by the Islamic fundamentalists using terror and persecution as a brutalising weapon at the behest of Pakistan. Blaming the policies and inaction of the then CM Sheikh Abdullah and the then PM Jawahar lal Nehru, he said, “I wonder if any religion of the world warranted such heinous cruelties against humanity,” the BJP leader said.
“I cautioned J&K CM, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed against dancing to the tunes of the terrorists and separatists and see the ground realities that the population of Muslims in India is more than that of Pakistan”, he said Kumar said most of the Muslims in country are nationalists and had been holding high positions in all walks of life. “let us usher in an era of brotherhood between all communities in India and Pakistan and work for their progress and prosperity without discrimination to save the two countries from ongoing chaos gripping some parts of the globe”, Shanta said.