As the in­ci­dents of hate vi­o­lence against Kash­miris still con­tinue in parts of In­dia, with the lat­est one in Delhi and Nag­pur, Kash­miri leader Syed Gee­lani ex­presses grat­i­tude to Sikhs for their kin­ship and love and praises their dar­ing against Hin­dutva el­e­ments.

Kash­mir and Kash­miris will never for­get that when the dark and gloomy clouds of hy­per-na­tion­al­ism had over­taken san­ity and the ra­bidly fa­natic el­e­ments were bay­ing for the blood of Kash­miris, it was the Sikh com­mu­nity and its brave youth who dared the Hin­dutva mon­ster and ex­tended their help­ing hand to the op­pressed and de­pressed Kash­miris in var­i­ous parts of In­dia,” said Hur­riyat Con­fer­ence chair­per­son Syed Ali Shah Gee­lani in a state­ment to the me­dia.

“I thank the Sikhs from the core of my heart for their moral, phys­i­cal, fi­nan­cial and timely sup­port.”

Syed Ali Shah Gee­lani, Chair­per­son, Hur­riyat Con­fer­ence

Far away in the North­east, to add in­sult to in­jury, the Gov­er­nor of Megha­laya -Tatha­gata Ray, an au­thor of a book on how im­pe­ri­al­is­tic feel­ings killed thou­sands of Ben­galis far away in the North­east, even though oc­cu­py­ing a gu­ber­na­to­r­ial post which re­quires neu­tral­ity, has asked peo­ple “to boy­cott every­thing Kash­miri.”

Mean­while there are re­ports of Kash­miri stu­dents be­ing at­tacked in the RSS-town Nag­pur and forced to re­peat the slo­gan Vande Mataram. Two poor vagabond shawl mer­chants were forced to jump off a run­ning lo­cal train in Delhi to es­cape a mob in a lo­cal train, which was chas­ing them shout­ing, “Kash­mir mein pathar faikte ho, ya­han shawl bechte ho….”you are pelt­ing stones in Kash­mir and here you are sell­ing shawls!”

For­mer chief min­is­ter of Jammu and Kash­mir and Na­tional Con­fer­ence leader Omar Ab­dul­lah has ex­pressed dis­may at the si­lence of the BJP and the Con­gress over at­tacks in Kash­miris in var­i­ous parts of In­dia. Jammu Kash­mir De­mo­c­ra­tic Party Na­tion­al­ist (DPN) pres­i­dent and for­mer min­is­ter Ghu­lam Has­san Mir has also re­gret­ted the si­lence of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi.

The Hur­riyat Con­fer­ence state­ment from Sri­na­gar said, “I thank the Sikhs from the core of my heart for their moral, phys­i­cal, fi­nan­cial and timely sup­port.”  He fur­ther added that all the mi­nori­ties are at the mercy of the ma­jor­ity and our Sikh broth­ers too have ex­pe­ri­enced the trauma and bruises, be it in the 1984 Sikh geno­cide at­tacks or the killing of 36 Sikhs in Chit­tis­ng­pora, at the time of the visit of US Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in March 2000.

This ges­ture of hu­man­ity and uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of the Sikh com­mu­nity will be ever re­mem­bered, the state­ment added.

Hur­riyat Con­fer­ence (M) chair­man, Mir­waiz Umar Fa­rooq also ex­pressed grat­i­tude to peo­ple, es­pe­cially Khalsa Aid for help­ing Kash­miris, while they were be­ing at­tacked.

In this en­tire sce­nario, the si­lence of the tra­di­tional Sikh lead­er­ship –Shi­ro­mani Akali Dal and their ilk, the Sikh faces of the AAP party, other Sikh lead­ers, the Jathedars and Singh Sahibans is nau­se­at­ingly painful.  Some of these have sided with the ra­bidly com­mu­nal el­e­ments in the coun­try and dis­played their in­tel­lec­tual and po­lit­i­cal bank­ruptcy.

In a tell-tale re­mark about the ha­tred that was be­ing aired on tele­vi­sion, a What­sapp cre­ative sar­cas­ti­cally re­marked, “Be care­ful, In­dia will be caught sleep­ing and some day the Tele­vi­sion chan­nels will go ahead and at­tack Pak­istan.”

A for­mer high rank­ing of­fi­cial of the In­dian army, boasted in a “de­bate” –”kill the Kash­miris in the same way as we killed the Sikhs in Pun­jab!”

Do we need to say more?