‘They were killing Jews and I was not a Jew’: The parallel for the Pandits

By Sheikh Qayoom Srinagar, Jan 17 : The hounding of the Kashmiri Pandit community from the Valley has an uncanny similarity with the persecution of the Jews by Hitler.
“They were killing the Jews/ And I was not a Jew” was how the Pandits rationalised the initial killings of community notables.
The killings of the local Pandits started with the daylight murder of Tika Lal Taploo on September 14, 1989. He was killed by militants in his home in downtown Srinagar.
Taploo’s murder surprised, but did not deeply shock the majority of the local Pandits. They tried to console each other by saying that Taploo was killed because he was the leader of the BJP in Kashmir.
This killing was followed by the daylight murder of former judge Neelkanth Ganjoo on November 4, 1989.
The retired district and sessions judge had gone to collect his pension from the J&K Bank branch in the busy Hari Singh High Street market of Srinagar when militants struck.