Srinagar (AsiaNews) – Some Sikhs living in Kashmir have received anonymous letters recently, urging them to “embrace Islam, join the protests against civilian killings or pack up and leave the Valley.” In one letter, the anonymous writer said, “Since you are benefitting from the joys here, why can't you share the grief and sorrow of Kashmiris as well? We know you are afraid of bullets” but “hold protests inside your gurdwaras [Sikh temples] or leave.”
For decades, Pakistan and India have been at loggerheads over the mountainous region. The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir now occupies the eastern half of the territory. For years, it has been the scene of a Muslim insurgency dedicated to the reunification of the greater Kashmir region under Pakistani rule.
Yesterday, hard-line separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani tried to reassure Kashmir Sikhs. He told them to ignore the letters, and not feel threatened.
Ali Ashgar Engineer, an Indian Muslims who heads Mumbai’s Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, spoke to AsiaNews about it. “The letters are unsigned, and Geelani himself condemned the incident and reassured Sikhs. Kashmiri valley Muslims have not done this; they [the letters] are from terrorists in Pakistan.”
“What is more,” Engineer noted, “I often go to Kashmir. No harm has ever come to Pandits from local Muslims. Most people are against violence, and opposed to terrorism and radicalism.”
Not everyone agrees. Predhuman Joseph Dhar is a Pandit, a member of a traditional Kashmir-based Brahmin scholarly caste; he is also a Catholic after converting 16 years ago. Muslims drove him from his native Kashmir valley to the relative safety of Jammu.
“The same thing that is happening to Sikhs happened to Catholics in 1989-1990. This is why I am in Jammu. Today’s clashes are religious in nature, not political,” he said. Muslim extremists “want to Islamise Kashmir. The Church has never understood this and that is why it has never cared for the Catholics that fled the valley.”
To illustrate this point, Dhar spoke about Fr Jim Borst, a Mill Hill missionary from Holland, who lives and works in the Kashmir valley. Last July, he got an expulsion order from Indian authorities. He has been in the area since 1963, involved in educational and health-related issues, but now might have to leave the country.
Dhar’s own personal story shows how difficult the situation in Kashmir actually is; at least for converts.
“Since I am a Pandit,” he told AsiaNews, my family and I had to leave home for Jammu in 1989, along with another 4 million people. I could not take anything with me. When I converted, I was disinherited. So, all the things that I was able to accumulate in the five years before my baptism I had to abandon; everything, except my dog who came with me during my escape.”
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