Sir — This refers to the article, “They came home, but got nothing” (August 13) by Gulzar Bhat. The Kashmiri leadership has been following a clear-cut policy to change the State’s demography since its merger with India. From the time of Sheikh Abdullah, there has been a consistent effort to ensure that Kashmiri Muslims are well-settled and they outnumber other religious groups and communities.
On the one hand, Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, though allowed to settle in Jammu, are denied State-subject status and the accruing benefits. This effectively keeps the proportion of the Hindu electorate to negligible levels. However, the same Kashmiri leaders have conferred State-subject status to thousands of Tibetan Muslim refugees and settled them in ladakh to dilute the percentage of Buddhists.