Kashmiri Hindu Martyrs Day

September 14, 1989 – a day etched in the memory of every Kashmiri Hindu; on this day was the first of the many felled by the bullets of barbaric Muslim Terrorists in Kashmir. On this day Pt Tikalal Taploo was gunned down in broad daylight, near his home in the heart of Srinagar, by the bloodhounds of Pakistan sponsored terrorists. The merchants of death had chosen their target well. Employing the well-known tactic of “Killing one to scare a thousand” the peddlers of death chose to silence the most audible voice against their barbaric and hate driven sectarian agenda. The idea was to scare a miniscule minority into submission, leading to ethnic cleansing. The tactic, unfortunately, worked and in less than 4 months, an entire community (almost half a million in number) left Kashmir valley to save their lives and faith – political orphans in a country that cared only for ‘vote banks’.

Tikalal paid the price for being a Nationalist, for daring to look fundamentalists in their eye and for taking them on intellectually. They responded in the only way they know – mowing him down in a hail of bullets. His demise opened the floodgates of Exodus of Kashmiri Pandit Community from Kashmir. The ethnic cleansing of Kashmir was not an unforeseen/ un-forceable event – it always was part of the larger Pakistani plan of 1947-48, a part of the unfinished agenda of Partition, a revenge for failure of Operation Gibraltar (1965) and later, creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The plan was nurtured by successive Kashmiri Muslim leaders, from Shiekh Abdulla (and his successors) to Afzal Beig, the Muftis, Maulvis and Geelanis. It was a handful of Nationalists like Tikalal who delayed the process.

Read: Who was Tikalal Taploo? A kashmiri pandit remembers. 

Read: Remembering the legacy of Pt. Tikalal Taploo